Benjamin Sum
Benjamin Sum (Burmese: ဘင်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်း; born 27 November 2000) is a Burmese singer of ethnic Chin descent.[1] He rose to prominence following his finish as the runner-up on the fourth season of Myanmar Idol.[2][3][4]
Benjamin Sum ဘင်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်း | |
|---|---|
Benjamin Sum in 2020 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Benjamin Sum |
| Born | 27 November 2000 Kalay, Sagaing Region, Myanmar |
| Genres | Pop, pop rock |
| Occupation(s) | Singer |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals • guitar |
| Years active | 2019–present |
Early life and education
Benjamin Sum was born on 27 November 2000 in Kalay, Sagaing Region, Myanmar. His father was a missionary and died when he was four years old. His younger sister died at age four when he was eight years old, at the same time his mother diagnosed with cancer stage three when he was in middle school. His life story shocked the Myanmar audience as he stepped into Myanmar Idol 2019 as a contestant. He is currently studying Computer Science at University of Computer Studies, Kalay.[5]
Career
MYANMAR IDOL JOURNEY
Ben started performing in public in 2018.[6] He wanted to pursue a career in music, and so he auditioned for the fourth season of Myanmar Idol. Finally, he was selected in Top 11 finalists.[7]
He made the grand final on the weekend of 28 December 2019, alongside Esther Dawt Chin Sung and Aye Mya Phyu. After Esther was declared the winner, he finished as the runner-up with over 50% of the public vote.[8] During his homecoming to Kalay a huge crowd of thousands fans gathered.[9]
After competing Myanmar Idol, he started his tour to different cities in Myanmar. He began shooting for commercial advertisements, stage performances, and preparing to record his first solo album [10]
On 18 May 2020, he released a single song called "Pyan Twae Mae Yat" MV on his Facebook page which earned 1 M views within 24 hours and then 2M views in 5 days.[11] Also it has long been number one on Joox's top 100 chart.[12][13]
He also went to Australia to help the victims of the Australia Bushfires and raised a generous amounts for them just before the global pandemic in January 2020.[14]
During the pandemic, he spent his days making songs and released a few of them which got charted No.1 in Joox[15]
Despite his passion for making more music, he wasn't able to produce it due to the military coup.[16]
MIZORAM JOURNEY
After flying down to Mizoram, he released his first cover song 'Chhailai di lenna' in collaboration with Thangbawiha Chhakchhuak which was made for charity for Myanmar.[17]
He then proceeded to make another video 'Tunah erawh zawng' [18] where he was noticed by a Mizo producer RPa Ralte [19] and got connected via youtube comments and continued to make an original song called 'Chhingmit in biahthu kan hlan' which hits 5M views till date.[20] This was the turning point of his career in the Mizo Music Industry. Since then he has been performing in various platforms and even won the 'Best Male Artist' in Thazual and Lelte Awards in 2021, the very same year where he fleeted from Myanmar to Mizoram.[21]
He also worked with one of the biggest record labels in Mizoram 'Kings & Prophets' where he released his first English original song 'Angel' [22] where he introduced himself as a grunge-punk artist and shocked the public with his new genre. He then released another music video 'Sam ang then zai i rel tawh mai ang' [23] which emotionally swayed the audience with the melodramatic lyrics, tune and the swooning vocals. He also worked with another talented artist, Saiwanah Sailo in a song called 'Khuanu Malsawmna' which was a huge hit as well.[24]
Extended Play (EP)
After releasing different singles, Benjamin Sum released an EP named 'Out Of The Blue' in December 9, 2022 which includes the following songs- 1. Cancer 2. Fire 3. Song For You 4. Feelings 5. I Wish 6. Run Away [25]
The content in this EP were all composed by him wherein he drew his inspiration from the people who are currently suffering a crisis back in his hometown. The genre in this EP is all Indie-pop-punk. While making this EP, Radwimps, Girl in Red, One OK Rock and Blink-182 were his muse.
