thai music

as the friends and family who read this blog are mostly elsewhere in the world, i thought i'd give you a little introduction to music here in thailand. while you're reading this you can listen to some music yourself, at the kapook music station. scroll down and click on the name of the song to listen to it- though if you can't read thai this of course will be quite random for you.

i won't get into thai country or folk music yet, as those are given about the same level of respect in bangkok as american country music gets in new york city. what the typical bangkokian younger generation listens to is thai pop and rock music, with a heavy dose of western music mixed in.

what a foreigner ('farang') notices right away about the thai popular music here is how dominated it is by sappy love songs, bubble-gum dance hits, and power ballads. if you turn one one of the local music video channels you'll invariably see either a (very cute) female singer wailing on about life in general or a (very cute) singer bouncing around to a catchy dance tune. much of the time it's songs about broken hearts, love that was never meant to be, and so on and so on.

there are some good rock music bands here, like silly fool and (ever-popular among farang) loso. i find that on their cds the songs are mostly ballads, with only one or two faster songs. this is the complete opposite of the west, where most rock/metal bands will have one, two, or no ballads.

the industry is dominated by two giants- grammy and rs promotion. they often put together groups similar to the 'idol' bands in japan or boy bands in the west. seems like a lot of singers get a break by knowing the right people, having good connections, or sometimes outright purchasing video and air play.

although a lot of half-thai ('luk kreung') singers can sing in english, to my knowledge no thai groups have become successful internationally. probably the closest is tata young, a talkative half-thai who i've actually met before (another story), as she had a couple of recent hits that got regional airplay. one song in particular, 'sexy, naughty, bitchy' seemed like it had the right sound but none of my friends in other countries have heard of it before.

Here are some songs to give you a sampling of popular music. have a listen and let me know what you think:

nam lai (saliva) - silly fools. silly fools is one of the more successful rock bands in thailand now. this is a very popular semi-ballad type song that'd pretty good

sexy - paradox paradox has quite a unique fun style. it's too bad some of their older (in my opinion better) songs aren't online. sexy is decent.

kor chet nam dta (wipe away your tears) - clash this is one of those power ballad songs with sappy lyrics i mentioned earlier. "i know that i can't replace him. i know he's the only one in your heart. all i ask is for you to softly dry your tears, like i used to do when we were lovers" oh please! *puke*

yak rong dang dang (i want to shout it out loud) - palmy palmy is one of those 'luk kreung' singers who appeared on the scene a couple of years ago. her style was quite different, a bit alanis morissettish, and her first album sold very well.

panthip - loso panthip plaza is the computer center of bangkok, where one can buy all sorts of international software for 100 baht ($2.50) per disc. anyway, the the singer in this song is suggesting to his date various places to go, but he absolutely won't go to panthip because a girl who broke his heart opened up a store there.

meow meow - kat english one of those bubble-gum dance tunes sung by another 'luk kreung'

chao na gup ngoo hao (the farmer and the cobra) - fly fly has been popular for many years. this particular song is about a farmer who nurses a sick snake back to health, but the snake eventually bites him and he dies- the morale of the story being you can't change someone's basic character. the video for this song shows fly being struck down by an evil (though attractive) woman he presumably tried to help.

704 - da jim thailand's answer to hip-hop. da jim's first cd forced thailand to grapple with the issue of explicit lyrics. the answer was not a warning sticker but to ban the cd outright and da jim was forced to release a much tamer cd. i've got a rare copy of the original naughty album- course it doesn't mean so much to me when the singer shouts out 'monitor lizard' a few times.

that's my quick round-up of the music scene here... hope you enjoyed!