Burmese babes: Me N Ma Girls aren’t copycats

SINGAPORE — They sing, they dance, and they are Myanmar’s first girl band.

But the ladies in Me N Ma Girls (geddit? Myanmar Girls?) aren’t stopping at their home country. The group recently opened the Music Matters convention here in Singapore, and performed at the Women In The World summit in New York City. And now, three years into the job, they plan to make another trip to Los Angeles to film a video for their song, Girl Strong. The band’s Htike Htike (pronounced “tie tie”) tells us what it means to be a part of the country’s first girl group, and how it feels to be representing Myanmar abroad.

You call yourselves Me N Ma Girls. Does that mean you’re representing your country every time you perform?

Htike Htike: We used to be called Tiger Girls, but we were forced to change our name because our ex-producer wanted us to make copy tracks and we didn’t want to anymore. We wanted to represent our country, and to represent our country’s traditional culture as much as we can. We wanted to prove to the world that we can do original tracks, so we changed our name to Me N Ma Girls. So yes, in some ways, we are representing our country.

How’s it like to be a pop music group in Myanmar? Are there any rules you have to follow?

Actually, we know the boundaries of censorship, so we censor ourselves before the censors get to us. We know we cannot dye our hair, but we want to push the boundaries a little, so we wear colourful wigs. But censorship laws have been getting looser.

You’ve been in the scene for three years. Has anything changed since you started?

Yes, Myanmar has really changed these last three years. Under the rule of the military government, we couldn’t do anything. We couldn’t create anything and we couldn’t sing for our country. There was little space for the arts. But now, we have a lot more space. Our country has really changed, and we can sing about the truth. And even though we are girls, we’re also interested in politics. That’s why we made a song called Come Back Home — we’re calling our people from outside the country, who are working and getting jobs in other places, to come home and support our country.

Do audiences react differently to your performances in Myanmar and abroad?

Support from the public is really different. In our country, people know us, and they support us even though they sometimes criticise us – but in good ways. We also have many fans who support us individually. But in New York, people were really crazy! We were so surprised. They supported us as a girl band because they saw that we were five artistes who were under a lot of pressure, and who came up despite the pressure.

Which groups do you look to for inspiration?

In our country, we don’t have teachers who can teach us how to be a girl band. That is why every girl band is our teacher. We have to learn from every girl band, not just the Spice Girls, but also the Pussycat Dolls, 2NE1 and other bands. Some people ask if we copy those bands — no we don’t. But we think of these girl groups as our teachers.