ORANGE MUSIC FESTIVAL
Benjamin Sum performed along with his band at Orange Festival in Dambuk, Arunachal Pradesh and got featured at Rolling Stones India where they wrote, "Myanmar-born, Mizoram artist Benjamin Sum – who had recently released his EP Out of the Blue – brought a raggedy pop-punk edge to the festival, matching the comedic heaviness of Green Day with jangly-pop and moving on to Radiohead-esque melancholy on “False Hope.” He included his most famous Mizo ballad to date, “Chhingmit In Biahthu Kan Hlan,” which was as grand as expected."Rolling Stone India" [26]
Competition songs
- Week 1: He sang Mother how are you in Burmese version and he won the hearts of Myanmar audiences.[27]
- Week 2: He sang Ma Tar Nae (မတားနဲ့) which makes him the most popular contestant[28]
- Week 3: He chose the song Adipati Lanma Ka Chay Yar Myar (အဓိပတိလမ်းမကခြေရာများ), Casablanca in Burmese version, for the week of College Student life.
- Week 4: He chose the song Min Ma Shi Tae Nya Tway (မင်းမရှိတဲ့နေ့တွေ ညတွေ) in country theme.
- Week 5: He sang Sate Pyay Thachin (စိတ်ဖြေသီချင်း) the week to the remembrance of the iconic singer Soe Lwin Lwin.
- Week 6: He sang December Na Nat Khin (ဒီဇင်ဘာနံနက်ခင်း) for winter theme and he became a top 5 finalist.
- Week 7: He sang Say (ဆေး) for popular song week and is chosen as one of the top 4 finalists.
Discography
Singles
Award
- Joox Top 10 Popular Song Award for 2020 [31]
- Joox Myanmar Half Year Artist Award 2020 (Rank 1) [32]
- Shwe FM Music Award 2020 Most Requested Song on Shwe FM [33]
- Chin TV Award 2020 Chin Artist of the year 2020 [34]
- Joox Popular Song Award ပြန်တွေ့မယ့်ရက် [35]
- Padamyar FM Song of the Year Award 2020 ပြန်တွေ့မယ့်ရက် [36]
- Chin TV Award 2021 Chin Person of the Year [37]
- Thazual Award 2021 Best Male Artist Award (7th Annual Thazual Award) [38]
- Hakha Times Award Chin Young Person of the Year [39]
- Lelte Award 2021 Male Singer of the Year [40]
- Chin TV Award 2022 Chin Humanitarian Award (Guys From Chin) [41]
- ChinTube Award 2022 Most Influential Award (Guys From Chin) [42]
- Moonlight Award 2022 Male Singer of the Year
References
- ^ "နေမကောင်းဖြစ်နေတဲ့ မိခင်ကို ဆေးကုဖို့ အလုပ်တွေ ပိုကြိုးစားမယ့် ဘန်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်း". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 24 January 2020.
- ^ "Myannar Idol Season 4 Winner ဆု ချင်းတိုင်းရင်းသူ Esther က ဆွတ်ခူး" [Esther wins the Myannar Idol Season 4 Winner award]. The Myanmar Times. 29 December 2019.
- ^ "Myanmar Idol Season 4 ရဲ့ Top 11 ပြိုင်ပွဲဝင်အချို့ရဲ့ စကားသံများ" [Voice of Some of the Top 11 contestants of Myanmar Idol Season 4]. The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 29 October 2019.
- ^ "ဘန်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်း နဲ့ အမာခံ ပရိသတ်များ တွေ့ဆုံပွဲ Fan Meeting". Myanmar Celebrity News (in Burmese). 24 December 2019.
- ^ Idol, Myanmar. "Myanmar Idol Contestant Benjamin Sum". Myanmar Idol.
- ^ Benjamin Zahau- Lairam Na Dam Maw & Cherry Myo, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ Christians in Myanmar Idol Season 4 (Benjamin Sum) နှင့် ခရစ်ယာန်အသိုင်းအဝိုင်း God Bless, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ အက်စတာ၊ အေးမြဖြူနဲ့ ဘင်ဂျမင်-မြန်မာအိုင်ဒေါ Winner ဘယ်သူဖြစ်မလဲ [Esther and Benjamin, Myanmar Idol Season 4 Winner Who?]. Democratic Voice of Burma (in Burmese). 27 December 2019.
