Bangkok invaded by songs and laughter

12 April 1997

Big changes in society often first come to light in entertainment and popular culture. The writers, performers and media entrepreneurs are sensitive to the seismic trends below the social surface.

Over the past two decades, Bangkok’s popular culture has been moulded by the growing size and prosperity of the new middle class. Everything has been modern, urban, glossy, slick. The most important media have been the television dramas, lifestyle magazines, and the light pop music pioneered by Grammy. All three have reflected the excitements and traumas of creating a new kind of life in a new kind of city.

The lifestyle mags have provided a guide on what to wear, how to behave, who to admire, what to be. The grandmummy of them all, Dichan, translates appropriately as "I". The TV drama serials have ranged across the spectrum of the new city life. Students learning about life in a new world. Families wrestling with the complications of growing prosperity. Women balancing careers and families. New entrepreneurs braving the shark-infested waters of Bangkok business. The songs of Grammypop have been about romance, but also about growing up in a new world, and about urban problems from pollution to prostitution.

Through all three, the dominant figure has been the new star, performing as actor, singer and model. Usually a Thai-farang luk kreung. Young, bright and optimistic. Well-mannered. These stars are not distant icons, but idealised versions of the boys and girls next door, close enough to be role models for all the absolute beginners of the new city.

This trend is still dominant, though it is becoming a little mechanised, jaded, repetitive. There are just too many Dichan-copycat magazines, predictable TV dramas, cookie-cutter Grammypop stars. The time is right for an invasion.

For decades, people have been migrating from the villages to Bangkok and the big provincial towns. In the last few years, they have been coming in larger numbers, staying more permanently, settling in. They bring along their local music. Once in the city, the lives of the migrants change. New jobs. New wealth. New problems. The music changes too. New technology. New influences. New concerns to reflect.

Phleng luk thung (country music) grew out of this process in the 1960s, when migrants from the central region first came to Bangkok in large numbers. The style was created by mixing central-region folk music with the new electric keyboards and with some Latino rhythms and stagecraft popular in the international films and TV shows of the era. The songs were often specifically about the life experience of the migrant, missing the village life back home, struggling with the strangeness and unfriendliness of the city, grasping at new opportunities. With new technology of cassette tapes, radio, and roadshows touring the country’s new highway network, phleng luk thung developed a national audience.

Phleng peu chivit (music for life) developed in the 1970s by a similar route among a different social group. For the first time, students from the provinces were sucked into Bangkok’s colleges and universities in large numbers. Some student musicians from the northeast mixed their local riffs and rhythms with borrowings from country’n’western and rock music. The songs were shaped by the social conscience and political awakening of the decade. The resulting phleng peu chivit became the soundtrack for political protest.

Despite their vitality and popularity, neither of these styles penetrated the urban mainstream. Phleng luk thung was too rural, phleng peu chivit too political. In the 1980s, they were pushed aside by the surge of slick, modern, international, optimistic Grammypop. By 1990, many of the big luk thung troupes had stopped touring, Most of the famous singers had retired. Both the big peu chivit bands, Caravan and Carabao, had stopped recording, squabbled among themselves, and disbanded.

But in the 90s, this decline was suddenly and spectacularly reversed. The music found a new audience. And moved towards the urban mainstream.

In 1992, the premature death and emotional funeral of Phumpuang Duangjan revealed the extraordinary range of popularity for this "queen" of phleng luk thung. The enthusiast and archivist, Jenphop, organised some big concerts which showcased the history and highlights of the genre. These essays in nostalgia were soon overtaken by a true revival. Many new young singers appeared. Some mixed up phleng luk thung with bits of rock, pop and rap. Some threw in humour. But others offered a self-consciously traditional and pure version of the sound and style. FM radio stations started to feature phleng luk thung shows. Then television too. Several new music-publishing companies put out classic reissues and new albums. Cassette sales mounted. Performers began to make music videos for the new TV shows. The "caf้" nightspots featuring singers mainly for the migrant audience increased in number and popularity. Finally Grammy took Got, a pretty-boy urban pop star whose career just would not spark, and remodelled him as a new-age luk thung artist, with huge success.

Then in 1994, TV Channel 7 created a TV drama series adapted from a 1960s film called Monrak Luk Thung. The director played the rustic setting as farce and the village characters as country bumpkins, which did not go down so well. But the music was wonderful, and drew in a big TV audience. Two soundtrack tapes sold in millions. The urban actors who played and sang the main roles were converted into country singers, earning more from appearing in touring provincial roadshows than from doing yet another TV family drama.

In 1996, a luk thung singer who shunned publicity because he felt he looked too downright rural produced a huge national hit. Monsit Khamsoi’s Sang nang (while I’m away) was played everywhere from country concerts to trendy Bangkok music halls. All other singers had to learn it because it always came up in the request section. Businessmen crooned it at parties and karaoke. The Bangkok Symphony Orchestra made a cover version. Monsit appeared at discos, on TV talk shows, and in glossy magazines. Phleng luk thung had arrived in the heart of urban culture.

Phleng peu chivit went through a similar resurgence. First the old albums started to sell well again. Then the old singers received more and more requests to appear at clubs, pubs, concerts, and festivals. Add Carabao made a solo album which outsold many of the Grammy stars, and gained fans beyond Thailand on the new Asian satellite music stations. The Carabao group reformed, recorded new songs, started to tour. Caravan followed suit.

Then the music made a step up to a new urban subculture. First some rustic bars were rechristened as peu chivit pubs. Then several huge new nightspots, each accommodating several thousand people, appeared under the same label. Many new bands appeared to perform in these venues. Phleng peu chivit now reached a much wider audience than it had in the 1970s. Still, the students. Also many of the new upcountry migrants. Plus some who deserted the discos and the yuppie Royal City Avenue bars for these new places, moving out of a glossy world of neon and chrome into a deliberately understated environment of wood and simplicity.

Comedy was not far behind. Along with music, comedy had always been one way the village migrants dealt with the city - laughing at themselves and their new surroundings. The first Bangkok caf้s featuring northeastern comics had appeared in the 1960s. But from the late 80s, the numbers and audiences expanded rapidly. Several venues became rich and famous. People who had come to the city and done well liked to show off their wealth by entertaining friends in these places and patronising the performers. Many could now make a living touring around these venues as solo comics and members of comic troupes.

Then this upsurge in comedy made the leap into TV. Before the early 1990s, it was hard to find much laughter in the box. A few review style programmes had some short-term success. And a handful of comics had support roles in game-shows and talk-shows. Then some channels tentatively experimented with bringing the caf้-style format onto the small screen. The audience went for it. All the stations quickly competed to offer comic shows. The popular troupes were hired for corporate and society events. A few figures became household names. The extraordinary Note became a one-man comic industry, selling books, tapes, and concert seats by the millions.

The TV drama, lifestyle magazine, and manufactured pop are still around and still doing well. But they have been shifted slightly to one side by a wave of songs and laughter rolling in from the provinces. Beneath these waves there are seismic shifts in the society, as new groups find their own voice and place in Thailand’s modern society.