I love black hip-hop and the NBL [National Basketball League] is my life. I don’t know why. Maybe we look to black American culture because we are so much darker than the Chinese
- Quote from Cheryl, aged, 20, the daughter of a senior Wa official in Shan State Special Region 2. These lines comes from an outstanding Irrawaddy report on current conditions in the Wa area along the Sino-Burmese frontier.
As a little fragment it reminds me of the (analagous?) influence of Korean pop culture in certain parts of the Indo-Burmese borderlands. In that case, I have heard very similar “racial” explanations for contemporary (pop) cultural affinity. Readers looking for a recent account of the “Korean wave” in the northeast Indian borderlands will find this article rewards a quick click.
It highlights a fascinating and largely unknown story of cultural production and exchange.
1 response so far ↓
1 Grasshopper // Jul 12, 2008 at 10:43 am
When I was last in Nepal, I was amazed to see, whilst wandering passed a Nayabazzar stall, DVD’s of ‘Bungee Jumping to their Own’, a music DVD of MC Mong and hundreds K-pop CDs. The whole Shabang-Shabang (shiny, shiny) attitude is everywhere.
Having watched some of these dramas; which seem only to follow a story line similar to terrible Jane Austen novels, I wonder what sort of diluting effect it will have on social relations if kids are taking these shows seriously enough for them to be adapting their culture to Shabang-Shabang Korea Time. I can’t wait to see shiny silver suits that swoosh all over the world.
If only there were Manipur, or South Asian productions, finding their way to Korea! Then the articles conclusion, that there will be a broader cultural ‘exchange’, would be more accurate.
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