Benjamin Sum

In this Burmese name, the given name is Benjamin Sum. There is no family name.
Benjamin Sum
ဘင်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်း
Benjamin Sum in 2020
Background information
Birth nameBenjamin Sum
Born (2000-11-27) 27 November 2000 (age 24)
Kalay, Sagaing Region, Myanmar
GenresPop, pop rock
OccupationSinger
Instruments
  • Vocals
  • guitar
Years active2019–present

Benjamin Sum (Burmese: ဘင်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်း; born 27 November 2000) is a Burmese singer of ethnic Chin descent.[1] He rose to public recognition following his finish as the runner-up on the fourth season of Myanmar Idol.[2][3][4] However, his rose to stardom is attributed to his cover of a Mizo love song "Chhailai Di Lenna" on YouTube in 2021.

Following threats from the Myanmar Army after the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Sum became a refugee in Mizoram, India. Adapting to the Mizo dialect, his first song earned him "Best Male Artist" awards at Ṭhazual and "Singer of the Year (Male)" at Lelte Awards in 2021.

In 2023, he was surrounded by a controversy as he was found to possess forged Indian documents including birth certificate, electoral voter identity, Aadhaar and driving license. Investigations led to uncovering other cases of counterfeit documents among the refugees in Mizoram. Upon public pressure, Sum surrendered all his Indian documents to the Government of Mizoram.

  1. ^ "နေမကောင်းဖြစ်နေတဲ့ မိခင်ကို ဆေးကုဖို့ အလုပ်တွေ ပိုကြိုးစားမယ့် ဘန်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်း". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 24 January 2020.
  2. ^ "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.
  3. ^ "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.
  4. ^ "ဘန်ဂျမင်ဆုမ်း နဲ့ အမာခံ ပရိသတ်များ တွေ့ဆုံပွဲ Fan Meeting". Myanmar Celebrity News (in Burmese). 24 December 2019.