- ^ လူပေါင်းထောင်ပေါင်း များစွာ ကြိတ်ကြိတ်တိုး ကြိုဆိုခံခဲ့ရတဲ့ Myanmar Idol ပြိုင်ပွဲဝင် ဘင်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်းရဲ့ ပုံရိပ်များ – Shwe Yaung Lan [Myanmar Idol contestant Benjamin Sun's coming home, where a huge crowd of thousands fans gathered.]. Shwe Yaung Lan (in Burmese). 6 January 2020.
- ^ BENJAMIN SUM - Valentine’s Day, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ "ဘင်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်းရဲ့ သီချင်းအသစ်ကို ချီးကျူးလိုက်တဲ့ ဖြူဖြူကျော်သိန်း". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 18 May 2020.
- ^ "ပြန်တွေ့မယ်ရက်သီချင်းJooxမှာTop 1ဝင်". Celeconnection.
- ^ ""ျပန္ေတြ႕မယ့္ရက္" သီခ်င္းေလးနဲ႕ ပတၱျမား FM ရဲ႕ Song of the Month ဆုကိုရရွိထားတဲ့ ဘင္ဂ်မင္". Cele Gabar. 7 July 2020.
- ^ Benjamin Sum II Thlapi, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ Exclusive Interview with Benjamin Sum, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ "Log into Facebook". Facebook. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help) - ^ Benjamin Sum - Chhailai Di Lenna [Charity for Myanmar], retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ BENJAMIN SUM - TUNAH ERAWH ZAWNG || Official Music Video ||, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ "Rpa Ralte (@rparaltemusic) • Instagram photos and videos". www.instagram.com. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
- ^ Benjamin Sum - Chhingmit in biahthu kan hlan (Official Lyric Video), retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ "Vanglaini - Thalai | 7th Annual Ṭhazual Award ; Siampuii Ralte-in award pahnih a pawm haw". Vanglaini. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
- ^ Benjamin Sum - Angel (Official Music Video), retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ Benjamin Sum - Sam ang then zai i rel tawh mai ang || Official Music Video ||, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ SaiWanah X Benjamin Sum - Khuanu Malsawmna (Official Music Video), retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ "Out Of The Blue (OUT NOW) - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
- ^ "Benjamin-Sum". Rolling Stone India. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
- ^ Han, You Phyu (29 October 2019). "Myanmar Idol top 11". The Irrawaddy.
- ^ "Rock week competition on Myanmar idol". Eleven Media Group. 9 November 2019.
- ^ ""Pyan Twae Mae Yat" on Joox". Joox.
- ^ ""ဟိုဖက်အိမ်ကကောင်းမလေး'" Jooxတွင်နားဆင်ရန်". Joox.
- ^ "JOOX Myanmar - Benjamin Sum - https://open.joox.com/s/rd?k=eSlC | Facebook". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
{{cite web}}: External link in|title= - ^ "Log into Facebook". Facebook. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help) - ^ "Log into Facebook". Facebook. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help) - ^ "Chin TV International added a new... - Chin TV International". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
- ^ "Log into Facebook". Facebook. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help) - ^ "Log into Facebook". Facebook. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help) - ^ I am nothing, He is everything. | I am nothing, He is everything. God is good all the time. By His Grace, 2019-2021 Chin Person Of The Year award has been given to me. I dedicate this... | By Benjamin Sum | Facebook, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ Benjamin Sum - The Best Male Artist (LENGZEM) at 7th Annual Thazual Award 2021, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ "Log into Facebook". Facebook. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help) - ^ 30th Lelte Award 2021, retrieved 2023-01-22
- ^ "Log into Facebook". Facebook. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help) - ^ 2022 Most Influential Winner - Guys From Chin, retrieved 2023-01-22