Dancing Through The Coup: South East Asia through Myanmar’s Viral Coup Video

(Originally published in LinkedIn – February 2021)

In midst of Myanmar coup event, there is one video went viral: a video of an aerobic instructor Khin Hnin Wai dancing to the tune of an Indonesian song “Ampun Bang Jago”, unaware there’s a military convoy when the coup taking place. For many observers, there’s nothing more perfect than this video to show how interesting South East Asia really is.

First, the “Ampun Bang Jago” is Indonesian music gaining popularity originally through TikTok. The music used by youths in Indonesia later on to upload dance music video in TikTok, which spreads to nearby countries, in this case Myanmar. The song lyrics itself contains satirical statement towards bullying behavior, thus the title, which translates more or less to “Mercy me, o big brother”. It can even be seen as sort of “Ok boomer” statement, according to some local Indonesians.

However, as expressed by Khin Hnin Wai herself, she has no slight intention to document or make a statement in relation to the coup itself via this video. A regular citizen, she just wanted to upload aerobic video for her followers in Facebook. The spot also was chosen not with the intention to show the convoy, since she’s been using it regularly in other videos as can be seen from her social media account.

Growing up in the South East Asia region myself (Indonesia), Myanmar’s social and political instability is nothing new for me, and certainly, also for many South East Asians. The story of Aung San Suu Kyi house arrest isolation for 15 years, before finally ended in 2010, is very well known among people from this region. This news, to some people in the region, may not sound so surprising knowing Myanmar’s history. Nevertheless, the fact how Khin Hnin Wai innocently created video “documenting” the process is very interesting.

South East Asians have ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations), which is a regional intergovernmental organization comprising ten countries in the region, promoting intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic, political, security, military, educational, and sociocultural integration among its members and other countries in Asia. It has been central point of attention for some initiatives, even before the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) started, ASEAN+3 (South Korea, Japan, and China) was multiple times mentioned for many partnership initiatives. RCEP is basically more like ASEAN+3, with ANZ chipping in.

Now, this is where it gets interesting, though discussions have been going on for many times of such partnership involving ASEAN, the cross cultural exchange rarely took place in global-attention setting spontaneously in the past. At most, for average person in the region, their awareness over their neighboring countries cultural exchange in the past is limited to SEA Games. ASEAN countries are unlike EU-model where EU citizens have the Euro currency or Eurovision music contest to really connect people from various countries with. People in ASEAN countries are still far from this EU-model. However, in my opinion, in-depth analysis over this Myanmar’s coup video can finally give a strong message and upbeat understanding over the region.

Written by Tian Storm and Ever Slkr, the song is not in English, and.. not even in formal/official Indonesian language. The lyrics is actually written in local dialect from East Indonesian, which I suspect Manado dialect (where Tian Storm coming from). Through TikTok app which is very very popular in the region, this song gained popularity in late-2020 as people uploading Zumba dance video along this song (see below, a video uploaded by a street dance group from the Philippines in YouTube).

“Okay, got it.. cross-cultural exchange finally taking place naturally among South East Asian youths.. what’s the deal then?”. Working and living in Europe since 2012, I was not much updated about the cultural exchange in the ASEAN region since I left Indonesia. How people started to exchange music taste, dance video, I was completely unaware, until I watched Khin Hnin Wai dancing to the tune in language that I am familiar with with Myanmar’s coup in the background, just in 3 weeks before my presentation “The Race to Digitize: An Asian Perspective” in GARP (Global Association of Risk Professionals) Risk Convention 2021, to give perspective over Asian rapid digitization story. The timing of the video popularity also cannot be better with the news of Bank Jago acquisition by Gojek, Indonesian famous FinTech unicorn, backed by Facebook and Paypal in this acquisition, becoming the first FinTech in the region for such deal-size to enter the regulated area of banking and… strangely, sound the same as “Bang Jago” as in the song’s title. Following the momentum, Bank Jago move was followed by Singapore-based SEA Ltd., which is a joint venture of Grab (another unicorn, Singapore-based) and SingTel, in acquiring another local Indonesian bank (PT Bank Kesejahteraan Ekonomi) to gain banking license and enter the competition.

It seems, with “Ampun Bang Jago” and Bank Jago stories, cultural exchange and commercial partnership between ASEAN countries will get even more interesting, especially with the new RCEP initiative. While for Myanmar, I hope they can join the ASEAN economic growth party, dancing through the coup as Khin Hnin Wai showed in her video.