Tai Orathai: The voice of Luk Thung and Mor Lam
Guest post by Keith Fitzgerald
I recently discovered the beautiful music of Tai Orathai, the beloved Luk Thung and Mor Lam singer from Ubon Ratchathani who has been recording since 2002 and is also known as Miss Grass Flower.
She has an evocative, melancholy, sometimes fragile voice which affects me in a way that’s similar to some of my favourite songs of desolation – Trista Pena by the Gipsy Kings, Black Coffee by Ella Fitzgerald, Lonely Stranger from Eric Clapton’s Unplugged album, and One for My Baby (and One More for the Road) by Frank Sinatra.
The videos I’ve seen of her tunes tend to be very simple, low-budget affairs involving romantic longing and loss. Her exquisitely brittle voice needs no gimmicks; I’d prefer no videos at all.
The journey to see Tai Orathai live
She gave a free concert at a temple called Ban Khom, also known as Wat Saphanaram, in Samut Sakhon province, about an hour south of Bangkok. Many Thai temples have two or three names, and this proved to be a bit of a challenge in finding out where to see her.
I took the rickety old State Railway of Thailand train from Wongwian Yai station in Thonburi down south. 10 baht. Not bad for a good dose of local culture as viewed from the seat of a 60 year old train.
About an hour into the ride, we passed a temple that had a huge poster out front for concerts taking place there. I saw Tai Orathai’s face and information there but assumed that maybe it was an ad along the way, and that I had to get off at the main station in Samut Sakhon, Mahachai.
No dice, and duh. So, I got back on the train going north and got off at the Ban Khom temple stop, then scoped out the temple for a while and headed to my hotel to kill time before the 9pm show.
Understanding Luk Thung and Mor Lam
I’m not deeply familiar with Thai music and didn’t know about luk thung and mor lam until I got hooked by Tai Orathai’s songs of heartbreak. (I’m sure she sings about less gloomy things, but the thing that hits me deep is the sadness.)
These genres are associated with the Isaan region of northeastern Thailand and Laos, and feature a blending of traditional Thai music and Western instruments, with a focus on rural life and sorrow expressed in a vibrato voice.
From what I could gather, Miss Grass Flower rarely performs in Bangkok. I found her on Facebook recently and inquired about where I could see her in this area. I think I was a bit of a nuisance, but she or her assistant did their best to accommodate me.
The closest venue to Bangkok was the province that, a few hundred years ago, was known as Tha Chin and served as a major port for the China trade. In 1704, a big canal called Mahachai was dug to connect this area to Sakhon Buri city, and, about 150 years later, King Rama IV changed the name to Samut Sakhon.
The concert at Wat Ban Khom
I checked into my hotel, killed time at a KFC, and then took a motorbike taxi back to Wat Ban Khom in the evening. This was my first concert at a temple. I’d heard and seen on videos that thuggish teenage boys sometimes go on rampages at such events, and I wondered what I’d do if I saw someone being attacked.
Not being one to just stand by, I envisioned myself heroically intervening. No such drama was to take place this night, but I did benefit from another one toward the end of the show.
I was the only white person there. It was a very lower-middle-class event, which suited me just fine. At this temple, local women who look like they may sleep on the temple grounds rent out large plastic mats for people to sit on in the parking lot facing the stage.
I got mine and set up close to the front-row centre, then walked to the nearest 7-11 to get a large can of the new Leo Supreme beer and a Snickers bar, and walked back to my mat and waited with great enthusiasm to see Tai Orathai.
There were several warm-up acts. First, two featured women singers and dancers wearing huge orange or white feathered headgear. The dancers seemed a bit unsure of themselves. They may’ve been new to such performance. Third up was a big man in a faded denim jacket with no dancing girls, and a commanding, impressive voice.
Then, there was a strangeness called Fongod Varity – a guy dressed up as a tacky, old-timey Chinese lord sporting a fake beard made of black cloth, and with an inexplicable plastic bar attached to the back of his head.
The emcee stayed on stage in the centre, behind each of the warm-up acts, as if he was the real star. At one point, a homeless man on a tricycle handed a ten-baht coin to the faux-Chinese singer. I had the impression that no political correctness agenda is in force here, at least when it comes to invoking silly stereotypes about the Middle Kingdom leviathan to the north of Thailand.
The arrival of Tai Orathai
After about an hour of mostly mediocre warm-up acts, Sao Dok Yaah (Miss Grass Flower – the name of her first album) appears on stage to the delight of a few hundred Thai fans and this one white American guy who took the 10-baht train from Bangkok to see her.
She’s surrounded by a retinue of costumed dancers who gracefully arc their hands and bodies in ways that are utterly farang to Westerners. Her best musician is a multi-instrumentalist who plays the phin (a kind of electrified, three-stringed Isan guitar), a khlui (bamboo flute or fipple), and a panpipe known as a wot.
The incident and a memorable night
About an hour and a quarter into the performance, I stand up along with everyone else up front. I take my wallet and phone out of my New York Mets backpack and leave the blue bag on the plastic mat where I was sitting. I think it must be okay. No one looks like a thief. We’re all here to enjoy the music. People are friendly. Not a bully boy in sight.
At a certain point, I look back to check on my Mets backpack. It’s gone. I silently spazz a bit because my condo keys are in there. People immediately notice my predicament, and several show serious concern and start helping me to look around. The most dedicated helper is a woman who does not quite look Thai (possibly Indian and Thai) and who’s wearing a shirt with a huge image of Jesus on it.
And then, lo, there’s Tai Orathai from the stage asking the crowd to help find a blue backpack for a man up front. I do not hear “farang,” which I don’t like being called, so I assume she used more polite language.
Thirty minutes pass as Tai keeps singing and I keep fretting about going back to Bangkok with no key to my room. As the concert starts to wind down, a young guy on the most forlorn, do-it-yourself-ed motorbike I’ve ever seen pulls up to where I’m standing. He’s beaming and says “Get on!” He speeds me over to another part of the temple and shows me my bag lying on the ground.
I remember this moment.
When I get back to Bangkok, I enter the Tai Orathai concert on my half-century-old handwritten list of every concert I’ve ever attended.
This one is #618.
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