Tag Archives | Thailand

Mahori isn’t just for men

Traditional Thai mahori court music ensembles consist of gongs, xylophones and strings, though not oboes, which are central to piphat, another classical genre from Thailand. Centuries ago in the Kingdom of Siam, performing mahori on these gongs, xylophones and strings — but not oboes! — was exclusively the task of males, though bit by bit women from royal families trained as classical musicians and were welcomed into the ensembles. In the mid-19th century the Siamese King Rama IV decreed that women would be permitted to not only perform in the mahori ensemble but could act onstage as well. Initially many women left mahori ensembles and chose to act rather than make music…but why? Look at this video of a performance of a mahori ensemble from Bangkok’s Ramkhamhaeng University. How could anyone ever choose to act instead?

Fong Naam at Bangkok Banana

Fong Naam is an ambitious East/West collaboration between Thai classical musician Boonyong Kaethong and American Vietnam War conscientious objector Bruce Gaston.

Already an accomplished musician, Gaston arrived in Thailand in the late 1960s and became a student of Kaethong, learning the khong wong, a circular gong that is a staple of the piphat orchestra of Thailand. Gaston and Kaethong formed the ensemble, according to their website, “to provide a stage and artistic opportunities for musicians who are not only sophisticated in classical Thai arts but also have a commitment to contemporary Thai art.” Kaethong had a special purpose: “Instead of ending up as an old drunken musician complaining that things were not what they used to be, as tragically many of his colleagues did, he fought to forge new future for Thai society through his compositions and performances with Fong Naan….” The ensemble has spent the last thirty years performing  classical and jazz compositions and compiling collections of ancient Thai music in order to simultaneously preserve and advance the form. In this video we see Fong Naam performing at the Bangkok Banana Contemporary Arts Festival in 2009.

Songs for Life

Phleng pheua chiwit — Thai “Songs for Life” — is a Thai form of protest music that started in the ’70s to address the issues of the working class and blended Thai traditional instruments with Western folk, rock and reggae.
The first popular phleng pheua chiwit band, Caravan, was an integral part of the mid ’70s movement for democracy. In 1976 Caravan and students from Thammasat University fled to the rural hills when police and right wing activists attacked them. In the ’80s the government of Thailand granted amnesty to the students, helping phleng pheua chiwit to become mainstream. By the 1990s, phleng pheua chiwit, in its classic form, was no longer as popular, though there are few “songs for life” artists remain like Pongsit Kamphee, who we see in this video.

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.

Take us Away to Thailand

All Around This World map of Southeast Asia featuring Thailand
Last week in our online class for kids we visited Thailand, an ancient kingdom that in all its years of being a unified nation never been colonized by Western powers — the only country in Southeast Asia with that distinction. The Thai people are overwhelmingly Theravada Buddhist (95%), almost 100% Thai speaking (though many also speak their own group’s local language) and, by all public accounts, quite fond of the king. (The kind of Thailand’s official title is, “Head of State, the Head of the Armed Forces, an Upholder of the Buddhist religion, and the Defender of all Faiths.” That sounds like a lot of work.) In class we cut the king some slack and mainly focused on the music, dancing and celebrations of the Thai people.

Thailand’s Thirteen Smiles

A common nickname Thailand is “The Land of Smiles” — a fact that Thailand’s travel industry will not let you forget.True, the Thai are known for their frequent smiling, but in Thailand a smile is not just a simple expression of happiness; Thai smiles do express joy, but they also appear as the Thai way of reacting to many circumstances, from happy to sad. In Working With The Thais: A Guide to Managing in Thailand, Henry Holmes and Suchada Tangtongtavy celebrate the Land of Smiles by analyzuing the meaning of, 13 kinds of Thai smiles, including Yim cheun chom, a smile that expresses admiration, Yim chuead chuean, a smile of gloating, and Yim sao, a smile that masks sadness.

Let’s try a “Smile of Being Happy That We Spent a Week in Class Exploring Thai Music but Sadness That We Have to Move On,” and prepare ourselves for next week’s class.

We can also Love Loy Krathong


Whether or not we and our kids in class are Thai, we can certainly enjoy Loy Krathong. the Thai Festival of Lights. If you’re a teacher, introduce the holiday to your students, prepare Thai music, clear the clas room so you have enough space to celebrate, and away we go.

1) Make a KRATHONG. With any available craft supplies (or, if there are none, pure imagination), have each student craft a krathong that is chock full of the year’s memories. Write memories on scraps of paper . . . bring in photos from the year’s adventures . . . pick objects to symbolize events or happenings . . . . Place the objects into some sort of vessel that could conceivably float down a river.

2) Time to LOY (float) your KRATHONGs. Clear a space in the center of the room that could simulate a river. Place a scarf or piece of fabric “in the river.”Each student will put a krathong on the scarf and either s/he or you will pull it gently down the river, wiping last year’s memories away.

3) Look forward to a brand new day.

Lanterns Fly on Loy Krathong

In Thailand, Loy Krathong, a yearly festival of renewal, takes place on the evening of the full moon of the 12th month in the traditional Thai lunar calendar — usually some time in November.
During the Loy Krathong festival Thai people will celebrate by creating a “krathong” — traditionally a banana leaf adorned with flowers and candles — and “loy” (float) it down a river, sending the previous year’s troubles away. They also sned candle-powered lanterns up into the air. As we see in this video, that can be glorious.

In Concert…Carabao!

And now, in concert…CARABAO!
This season in our online classes we’ll appreciate a wide range of East and Southeast Asian folk songs, from simple traditional children’s rhymes that resonate in rural areas to deeper, “dangerous” anti-authoritarian activist anthems. The band Carabao, from Thailand, is an example of a group that lives for the latter, blending acoustic folk — specifically Thai political “phleng peua chiwit” folk music — with Western rock. In this video enjoy the band, live — big drum beats, raging guitar solos, ubiquitous bandanas and all.