The album cover for Luk Thung; Dust-to-Digital
[Editor's Note: As I am facing numerous writing deadlines over the
second half of February, this seems like a good time to give a
retrospective glance to the first two years of Art of the Rural.
Over these weeks I will feature a few new articles, but also many
favorites from the archives. Thanks again to everyone who has read and
contributed; what began as a labor of love has become a project far
larger, and far more rewarding, than I ever could have anticipated - and
I deeply appreciate the readership and participation of such a diverse
audience. In March we will offer new articles and series, and share some
new projects related to our mission.
Rural International: Luk Thung & Thai Country Music was originally published on September 10, 2011.]
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A few weeks back, I began an unofficial series of pieces that look to expand what we talk about when we talk about the rural,
and today I'd like to discuss a recording that can challenge us to
rethink our own categories and boundaries when it comes to rural arts
and culture.
Luk Thung: Classic & Obscure 78s from the Thai Countryside is one of the latest releases from Dust-to-Digital,
a record label that has, for over a decade, consistently produced some
of the most thorough and thought-provoking reissues of vernacular music
and visual art--everything from the southern gospel of their landmark Goodbye, Babylon set to the forthcoming Opika Pende: Africa at 78 RPM, a multi-disc package featuring diverse pan-African music that has never been released on CD. Luk Thung is one of the productions of the "phonographic arm" of Dust-to-Digital, Parlortone, though this music is also available for download. Luk Thung was compiled by record collector David Murray (see his Haji Maji music blog) and the notes were written by Peter Doolan of the Monrakplengthai Thai vernacular music site.
Many
of our readers are no doubt familiar with the work of Dust-to-Digital;
as both a record label and a kind of cultural sensibility, Lance
Ledbetter's project has not only served as a catalyst for the thriving
reissue movement, but has pushed an audience to reconsider the deeper
dynamics of a place and its people.
Luk Thung continues
in this direction, and provides an opportunity for many of us to expand
our own deeper narrative of the rural arts. While many discussions of
rural culture fail to consider the role of the rural diaspora, I cannot
think of many instances where we've thought of this geographical
movement--from the Great Migration to the farm crisis of the 1980s--in
an international context. Luk Thung provides such an opportunity.
Here's Peter Doolan, editor of the Monrakplengthai music site, writing in the introduction to his liner notes:
Luk Thung is known to many as Thailand's "Country Music"; it's a vibrant and syncretic genre of pop song which aims to give voice to a disenfranchised rural population. Its history is intextricably linked to that of the nation at large, and it continues to provide a soundtrack to the political turmoil that abounds in today's Thailand. Despite its commercial nature and its roots in imported music, Luk Thung's use of local Thai melody, instrumentation, rhythm and vocal styling leads many casual listeners to mistake it for a sort of folk music. In any case, Luk Thung may indeed be filling the social gap left by a slowly vanishing traditional culture.
The term Luk Thung itself, meaning "Children of the Fields," refers to people of rural background, as opposed to Luk Krung, those born and bred in the city. Bangkok, the capitol of the Kingdom of Thailand, is a massive metropolis disproportionate to the rest of the country, and is, without rival, its political, economic and cultural center. The majority of Thailand's population, however, lives in the provinces outside of Bangkok, as has been the case for millenia. But in the 20th century, spurred by the nation's increasing status as a global commercial power, the capitol began to attract significant movement in from the provinces. By mid-century, a steady stream of migrants were making their way into Bangkok, with most joining an urban underclass of menial laborers, pedicab drivers, market vendors or slum dwellers. Some settled permanently in the city, some came and went with the seasons, but all had to cope with enormous changes in their lives. Music became a vital means of maintaining a feeling of connectedness to the world they were leaving.
As
Mr. Doolan tells us in his extensive notes, this rural diaspora first
met a state-controlled mass media that privileged western culture
(everything from dress to dining utensils) and denigrated traditional
Thai practices. After World War II, these forms of expression were
re-integrated, as pop music blossomed into a complex and kinetic
exchange of idioms, instruments, and experiences; in balancing these
various sources and influences, these artists created what I've called
before a kind of "rural modernism." Consider the breadth of expression Luk Thung incorporated: "Liké street theatre, antiphonal Lamtat field songs, and Klong Yao
long-drum troupes," Mr. Doolan writes. "A particular interest was
kindled in songs from Isan, the impoverished and drought-stricken
Northeast...singers integrated both Isan's Thet Lae preaching style and Lam Klon poetic form into their performances, and many even began including words from Isan's distinct dialect in their lyrics."
From
Peter Doolan's extraordinarily helpful notes we see that these
musicians were working in a vein not at all that stylistically different
than James Joyce or T.S. Eliot, or any of the modernist painters who
incorporated a wildly divergent range of materials and images. Further,
the span of Luk Thung runs the American timeline from the Great
Migration to today, and from the explosion of folk, blues, country and
rock music--all fueled in large part by what a rural diaspora brought
with them to the city and its airwaves and recording studios.
Here's
Phloen Phromdaen singing "Ruedu Haeng Khwam Rak (Season of Love)." Mr.
Phromdaen, who grew up on his family's farm along the border with
Cambodia, first encountered Luk Thung on the radio and saved his
money to make his own recordings. A rise to stardom followed and was
punctuated, Mr. Doolan tells, by his 1966 hit "Chom Thung (In Praise of
the Fields)." Phloen Phromdaen is still singing today.
Mr. Phromdaen went on in his career to create a variant of Luk Thung called Pleng Phut,
or "talking music," a development which seems to suggest, if we are
thinking in terms of a rural diaspora, a comparison with Johnny Cash, or
Elvis, or Muddy Waters or any number of other musicians. As Mr. Doolan
writes, these musicians attained a level of stardom in their home
country commiserate with the likes of their American counterparts. Given
the cultural and political backdrop to Luk Thung, we find many
similarities to the social commentary within the language of American
folk, blues and country--even to the rebellious use of identity and
dialect in "hard country," as discussed by Barbara Ching in her
essential book-length study Wrong's What I Do Best.
Lastly, what such a vibrant release as Luk Thung
can stir in us is the thought that, even within our own home borders,
we may live near folks who most likely identify on one level or another
as members of a more distant "rural diaspora," be it from Thailand,
Mexico, Somalia or elsewhere. We do a disservice to these members of our
community--and to ourselves--when we leave them out of a discussion on
rural America.
