“Home is (not) Where We Sing For” Karaoke and Democratic Voice of Burmese Migrant Worker

“Home is (not) Where We Sing For”
Karaoke and Democratic Voice of Burmese Migrant Worker

Siriporn Somboonboorana

Introduction
This paper focus on one of the activities of Burmese migrant doing after work, they love to hang out around the local restaurant to sing a karaoke. For them, to practice a karaoke is something like to cross tension between ability’s voice and other possible desires. My paper also deals with the origin, evolution and interrelation of the Burmese workers, with the particular elements of their culture and everyday life, and social spatial in the border city between Thailand and Burma, Ranong province.

Significant in Anthropology of border, living outside the borders of the “homeland” and inside the borders of “another country” often entails a border journey into the memory and imagination that negotiates between old and new, past and present, self and other, safety and danger. Thus, conceptions of cultural borders have given way to globalism, multiculturalism, and transnationalism, while generic boundaries have collapsed into “blurred” or “mixed” genres. (Donna, Hastings and Wilson, Thomas M. 1999 : 40-42)

Then, my argument is that karaoke signing is intimately related to the memory and the imagination of democratic in their homeland and their place to stay. As participatory consumption, karaoke is so important in their floating lives. To sing in front of the public with the karaoke juke-box therefore symbolizes the new awareness of self in Burmese communities in Thailand. But any place they went or stayed in Thailand, their life was still on the border. Thus, I would like to introduce about the state of Burmese migration in Ranong, Thailand first. And then analyzed what karaoke did in the life of Burmese workers.


Burmese Migrant Workers: Where are Home for You Now?
In Thailand, illegal immigrants are the biggest group of migrants to Thailand. Since mid of 1990’s, economic prosperity in the country had brought about income disparities between Thai nationals and nationals of neighboring countries whose economic development has advanced at a slower speed. The largest group of migrant workers, accounting for over 70 %, is Burmese; they are willing to work at dirty, dangerous, risky and difficult jobs (the “3Ds”). They are cheap and unskilled labor. In fact, labor Burmese workers are important to the economy’s Thailand, nevertheless almost all are illegal. As Thailand’s economy becomes prosperous, waves of Burmese migrants are on the move across Thailand to escape poverty at homeland. It can be said that there are lots of Burmese migrant communities in Thailand such as Mae Sot town, Tak province, western of Thailand, Mae Sai town, Chiangrai province, north of Thailand and Mahachai town, Samut Sakhon, central of Thailand which are quite busy with the cross-border movement of people.

In Ranong, Burmese crossed the border easily from Kawthaung, the harbor of Burma’s Victoria Point to the nearby Thai port of Ranong province. And they also cross at small ports along Kraburi River which Thai- Burma territory is on. It could be said that this border is quite no border line. That means it not seriously about territory if we compare it to the north of Thailand where a minority conflict in Burma makes the national security is so stronger. Most of them left their homes and came to Thailand because they know that they could earn more money here than they can in Burma. Therefore, in Ranong’s market, you can see lots of the Burmese men walk around the town wearing longyis (sarongs) and taking to finish a mouthful of betel and areca nuts and the most of women make up their face with Burmese powder (Tanaka). As is important for Ranong economic, we also see Burmese script, along with Chinese and Thai script, displayed on the shop’s front. This implies a clash between the ‘house rules’ of the new place and the practices that immigrants brought with them.

It could be said that there are lots of Burmese migrant communities in Ranong. Moreover, it can urge that if one day you went to Ranong province, particularly to Ranong’s city, you would probably assume it is in Burma territory, not in Thailand territory. However, my concern here is not about the geographical border.

Theoretically, migration means leaving home and taking up residence in someone else’s home. The newcomers seek to construct a place that they can again call home, and follow their own preferences that involves negotiations with neighbors. Home is where one feels a sense of belonging and security, and where one can decide on acceptable values and forms of behavior. Feher and Heller (1994, 143-7) have proposed the concept of “house rules” for this. Home also implies closure: only those who belong can come in, and a home-owner can shut the door on outsiders. However, home does not just refer to a house, but by analogy to a wider social space – even a country. The notion of home is part of the discourse of the nation-state, having emotive connotations of solidarity with those inside and the exclusion of those outside. That’s a place making where’s a highly visible process, through signs on shops and restaurants, local market and a different use of public space. On the borderland, place making can be seen as a spatial extension of home building and liked to the partial control of local markets (Castles& Davidson 2000: 130-131).

So, the heightened movement of Burmese people, symbols and practices have not only undermined the structures of Thai society that attempted to make a sense of the social homogeneity as it embedded the identity of subjects within given geo-political units and linear narratives of history, but has also problematized the degree to which migrants have made an exclusive identification with their place of work and living outside their homelands. And karaoke shop does something in making sense of the living for Burmese people in Ranong.

