Phumphuang Duangjan was born in rural Suphanburi, in a family of twelve children. As a small child, she helped her mother as a sugar-cane cutter. She began working as a singer when she was eight years old. Her first husband left her for her sister. The second one gambled away her earnings, and reputedly hastened her death by failing to pay her hospital bills. She refused to stop working in the face of illness because of her responsibility for maintaining her family.

At her death ten years ago, Phumphuang was thirty-six. Her fatal illness (a blood disorder) was a result of bad luck, ignorance, and poor treatment. Like so many migrants from village to city, she had been pulled away from family and culture, and forced to work hard for survival and success. She had become exposed to risks which she was barely equipped to understand. Her most ardent followers were the legions of seamstresses, factory workers, bar girls, construction workers, shop assistants and sweatshop slaves and who saw Phumphuang as a glamorous version of their own personal histories.

Phumphuang’s most popular songs drew on this personal history and dramatized its themes. Many of the songs were soliloquies which captured the essence of relationships, human situations, and personal histories against a background of rapid and bewildering social change. The city is fascinating and fearful. Men are predators and patrons. Life is opportunity and fate.

Many of her most popular songs were about herself—about young rural women in the city, about personal transformation, about exploitation, about longing for wealth and success, and about the wish to go back home to the village:

When the sun sets and the birds return to their nests
I really miss the paddy fields.
Do they wonder too when will I go back home?
I came to the city to be a big star.
It’s tough, but I can survive.
When I left the village, my friends mocked my ambition.
That hurt. If I don’t make it, I cannot go back.
Every night, I pray I will be famous.
Then this up-country singer can go back home
And sing for their admiration.
[“Nak rong ban nok”, Up-country singer]

In the 1980s, the style of phleng luk thung was seen as countrified, hick, not part of Thailand’s exciting new modernity. After Phumphuang’s death, phleng luk thung boomed. Some 150,000 attended her funeral. Millions saw it on television. Luk thung suddenly became fashionable. Yingyong Buangam sold an unprecedented 3 million copies of a new tape. FM radio stations started to run luk thung shows. In 1995, a 25-year old musical film, Monrak luk thung (The Wonder of luk thung), was remade as a TV series to great acclaim. In a reversal of the usual story of the singer’s trek to the city, the urban actors were converted into the singers they had portrayed, and transported out to the provinces on concert tours.

In 1996, an ex-paddy farmer Monsit Khamsoi’s Sang nang (While I’m Away) became so popular that the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra made a cover version and the city’s hottest discos reluctantly played it on popular demand. A 24-hour luk thung radio station was launched. Television channels competed to sponsor concerts for late-night broadcast. Sunaree Ratchasima and Aphapon Nakhonsawan—who sang respectively in Phumpuang’s wistful and sexy styles—achieved national stardom and were wafted off to Tokyo and Los Angeles to entertain Thai exiles.

Urban bubblegum stars converted themselves into luk thung singers. Then luk krung (Thai-farang) did. And finally a pair of blonde Scandinavians. A feature film (Monrak Transistor) with a plot about a luk thung singer’s struggle for fame became a runaway hit. In 2001, television screened the first drama which portrayed villagers in any role other than clowns and rude mechanicals (Nai hoi thamin). The cast consisted of luk thung singers, boxers, and a few Bangkok actors struggling to approximate an Isan dialect. The plot (from a story by Kampoon Boontawee) followed a group of north-easterners in the 1930s herding buffalo across the plateau to sell in the central plains—and to visit Bangkok on the proceeds.

Meanwhile, Phumphuang was immortalized. Five life-size wax statues were installed in Wat Thapkradan in her home province of Suphanburi. Crowds came to honour these statues and petition for good fortune. One petitioner won the lottery. Temple attendants had to organize queuing for the five statues. The bark on trees in the wat compound was rubbed away in hopeful search for lucky numbers. Bangkok newspapers vied to increase circulation by publishing the lottery predictions of Phumphuang’s spirit. Her ex-husband claimed to have won on the spirit’s recommendation. Her sister set up a stall selling tapes and memorabilia. Grateful lottery players donated some of their winnings to the wat. The best of the five statues was moved to share the prime location in the wat with the image of an honoured ex-abbot. Pilgrims began to arrive from all over the country.

In 1998, Phumphuang’s life was made into a television drama series. She was the first modern Thai historical person to be treated to such a biography. The director and cast strove for much greater realism than usual for television serials. The script focused on her longing to escape poverty, and her responsibility to family and friends. The story began with her child labour in the sugar-cane fields of Suphanburi, and ended with her collapse while praying to Phra Chinnarat, perhaps the nation’s most famous Buddha image.

Phumphuang has been immortalized in the urban society’s ‘prosperity cults’ and public culture. She has become part of the blurring of urban-rural boundaries as a result of rising incomes, migration, cheap transport, and mass television. She has been transformed into a guardian spirit with a national following. She has “made it” in ways which Nakrong ban nok never imagined.