People & Culture - Bangkok - page 502

Music
Classical Thai
Classical central-Thai music (pleng tai deum) features a dazzling array of textures and sub-
tleties, hair-raising tempos and pastoral melodies. The classical orchestra (Ъèe-pâht) can
include as few as five players or might have more than 20. Leading the band is Ъèe, a
straight-lined woodwind instrument with a reed mouthpiece and an oboe-like tone; you'll
hear it most at moo·ay tai (Thai boxing; also spelt muay thai ) matches. The four-stringed
phin, plucked like a guitar, lends subtle counterpoint, while rá·nâht èhk, a bamboo-keyed
percussion instrument resembling the xylophone, carries the main melodies. The slender
sor, a bowed instrument with a coconut-shell soundbox, provides soaring embellishments,
as does the klòo·i, a wooden Thai flute.
Lôok Tûng & Mŏr Lam
Popular Thai music has borrowed much from Western music, particularly in instrumenta-
tion, but retains a distinct flavour of its own. The bestselling of all modern musical genres
in Thailand remains lôok tûng. Literally 'children of the fields', lôok tûng dates back to the
1940s, is comparable to country and western in the USA, and is a genre that tends to appeal
most to working-class Thais. Subject matter almost always concerns tales of lost love, tra-
gic early death and the dire circumstances of farmers who work day in and day out and, at
the end of the year, still owe money to the bank.
Another genre more firmly rooted in northeastern Thailand, and nearly as popular in
Bangkok, is mŏr lam. Based on the songs played on the Lao-Isan kaan, a wind instrument
devised of a double row of bamboo-like reeds fitted into a hardwood soundbox, mŏr lam
features a simple but insistent bass beat and plaintive vocal melodies.
Songs for Life
The 1970s ushered in a new music style inspired by the politically conscious folk rock of
the US and Europe, which the Thais dubbed pleng pêu·a chee·wít (literally 'music for life')
after Marxist Jit Phumisak's earlier Art for Life movement. Closely identified with the Thai
band Caravan - which still performs regularly - the introduction of this style was the most
significant musical shift in Thailand since lôok tûng arose in the 1940s.
Pleng pêua chee·wít has political and environmental topics rather than the usual love
themes. During the authoritarian dictatorships of the '70s many of Caravan's songs were