From Japanese to Burmese: A Karaoke Singing for Everyday Living

By the 1970s, Karaoke was popularized by the Japanese singer Daisuke Inoue in Kobe. After becoming popular in Japan, karaoke first spread to East and Southeast Asia during the 1980s and subsequently to other parts of the world. In Asia, a karaoke box is the most popular type of karaoke venue. A Karaoke box is a small or medium-size room containing and less public atmosphere. Generally, entire business provides karaoke as their primary function, although karaoke machines are sometimes included in hotel or other business facilities(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke,5/4/2007) Longman’s English dictionary explains about Karaoke is “the activity of singing to recorded music for entertainment” and “a machine that plays recorded music which people can sing to” (Longman 1995:773). And The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2000:735), as “A type of entertainment in which a machine plays only the music of popular songs so that people can sing the words themselves”.

The transition from juke-box to karaoke in the 1970s should not be interpreted in the same way. Karaoke is cultural technology; it is irrelevant to conceive it as the product itself that the boom exploded. It is not only a sing-along machine but also a variation of image consumption for Asian people. The technological image of karaoke may result from its contrast with pre-existent forms of non-professional singing. Unlike television and cassette tapes, cultural technologies that deeply penetrate mass music consumption in Asia and other areas. (Otake&Shuhei, 53, 2005)

Kimindo Kusaka (cited in Ban 1991, in Lum, Casey Man Kong1998, 172-3) said that (Lum, Casey Man Kong 1998: 172-173) “Karaoke is part of the “culture of form”. In any country, more than half of the citizens live a life of following orders from above. Once in a while, these people want to express themselves in front of others. They have difficulty doing something completely different from what others do, but they can do something if they can practice a fixed form.

Interestingly, Asia pop songs are unambiguous examples of the double indigenization of Japan and the West by local musicians. Many Japanese Top 10 tunes that usually consist of Western- borrowed sound are today covered in Cantonese and Taiwanese, and, with more luck, in Mandarin, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Indonesian, Malay, and so on. The Asian music cultures are homogenized by the loud singing voice from the speaker. Thus, karaoke is in turn domesticated by Asian people and becomes the most popular technology for singing. It is true that karaoke by necessity institutionalizes non-professional performance in front of bar or box audiences through pre-recorded sound, cheap images and amplified voice; it does not erase the local differences in which the material practice of singing is embedded(Otake, Akiko and Hosokawa, Shuhei 1998:196)

Unfortunately, in the Fascist state of Burma, karaoke bar/restaurants are Fascist Entertainment. Only, the military and government officer can pay for this. Although, the poor can have CD device, but they sang the songs much censored by government. (Skidmore, 2004)

To sing songs in Burmese in Ranong, the karaoke became tool of a symbolic of the community. In the Burmese’s migrant community, karaoke is very popular because it is consistent with culture practice of social singing. Specially, one of activities in everyday life they want to relax and sing songs with girls in karaoke shops. As metaphor, the practice of karaoke is the old identity they lost and the new one they found. The singing is one of the methods to construct their space and power in the new country. To be due to live in Burma, they cannot sing karaoke songs in public space such as karaoke bars and restaurants or owner especially of karaoke machine. And when they came to Thailand and live on the border. They cannot speak Thai and communicate with people around them so they feel inferior. They want to able to communicate in Thai and understand each other better. Living in a foreign land without full rights, it is understandable that they have some feelings of fear and uncertainty. However, they do not blame anyone or ask for anything beyond basic consideration as a human being.

This generalization comes under specifically related to identity communities which are marginalized, which succeed or fail to create space, which stand against flows of capital and practice to inscribe their identity on the physical world. When a singer’s voice is mechanically amplified (with echo) and shared with the anonymous audience, it becomes more publicized than an unamplified singing voice. For those who are not strangers in the communities, a collective singing in shophouses is seemed like a participatory democracy in their dream. May be they can not do something like this in their homeland. Thus, a karaoke is not only a reincarnation technology but also a pre-existing of cultural practice for the migrants. Moreover, the karaoke singing is expected to take a turn at performing on stage for the warmly enjoyment with others, no matter how well Burmese migrants perform. Indeed, they only want to present and perform as free(dom)as they can on this practices.

During the evening the microphone passes from hand to hand and everyone present can be a star in turn. There are about 40 karaoke bars/shops owned by both Ranong native and Burmese in Pauk Khaung Ranong. Mostly there are shophouses karaoke. Each shop have only one karaoke jukebox and it has Burmese music’s lists on the wall for service the customers. Burmese always sing songs after work time and drink alcohol with girls and their friends. They seem not only to get rid of their stress but also to get more relaxation and imagination there. They always sing karaoke songs in Burmese language, not in Thai language. The CD of karaoke songs, almost are Burmese popular music were imported from Burma, these are illegal. But who care!

