Songwriter: ‘Panglong Agreement’ inspired by cartoon
Wednesday, 28 November 2012 15:25
S.H.A.N.
“I had wanted to write it for so long,” he told his audience at Tawwin Hninzi (Royal Rose) on Shwe Gondaing Road. “But I couldn’t think of how I could draw the listeners’ attention to it.”
One day, he came across an old Tai Youth magazine, published by the Rangoon University Shan Literary Society in 1961. In it was a cartoon of one Shan youth climbing the statue of Aung San and going through his pockets. When the statue asked him, “What are you looking for?” he replied, “We’d just like to know If you had taken the Panglong Agreement away with you.”
The result was the song which ends with the lyrics:
Have they all gone, I wonder, with Aung San
Where are the vows and promises of Panglong?
Where are the vows and promises of Panglong?
Sai Kham Leik, who has written both Shan and Burmese songs, is honored by both Shans and non-Shans alike in Burma.
The following is a free translation of his song by the late Chao Tzang Yawnghwe (1939-2004), considered Shans’ foremost scholar-fighter:
A free homeland for the Tai
This, we agreed on at Panglong
The vows and promises so solemnly made
And now, though it has never been told
By whom the promises were broken
We know who betrayed who
But the Tai have always been true
Where are the vows and promises of Panglong
Have they all gone, I wonder, with Aung San.
This, we agreed on at Panglong
The vows and promises so solemnly made
And now, though it has never been told
By whom the promises were broken
We know who betrayed who
But the Tai have always been true
Where are the vows and promises of Panglong
Have they all gone, I wonder, with Aung San.
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