Ponle a tu religion musica de rock: el ritual budista shan y el escenario para el esectaculo de las festividades en una zona en disputa en la frontera entre Tailandia y Birmania (Rock your religion: Shan Buddhist ritual and State-Show Revelry in a Contested Zone at the Thai-Burma Border)

Abstract

This chapter deals with the role of transnational rock music as performed by ethnic Shan bands as part of Theravada Buddhist festivals in the Thai-Burma borderlands. The data is from ethnographic research in a community of Shan insurgents and their affiliates, during the annual mass ritual ordination, “poi sang long” of young boys into the Buddhist sangha. The use of rock music as part of the festivities allows the ideology of the festivities to signify the Shan nation, why it is cosmopolitan, while still maintaining connection to the merit-making of the ritual.