Democratic Voice and Its Place- Making
In my short time fieldwork, I founded that on the cultural globalization, market expansion and social spatial practices of Burmese workers on the borderland was on socio-spatial dialectics of place-making on border land like Shields said( 1991). Furthermore, globalization and market expansion changed Ranong province into multicultural- marginalized space where the idea of having a clearly bounded nation–state with a homogeneous identity could become unviable.

Burmese migrants often come to Ranong with an expectation of economic and social integration into a local society. Differences between migrants and local people in language and traditions may seem less significant than the common acceptance of a culture, economic and political structures. However, such individual workers usually can integrate to highly skilled migrants, who are not subjected to processes of labor market segmentation and residential segregation. But most of lower skilled migrants experience discrimination and exclusion. This often provokes a response in which group culture becomes a resource for survival and resistance.

At Pauk Khaung Ranong, where Burmese village and fishing factory are, the sounds of Burmese karaoke fill the roads in every evening. Pauk Khaung is a famous Burmese karaoke area in Ranong as well. Actually, there are not karaoke bars in the sense of night life as usual. This area is only well-known local entertainment for Burmese migrants.

Burmese migrants often sing karaoke Burmese songs in karaoke bars/shops and present their voices very loudly. The voices were presented to empower them and freedom in the place. Hence, karaoke is intimately related to the democracy and freedom of self expression in Thailand. The appearance of common people and the new lifestyle was presented in the practice of karaoke, which was symbolic of the new democratic in the place. Also, Karaoke is device to let us know that Burmese seek a mean of escape from the everyday poverty, fear and oppression that are both real and imagined.

The karaoke place is place-making imagination, as it resists the easy distinction between public and private, commercial and recreational, real and virtual. They think they are using imagination by buying the latest mass produced goods, karaoke. Their imagination becomes scripted by those same market forces, so that dreams become commercials, which become karaoke scenes and music, which become dreams all over again, severed from their material history and therefore believed to be unique. The imagination that makes place possible is not the imagination of fantasy. It is not that they produce self-contained worlds, which they then use to reconstruct the real world.

However, many karaoke shophouses operated in small private rooms and open door. The local authorities always went there and sometimes forced the owner to close the shophouse. Because they supposed these shop connection with the underground economy such as prostitutes, trafficking, drug and tax evasion.

In place like Pauk Khaung Ranong, the karaoke bars/shops became zones of cultural production and consumption and contested spaces of meaning-making and meaning breaking. Karaoke shops/bars are socially constructed, in that they are made possible through the tacit and explicit social assumptions, agreements, practices, habits, and significations in which migrants hold. The karaoke place on the border is a highly visible process, through signs on shops and restaurants, ethnic markets and different use of public space. And it is the place-making to take place everywhere karaoke shops are.

For karaoke, the indifference between the two sound machines (microphone and TV) is found not in the meaning of sound-and-vision experience but in the theatricalization of space by incorporation the stage from the floor. For border, the significance of the visual space in territory lies in the subjective and collective participation. In order to fill the gap, Burmese migrant is rather than living it from place as ready-made; they interpreted it as space established by them. Thus, Karaoke was embrace as an everyday cultural practice of Burmese migrants.

It is important to note that their voices are liberated by them for freedom. While they escaped from their homeland and confront the new home, they have to build new place like their home in Burma. Hence place-making imagination must be something more than the mere production of images of place or space. Karaoke place, as place-making imagination was constructed for escaped the reality, after work in everyday.

Many Burmese migrants expect their home to be democratic country, the imagination in their homeland and they expect the new home to give democratic lifestyle and modern life. Reality, they want to express them in front of Thai society and respect from Thai people. Not only imagine and dream in karaoke but also they want to meet in the real world, “Life is not all bad, when we look at the brighter side” said a Burmese labor who was sitting in karaoke shop.
Conclusion
In the past two decades, the waves of Burmese migrants moved across Thailand’s border by escape poverty in Burma. The leaving home and taking up residence in other land, Burmese migrants seek to construct a particular place that they can make a negotiation with neighbors in Ranong province, the border city of Thailand. They also constructed a place, Pauk Khaung Ranong which has cultural meanings in their everyday life while they were living in this city.

One of the cultural from that they used is the karaoke. And there are many karaoke bars/shops in Burmese community on Pauk Khaung Ranong. And the songs they sang signified a symbolic of the community. It is not surprising that the Burmese migrants do not feel a sense of belonging and security in their homeland. It has not a freedom of speech there.

The singing karaoke Burmese songs in karaoke bars/shops represented the voice of freedom. It is very loudly. Moreover, the karaokeshops’ places took the lines among leisure, work and entertainment which were blurred. Their loudly voices also empowered them to get the freedom in the place not only they used to belong but also belonging now. Thus, they also felt that karaoke is related to the democracy and freedom of self expression in their living in Thailand. Moreover, Burmese karaoke is device to let us know that Burmese seek a mean of escape from the everyday poverty, fear and oppression that are both reality and imagination.


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