Make room for mor lam!

NATTAPON “DJ Maft Sai” Siangsukon has been successful beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings in taking luk thung and mor lam – Thailand’s most popular forms of indigenous folk music – to the world. 

His own 2010 compilation album “Sound of Siam” earned rave reviews in England when it was released there on the Soundway label, including from Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, who loved how Nattapon had sampled “Jumping Jack Flash” on one track.

And Nattapon’s earnestly lively group the Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band (they use a variant spelling of mor lam) has just returned from another triumphant tour of Europe. They’ve played the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, the Off Festival in Poland, the Farmfestival in England and the Worldwide Festival in France, and in Germany opened for British alt-rock singer Damon Albarn. The band’s lute player, Kammao Perdtanon, found himself being called “the Jimi Hendrix of Thailand”.

It’s all been pretty amazing for an outfit that’s only now recording its second album.

Nattapon explains how the wheels got set in motion.

“I uploaded two videos of our show at a festival in Vietnam in 2013 to YouTube and they went viral, which led to a nine-show tour of Europe the following year,” he says. “We got to play the Off Festival in Poland by chance after Beyonce’s sister, Solange, cancelled her European dates and we were called in as a replacement, playing to 300,000 people! They loved it – people were even bodysurfing to mor lam music!” 

As word spread, the band was booked for nearly 30 more shows in Europe. “There were so many foreigners who had no idea there was this kind of sound in Southeast Asia.” 

At the beginning, Nattapon didn’t know much about mor lam either. He was more into reggae and African roots music while studying in England, working part time at a record shop and, along with all his roommates, collecting vinyl – jazz, soul, funk, disco and later deep house and Detroit style.

“I’d learned that Africa didn’t have only one musical style but many – in Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia, Kenya – everywhere. I also liked to hear local folk music blended with Western influences, like drum-and-bass,” he says.

“I didn’t know about luk thung until I heard the original ‘Phu Yai Lee’ and got excited. That song’s been covered more than 10 times, including with Carlos Santana guitar riffs. It sounded similar to Ethiopian rhythms, and the phin melody in mor lam is similar to what you hear in the music of Ali Farka Toure from Mali.”

Nattapon started haunting record shops in Saphan Lek six days a week, discovering the depth of Thai folk music. In 2009 he organised the first “Paradise Bangkok” party, treating 200 people to a selection of tracks from the Thai country-folk catalogue and other “world music” genres of the same ’70s vintage.

“After the second year of the party I wanted to do something more,” he says. “I’d often played the luk thung music of Dao Bandorn and I wanted to see him perform live, so I went to Isaan and met him and the guys from his original band, 30 years on, and invited them to play at our next Paradise Bangkok party. 

“They rehearsed for six months – some of them had stopped singing and playing altogether. I was so impressed with their show that I did the same with Saksiam Petchchompoo and other artists who only ever had gigs upcountry, never in Bangkok. 

They all had the same high quality but weren’t well known at all.” To get the old bands on record, Nattapon set up his own studio, ZudRangMa Records, in 2007. 

“There was a time when the kids in Bangkok would shout me down for playing mor lam and luk thung, telling me to ‘go back to the country’. It only made me more serious about finding the vintage sounds. I sought out Dao, Saksiam, Angkanang Kunchai and Khwanjit Sriprachan and put together a couple of concerts every year.”

In 2012 Nattapon formed his own outfit, the Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band. He got Piyanat “Pump” Chotisathien, the former bassist from Apartment Khunpa, Sawai Kaewsombat playing the khaen (bamboo reed pipes), Kammao on the phin (Thai lute), Phusana “Arm” Treeburut on drums and Chris Menist on percussion. 

“Without vocals the band would be endlessly improvising and soloing, so I invited different singers for different shows, all the while developing a new mor lam sound. 

“But it actually isn’t new – it’s what people in Isaan did in the 1970s when they were entertaining the American GIs who settled down there. All mor lam bands had the same traditional lam plern and lam toey line-up, but there were differences in the arrangements and instrumentation. The band Thephabutr, for example, has no phin or khaen – only brass. And Phetch Pinthong was the first band to use an electric phin.” 

At the end of 2014 the Paradise band released its first album, “21st Century Morlam”. 

“The tracks show the influence of rock, reggae and disco and the album got good response. Gilles Petersen listed it as album of the week on BBC 6 and we were named one of the 20 top bands at the Worldwide Awards, the only band from Asia. We got to jam with great artists and went to the festivals in Europe, which has become our summer routine.” 

Work has begun on the follow-up album, which Nattapon says involves “more experimenting and pushing the boundaries”. It’s “more imaginative overall”, he says. “One day Phi Sawai was blowing his khaen after walking in a park and seeing some animals. He was in a good mood and everybody was jamming along.” 

“On ‘Sao Sakid Mae (Namtok)’,” says Pump, “Phi Kammao imitates the sound of a waterfall on his phin!” 

And this is where mor lam is really beginning to develop its 21st-century sound.

“When we first started playing we were just imitating the sound of ’70s mor lam,” Nattapon explains, “but in the 21st century it includes different ways of playing and effects and dubbing. It’s more about reinterpretation than remixing. We might put effects on the khaen so you can’t even tell it’s a khaen, but it’s still keeping the melody.” 

Kammao – “Thailand’s Jimi Hendrix” – says he’s delighted to be playing “the forgotten music” for a younger crowd. “It was very humbling when I first came back to Bangkok in 1985 – people just saw Isaan people holding a phin or khaen as beggars. I decided I’d make all Thai people appreciate the phin. I’ve been playing it since I was a kid. My father was a player, and he told me it’s a ‘high-art’ instrument, played by Lord Indra.”

As it happens, says Kammao – whose dad crafted phin from the wood of the jackfruit trees his own father grew – the band has made not just Thais but the whole world more familiar with the traditional sounds of the Northeast.