A number of odd events occurred during the production of the series, the singer’s songs emerging from a computer that wasn’t turned on, a missing script that reappeared only after the writer paid her respects to a statue of Phumphuang built after the singer’s cremation in a Suphan Buri temple, etc. When these eerie stories became known, and someone claimed to win the lottery after visiting the statue, the temple became a pilgrimage site. Today, thousands rub the bark of a big tree on the grounds, looking for those magic numbers, and four more statues have been erected.
Once snubbed by the urban hip and the Thai “Hi-So,” short for high society, the music found new fans in the expanding middle class, especially among white-collar workers and trend-conscious teenagers. Bangkok schools formed luuk thung clubs, presenting regular concerts; Rangsit University even produced an album of anguished songs about campus life. At the same time, leaders of the two most popular “Songs for Life” bands of the 1970s performed together with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra and new clubs opened in Bangkok and elsewhere featuring groups led by similarly inclined activists. This continues today.
Many of the new singers, such as Apaporn Naskornsawan, Chakrapan (Got) Jakraphand, Dao Mayuree, Suda Srillamduan, Nujaree Sri Racha, and Yui Yartyeoh, became teen idols. Today’s stars even include a blue-eyed Norwegian social worker-turned-singer, Jonas (pronounced Jonat, as Thais have trouble with “s”)
Anderson, and the Dutch-British daughter of religious social workers, Christy (Krit-tee) Gibson, who have learned to enunciate the lyrics properly, and also to howl from the lungs and duplicate the severe vibrato that help telegraph the music’s emotion. Such techniques come naturally to Thai vocalists, and Anderson admits he has to learn the songs note for note.
With all this new popularity and social acceptance, the number of country music companies has grown ten-fold and there now are more than a hundred vocalists with recordings, triple the figure in 1996. Where once luuk thung singers didn’t need to be physically attractive and success relied solely on vocal prowess, now young, good-looking stars predominate, several of them making feature films along with music videos that get regular exposure on Thai language television stations. For some performers, tee-shirts have been replaced by flashy costumes reminiscent of traditional Thai dress. The line-up of eight or more dancers—key to any luk thung performance—is now choreographed and singers are taught by their record companies how to project more appealing personalities. An increasing number have their own web pages. And although they haven’t been particularly successful, Sony, Universal, Warner, EMI and other international companies have set up Thai music divisions. So far, none of this music has been exported.
Nor is there much money to be made at home, at least not by western standards. A popular luuk thung singer may be paid as much as US$500-1,000 per concert, not bad considering the country’s average annual per capita income is under $3,000. Most fees are much smaller, however, and personal appearances often generate more income than record sales, in part because of the widespread counterfeiting; the leading label, Grammy, in early 2002 reduced its CD price by half in an effort to compete with the bootleggers.
Where once a patronage system in the luuk thung business saw famous singers with up to a hundred dancers, musicians, comedians and other less famous singers on their payrolls, and the star vocalist owned everything from the dancers’ dresses to the instruments, now most performers work alone, managed by their record labels or independent production companies.
Only a few of today’s luuk thung singers have their own bands. Most travel a circuit alone, at its basic level appearing in several venues in a single night, backed by each club’s house band, performing familiar songs that everyone can sing. Many of the older vocalists work for tips from the audience, earning $100 or more a night.
Bangkok’s Tawan Isan Daeng is typical club. It’s a huge, dark warehouse of a room that serves a menu of Isan dishes and is popular with families as well as with young men and women lonesome for Isan and looking for a cheap night out.
After nine, when a seven-piece band appears, accompanied by a lineup of dancers in matching outfits and a round-robin procession of vocalists, the small dance floor in front of the stage fills with the middle-aged and young alike, repeating the easy, gliding steps and the sinuous waggling of arms and wrists held above their heads that characterizes simple Isan dance, backed by the drone and thump and lyric message that, for an evening, takes them home.
Greasing the Reels
Foreign film companies loooooooove Thailand.
After dozens of foreign productions—from The Ugly American, casting Kukrit Pramoj as a fictional prime minister opposite Marlon Brando, and the early James Bond extravaganza with Roger Moore, Man With the Golden Gun, which turned an island in Phang Nga Bay into a tourist attraction; to most of the Vietnam war films and no-brainers by Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Dame—Thailand has cultivated a behind-the-camera labor force comfortable working with foreigners, and it has become recognized as a location of choice for filmmakers at affordable rates.
It has mountains and jungles, tropical island beaches, rivers and canals, ancient ruins and villages little changed since the Stone Age. It has vintage aircraft and tanks and elephants, all in working order. It has five-star hotels, where cinema egos can get the room service they believe they deserve.
That isn’t all. Thailand also has a reputation for cooperation. Virtually anything you want, if you are willing to pay for it, can be had. Want to close down traffic on one of the major roadways in Bangkok (as was done for Oliver Stone and others)? No problem. Want to halt shipping on the Chao Phraya River so you can blow up and sink a boat (as was done for Van Damme, an effort that required permission from police on both sides of the river and the marine police)? Easy as pie. Need an army of men with weapons or a fleet of helicopters? Say where and when you want delivery. Did one of the stars or production principals get thrown into jail, and you want him released? Piece of cake. Did someone die on the set and you want it to go unreported? Have a second piece of cake.
Filming is big business in Thailand, if not for the home-grown productions—whose budgets still rarely go over the US$1 million mark—then for those imported from Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, the U.K. and, most profitably, the U.S. Most of the Indochinese war films made in the past twenty years— The Deer Hunter, Air America, Good Morning Vietnam!, Platoon, Heaven and Earth, Uncommon Valour, Casualties of War and Operation Dumbo Drop among them—were filmed in Thailand.
So were Van Damme’s earlier Kickboxer and Street Fighter and his more recent Quest; Cutthroat Island, in which the Krabi coastline masqueraded unconvincingly as the Caribbean; The Phantom, based on the American comic strip; Mortal Kombat (both of them), The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles; a remake of Around the World in 80 Days, Angelina Jolie’s Beyond Borders; Oliver Stone’s Alexander; Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, John Carpenter’s Vampires 3; another James Bond film, this one starring Pierce Brosnan, Tomorrow Never Dies; Steven Seagal’s Belly of the Beast; and, believe it or not, something called Surf Ninjas of the South China Seas.