Tag Archives | Piphat

Piphat is a Thai Classic

Thai classical music — Piphat — is performed by a lively orchestra that includes xylophones (ranat), barrel drums (klong), circular sets of tuned horizontal gong-chimes (khong wong) and an oboe (pi) .

Thailand’s relatively central geographic position in Southeast Asia placed it at the hub of trade routes involving Persian, African, Greek, Roman, Chinese and Indian travelers. Thai classical music reflects these influences, most obviously in the Persian, Indian, Chinese and Indonesian origins of many of its instruments, yet, as we see in this video, it is still a very distinctly Thai form. Today’s classical musicians of Thailand play compositions similar to those performed in the Thai royal court nearly a millennium ago.