Thai music producer's project designed to take ethnic songs to a wider audience

General News : Monday December 10, 2007

SPOTLIGHT

TRADITIONS LIVE ON

Thai music producer's project designed to take ethnic songs to a wider audience

Story by ANCHALEE KONGRUT

Pongprom Snitwong Na Ayuthaya, an executive with the well known Butterfly Records Co, has been one of the unsung heroes of the Thai music industry for many years.

In a career spanning more than two decades, he has written and produced songs which have made local superstars of bands and singers like Carabao, Micro and Mai Charoenpura.

He has also played key roles in making popular advertising jingles for companies promoting such diverse products as Select Tuna and MK Suki restaurants, to name a few.

But while Pongprom is famous for the commercial success of the music he has written, his own tastes include music few people know of or have ever heard.

"Listen ... listen ... this song is sung by Ei Nang Eia. She is a teenager who has a very, very beautiful voice," said Pongprom, 42, while playing a song he recorded during a recent trip to a small village in Sibsong Panna in Yunnan province in southern China.

The people of Sibsong Panna are ethnic Tai and are believed to have descended from the same ancestors as the Thai people, with a similar language and culture.

"Now listen to this song. It is awesome and I believe no one has ever had a chance to listen to it," said Pongprom as he played a song he recorded during a trip to Bhutan in February 2005.

It is a chant sung by Buddhist nuns in a temple. He had to get permission from the Bhutan authorities to enter the temple and record the nuns chanting.

The temple had been off-limits, even to local people.

Over the past two years the famous Thai music producer has travelled to small villages in Thailand, Laos, China and Bhutan and recorded ethnic music sung by local villagers and downloaded the music on his website - http://www.siameseproject.co.th.

The website features hundred of ethnic music clips from countries in the region. It is free to access and is expected to be officially launched in 2009.

The website also contains rare ethnic music such as lullabies and songs performed by Thai ethnic villagers during traditional rituals. These songs have been duplicated from the music library of Soon Sangkeet - Bangkok Bank's arts and cultural centre.

The website is part of Pongprom's Siamese Project, which features his own music album which will be released some time next year, books on ethnic music in Asia and a television documentary.

"I will make sure ethnic singers are properly credited on all songs in this album, so people will know it is ethnic people who created the music ... not me," he said.

Pongprom is one of the few popular musicians in Thailand who uses ethnic music in his songs - he used a chant sung by monks in Bhutan in a television advertisement for a famous telecom company.

For him, popularity and a mass audience are the best ways to conserve traditional music.

"This genre of music is dying and no one knows it," he said. "There are music historians who have recorded these types of songs, but they are kept in museum libraries, and certainly these songs will disappear if a mass audience cannot get access to them."

His interest in anthropology and history started five years ago after he read books on history penned by renowned historians such as Sujit Wongthes and Srisak Vallibhotama, who often depicted music as a mirror of cultural beliefs, historical events and social standings.

He also taught a music course at Silpakorn University.

"Everyone involved with music knows it is a matter of culture, history and anthropology," he said as he sat in his office packed with a sound-mixing console, a computer, historical text books and traditional music instruments such as a Chinese harp and drums and percussion instruments from Bhutan.

Siamese Project, he said, is more than exotic sounds from remote villages.

"Most of these songs sound so similar to Thai ethnic music. You may not understand the meaning, but the songs can get under your skin.

"I feel like I'm home in a remote village in China when I hear their tribal songs. I can't feel that way when I listen to western music," he said.

Anant Narkkong, a lecturer in music at Mahidol University's College of Music, welcomed Pongprom's initiative, saying it can boost the mainstream popularity of ethnic music.

Ethnic music, which is also known as world music, has gained in popularity in the last two decades, thanks to the endorsement of world famous musicians such as Peter Gabriel and Micky Hart, the Grateful Dead's drummer.

Rights activists and environmentalists have also used world music as part of their campaigns, which include fund raising concerts, according to Anant, an expert on world music.

Music companies have sampled ethnic music looking for sales and the lucrative advertisement industry has used the exotic sounds of tribal people in television advertising.

"The problem when the commercial sector deals with ethnic products is money.

"This type of project needs investment and my question is how do these investors recoup their money," said Anant.

Because ethnic songs are passed down over the years and there are no real owners of the music, companies usually do not pay the villagers intellectual property rights, he said.

By : Bangkok Post