Spirit and the soul

FEW PEOPLE had even heard of Rasmee Wayrana until earlier this year when the singer swept three of the main music categories in the Kom Chad Luek Awards, taking home the prizes for Best Female Artist, Best Album, and Best Song for “Maya”, a track off her debut album “Isan Soul”.

“These three awards come as a real surprise but you can be sure they will encourage me to work on our next album. My thanks go to Kong [Satukan Tiya Tira] who co-wrote the songs,” Rasmee said to loud applause after the announcement.

“It was way beyond our expectations. I guess that’s because our album ‘Isan Soul’ is so very different from albums released these days,” says composer and guitarist Kong today. “‘Isan Soul’ is only a seven-song EP but we are now working on a full-length album. We would like people to know more about our blend of North-eastern music mixed international sounds and of course Rasmee’s unique voice.”

Rasmee was born and raised in Ubon Ratchathani Province and started singing at the age of five with her father, the founder of the Khmer folk outfit Jariang band. She took part in singing competitions as a young child and after completing primary school started singing with a band in Kantharalak District, Sisaket Province, 50 kilometres from her home. By the age of 13, she was already enjoying a career as a fully-fledged singer.

“My father used to lull me to sleep with luk thung (Thai country folk) songs by Poompuang Duangchan, Sayan Sanya, and Seree Rungsawang. I asked him to buy Poompuang’s CD for me but unfortunately it was out of stock so he gave me Jintara Poonlap’s “Chao Bao Hai” which was very popular at that time. I practised singing luk thung because my father didn’t teach how to sing in Khmer. 

“The band leader heard me singing and asked my dad if I could take on vocals in his band. He was a good guy, an instructor by day and a mor lam musician by night. We played luk thung and mor lam hits by Jintara Poonlap and Siriporn Ampaipong as well as some pop and rock by Palmy, Labanoon and Bodyslam. I used to sing mainly luk thung and mor lam though,” Rasmee recalls.

Rasmee later moved North to study art at Chiang Mai University and soon joined up with a jazz musician from Chicago at the North Gate Jazz Club where she started experimenting with mor lam music. It was here she met the members of international band Bamako Express who played Afro music, which reminded her of the Khmer music known as kantruem and inspired her to build Afro beats around her Khmer and Isaan lyrics. 

In 2013, she joined French jazz outfit Limousine and was invited to perform in France. She thought carefully about the offer and eventually decided to drop out of university.

“I decided to go to France because I didn’t think I would get another opportunity and I could also study art in France. I dreamt of visiting the Louvre. I sang mor lam in a jazz style out there and was really thrilled when we were invited to perform at the Thai Embassy in Paris. I wore a sarong for the occasion and was absolutely stunned when the audience gave us a standing ovation at the end of our show,” she says.

The French experience encouraged her to start work on her own and meeting Kong, who was then working at a music shop, was the deciding factor. She persuaded him to work with her. 

“I was knocked out by her voice and her singing style of modern mor lam. She was a good improviser. That was the starting point of the first song, ‘Praka Prui’. She was very popular in Chiang Mai, because Chiang Mai has no mor lam. She was the only mor lam singer in the city. The big unknown was how her songs would go down in Isaan,” says Kong.

“The song talks about heartbreak and is in Khmer. We wrote the original outline in Thai but translated it into Khmer on the advice of my uncle,” she says.

“Praka Prui” is one of the seven songs on “Isan Soul” and mixes mor lam with international music. The lyrics however follow the traditional mor lam story telling style. 

“‘Maya’ is based on the true story of a woman prepared to do everything for fame and ends with an interesting statement. ‘No matter how many times a woman has sex, she doesn’t lose the spirit of her femininity’,” says Kong.

Another track “Lamduan” is based on her grandmother and uses the percussive guitar slap as the backing. 

“My gran died of lung cancer when I was four but my mother told me a lot about her. The song is about gender inequality,” she says.

“I used the slapping technique throughout the song and it works well,” Kong adds. “We’d done it once before as a jam in a recording studio and it sounded good.”

“Muang Choot Dam” was inspired by her first visit to Paris. “I wondered why the French seemed to dress only in black in winter. It’s a lively song that tells them I am taking colour to their country. It has a 3-cha beat”, Rasmee says.

“Pleng Rak Khong Boonruen” (“Boonruen’s Love Song”) is her father’s love song while “Ai Yoo Sai” (“Where Are You?”) was written after visiting a war museum in Cambodia and watching a documentary about the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities. 

“I don’t write directly about the war but about a wife waiting for her husband and cooking food for him. It’s very sad. We played a very dark version of it at a concert, backed by cello, violin and double bass. It was great. It would be fun to do with a full orchestra,” she says. 

 

MUSIC FOR THE HEART

 

- “Isan Soul” is on sale at iTunes with each track going for just Bt19. Visit https://itunes.apple.com/th/album/isan-soul/id1086942207.