Twante Soe Aung
{{Short description|Burmese singer (1962–2023)}}
{{Orphan|date=April 2025}}
{{Family name hatnote|Twante Soe Aung|lang=Burmese}}
{{Infobox musical artist
| name = Twante Soe Aung
| native_name = {{Lang|my|တွံတေးစိုးအောင်}}
| native_name_lang = my
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1962|5|11|df=yes}}{{cn|date=April 2025}}
| birth_place = Twantay
| death_date = {{death-date|9 March 2023}} (aged 61)
| death_place = Kyimyindaing Township, Yangon
| occupation = {{hlist|Singer}}
| years_active = 1997–2023
| spouse = Khin Mar Cho
}}
Twante Soe Aung (1962–2023) was a Burmese singer. He rose to nationwide fame with his unique style of performing modern studio songs with both rural and urban favorites which was accompanied solely by the mandolin. This distinctive approach earned him the title Nationwide Famous Twante Soe Aung. His debut solo album was "Call Me Ko Ko". Some of his other popular songs include "A Thae Pan", "Oo Nae Thamee", "Shwe Kyar Lo Achit", and "Chit Lo Kwe Dae A Thee".{{cite web |date=9 March 2023 |title=တွံတေးစိုးအောင် ဒီကနေ့မနက်ပိုင်းမှာ ကွယ်လွန် |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/articles/cd1n12906d8o |access-date=18 April 2025 |work=BBC Burmese |language=my}}{{Cite web |date=2023-03-10 |title=Famous singer Twantay Soe Aung passes away - Global New Light Of Myanmar |url=https://www.gnlm.com.mm/famous-singer-twantay-soe-aung-passes-away/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |language=en-US}}
Career
Twante Soe Aung was born on May 21 1962, in Yankin Village, Twante Township, to U Ohn and Daw Than Nu. His parents were farmers. He began learning to play the mandolin at the age of 13. His music and mandolin teacher was Twante U Thaung Shwe, the father of pianist Thein Min. Twante Soe Aung began his musical career in the traditional htain-wine (circle performance) scene in 1987. He later entered the Yangon mainstream music scene around 1994–95. Starting in 1991, he began touring solo across townships and villages throughout the Ayeyarwady Region, performing with just a mandolin and building direct connections with his audience.{{cite web |date=9 March 2023 |title=၁၉၉၇ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇူလိုင်လထုတ် ရုပ်ရှင်တေးကဗျာမဂ္ဂဇင်း အတွဲ (၁၃) ၊ အမှတ် (၇) တွင် ပါရှိသည့် တွံတေးစိုးအောင်ကို စူးစမ်းလေ့လာခြင်း |url=https://www.facebook.com/NewsWatchDigital/ |access-date=18 April 2025 |work=Yokeshin Taykabyar - ရုပ်ရှင်တေးကဗျာ}}
Twante Soe Aung also appeared as an actor in over 16 productions, including films, videos, karaoke dramas, and a few historical series. He starred alongside well-known actor Kyaw Hein in the film Pulin Tu Buu So ("The Fake Bottle"), produced by Kyauk Kan Pha Film and Video Production. He collaborated with Kyaw Hein in two films in total. However, in later years, he shifted his focus away from acting and dedicated himself primarily to music.{{cite web |date=30 June 2020 |title=ခေါင်းဆောင် မင်းသား လုပ်ခဲ့ဖူးတယ် ဆိုတဲ့ တွံတေး စိုးအောင် |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQXk7ttgzYk |access-date=18 April 2025 |work=Myanmar Celebrity}}
Legacy
He became well known for his unique ability to record an entire album in one sitting, using only a mandolin and a bottle of drinking water. This distinctive and minimalist approach to music production gained him popularity in Myanmar.{{cite web |date=11 March 2023 |title=မယ်ဒလင်တလက် ရေသန့်တဘူးနဲ့ တထိုင်တည်းအပြတ် အသံသွင်းခဲ့တဲ့တွံတေးစိုးအောင် |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOYQ8sLk-xY |access-date=18 April 2025 |work=NewsWatch Myanmar}}
Death
Twante Soe Aung died at the age of 61 from a brain hemorrhage at his home on Pan Hlaing Road, Htein Pin Industrial Zone, Hlinethaya Township, in the early hours of March 9, 2023, at 2:03 a.m. He was cremated at Htein Pin Cemetery on Saturday, March 11. On March 12, his ashes were interred in a family mausoleum in Ashae Ayeyar Taung Village, Twante Township—his wife's birthplace.{{cite web |date=9 March 2023 |title=နိုင်ငံကျော်အဆိုတော် တွံတေးစိုးအောင်ကွယ်လွန် |url=https://voiceofmyanmarnews.com/news/2023/03/09/%E1%80%94%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%84%E1%80%B6%E1%80%80%E1%80%BB%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%BA%E1%80%A1%E1%80%86%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%90%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%BA-%E1%80%90%E1%80%BD/ |access-date=18 April 2025 |website=voiceofmyanmarnews |language=my}}{{Cite web |date=11 March 2023 |title=နိုင်ငံကျော် မြန်မာသံအဆိုတော် တွံတေးစိုးအောင်၏ ရုပ်အလောင်းအား ထိန်ပင်သုသာန်၌ မီးသင်္ဂြိုလ် |url=https://npnewsmm.com/news/640c3f0be53ecc4c2a1c1c5a |access-date=18 April 2025 |website=NP News |language=my}}{{Cite web |title=Myanmar's famous country singer Twantay Soe Aung dies at 61 – Thanlwintimes |url=https://thanlwintimes.com/2023/03/10/myanmars-famous-country-singer-twantay-soe-aung-dies-at-61/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=thanlwintimes.com}}