The four singers are just launching into the chorus when the music goes dead. The power has cut out, as it does a couple of times a day in Myanmar’s crumbling former capital, taking with it their backing tracks, the lights and the air conditioning.
The girls sing on, undeterred by the sweltering heat of their boxy rehearsal studio or the noisy city outside.
The Spice Girls never had to deal with this — but the Spice Girls never had to have their song lyrics approved by a military board of censors, either.
EXIT SPICE, ENTER TIGER
The Tiger Girls are Myanmar’s answer to the 1990s British girl band. Each Tiger has been assigned a stage name and persona and Tricky, Chilli, Electro, Missy and Baby hope to bring to Myanmar some of what Posh, Scary, Sporty, Ginger and Baby Spice foisted upon the world some 15 years ago.
The group’s mentor — dance tutor, singing coach, co-songwriter and manager — is Australian dancer Nicole May, who was teaching in Yangon orphanages when she saw “a gap” in Myanmar’s music scene: The need for a girl band.
“There is so much natural music flowing through people’s veins here, but the music industry is undeveloped,” she said. “Girls have more to sing about than sad love songs or tough hip-hop tracks.”
A call for auditions brought forward 100 hopefuls, from whom five were chosen. As Myanmar’s first ever all-girl band, the Tiger Girls are an unknown quantity in a country ruled by a military junta resistant to outside influence.
FIRST GIGS
At their first gigs, in Yangon in February, audiences were stunned into silence.
“On the first day, people were quiet, they did not know what to think about us, they hadn’t seen anything like us before,” says Htike Htike — Electro Tiger. “But by the second day, they really liked us, they were clapping and cheering and calling for more.”
Musically, the Tigers are doing things their own way.
‘COPY TRACKS’
The fashion in Myanmar is to sing “copy tracks” — Western pop songs rewritten in Burmese, but the Tigers have a message for the girls of Myanmar, one they feel is best expressed through their own music.
They want their fans to be “confident, to be strong and bold,” said Ah Moon — Baby Tiger. “Girls can do anything that they want. We have enough energy and ability to do what we want to do.”
Myanmar’s ruling military junta requires all musicians to submit lyrics to its censorship board before they can be performed or recorded. Anything political, or even vaguely anti-authoritarian, is usually outlawed, but the censors are inconsistent and unpredictable.
The Tigers’ lyric “Is this Yangon, or is this the jungle?” judged to be about the constant electricity failures, had to be changed.
They got away with the more positive: “I see you, you see me, but I’m gonna dance, because I’m free.”
RISQUE
Their short skirts, risque dance moves and showbiz make-up are political enough. Myanmar expects women to be demure and subservient, May says.
“These girls don’t need to be overtly political, just being who they are, five beautiful girls who sing, who dance and who are confident, that’s a big deal in Myanmar. And if we were too political, people would be scared to like us,” she says.
The country holds its first election in two decades on Nov. 7, although the poll is expected to be rigged to consolidate military rule. Regardless, a mood for change exists across Myanmar.
“The country is hungry for something new, but whether it is ready for the Tiger Girls, I don’t know,” May said.
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