South East Asia Research, 18, 1, pp 161–189 Shan noises, Burmese sound: crafting selves through pop music 1 Amporn Jirattikorn Abstract: This paper examines how ethnic Shan singers use the Bur- mese language to redefine their own ethnic identity, in the process helping to construct Shans’ place in the Burmese national imagi- nary. The paper focuses on the songs of two Shan artists, Sai Htee Saing and Sai Sai Mao. These two singers have been singing in Burmese for three decades. Both have gained nationwide popular- ity and are now among the most famous singers in Burma’s music industry. The paper consists of two parts. The first one discusses the dynamics of self-representation, examining how Shan artists select and adapt dominant discourses about them to their own task of crafting themselves. The second part investigates the audience reception of these two singers, exploring how particular groups of audience members bring their own ethnicity into interpreting a media text. Through participant observation, interviews with audiences and with the singers themselves, the author seeks to illu- minate how such self-fashioning and listening practices reveal complex relations between ethnicity and the popular construction of identity. Keywords: pop music; self-representation; audience reception; Shan ethnicity; Burma Author details: Amporn Jirattikorn is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Division of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University, HSS #05- 39, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332. E-mail: ampornfa@yahoo.com. The woman at the guest house where I stayed in Mandalay was hum- ming Sai Htee Saing’s tunes (see Figure 1) while sweeping the floor. An English bookshop owner in Rangoon played Sai Htee Saing’s 1 I would like to thank Ward Keeler, Nicholas Tapp, Philip Taylor, Ashley Carruthers, Alan Rumsey and Frank Smith for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am especially grateful to the late Sai Htee Saing, whose songs will never disappear from Burmese people’s memories.