Hip Hop against Min Aung Hlaing

“In hip hop rap battles, we always like to provoke each other. So I thought, ‘How about we switch the arrow direction in the Dickcouncil album, to take on the military junta and Min Aung Hlaing or whoever, like every tyrant across the globe?!’ So that's what it is.”

So said Aye Win, the producer of the breakthrough album "Dickcouncil" by Rap Against Junta, describing their creative process in making this work.

I want to underscore just how significant Aye Win's reflection is. For those less familiar with Burmese culture and history, particularly the underlying role that Burmese Buddhism has played in feeding into the pathology and narcissism of past kings and tyrants, there is something quite powerful about what Aye Win is expressing.

Traditional beliefs, drawing from an understanding of karma, insist that one cannot accomplish anything in this life without an adequate storehouse of merit ("pon") from previous lives. Past leaders would therefore go to great lengths to demonstrate how powerful their own store of "pon" was, which indicated a kind of divine right to rule. And on the flipside, this also suggested that challenging such a ruler was not only dangerous for the military might they could bring to bear, but also for the supernatural powers that would also have to be contended with, as already proven by their leadership to this point.

So let us take this understanding into 2022. Far from being frightened by their relative insignificance, and correspondingly low "pon", these young Burmese rappers are openly dissing and flat-out disrespecting their self-proclaimed leader! While such truth-to-power verses are part and parcel of hip-hop culture the world over, and so nothing very unusual to rap fans accustomed to the genre, they are yet another unprecedented example of how Burmese youths are responding to the attempted military takeover of the country, and rewriting the weight of past history in ways we've never seen before.

Aye Win's interview is part of Episode #77, "Revolution As Art." To listen, subscribe to Insight Myanmar wherever you get your podcasts, or else check these links below.