I Saw the Queen of Morlum (and Molam and Mawlum and Morlam)
Her name is Banyen Rakgan, and here I must quote Wikipedia:
“Banyen was the first national mor lam star, whose appearances on television in the 1980s brought the form to an audience beyond its northeastern heartland. She bridges the gap between traditional and modern mor lam, normally appearing in traditional clothing, but using electrified instruments and singing luk thung and dance influenced songs.”
The basic story of how I found myself ten feet away from Banyen performing live is simple: It was serendipitous.
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I work at Rajabhat Mahasarakham University. There are many Rajabhat universities located all over Thailand. A few days ago I went to the Rajabhat in Ubon Ratchathani (where the US Air Force created a base during the Vietnam War) with 450 other teachers from my university for what they call a “sports day,” and insofar as helping my tug-of-war team lose twice and thus tie for third place (the victories needed for such were achieved before I came in at the semifinals), I guess I did play sports. Sports Day this year was actually two days – we arrived on February 4th for the opening ceremony and dinner, and played sports on the 5th with teams fielded by all the other Rajabhats in the Isan (NE) region.
According to a close friend, Banyen has been overseas (mostly in the states) for some years and only recently returned to Thailand. She’s a teacher at the music department at the very university we were visiting, which explains why she was performing at the closing ceremony/dinner. She is now 55 years old and has only become more beautiful with age. Everyone calls her “Ajarn Mae” which are respectively the words for teacher and mother in the Thai language. This encompasses the feelings that most Thais, and especially most Thais from Issan have for her – they grew up on her music and she is a national hero; she is also the most famous molam singer in the world. This much I have studied since the last time I really wrote about molam on this blog. Incidentally, Banyen is also a student of Ajarn Chawiwan Damnoen (who I guess would have to be called the Queen’s mother), who sang at our wedding in 2006 and is also a living treasure…
I had no idea what was going on when Banyen started singing, as we were working through the free food and booze at my table in an auditorium crammed with several hundred university employees. However. I was drawn to her voice, and soon found myself threading through a crazed yelling mass of fellow teachers who were temporarily achieving enlightenment with an instinctive dance passed down through their DNA. I eventually reached the center stage and there was only a single row of people in front of me. People were offering her money as they do here – from grade school performances all the way to stadium concerts – and when she came to accept it, I saw that her dress was made from what looked like polished pieces of broken mirror… There is no way to describe the sound. It flowed through my body and I felt it as much as heard it. The primeval beat of the drums, the fluctuating melodies of the Kaen reed flute, and the luscious voice of Thailand’s Queen of Molam (I use that word because this type of Molam is basically flirting)… For a few minutes I was lost in the groove, which is something I haven’t felt for a long, long time. Dare I say it? Yes. For a few minutes, I too achieved an enlightened state. A state that I hereby coin as Molamgasm.
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The video I took on my crappy old cellphone is so bad, I was determined not to bother posting it here. The more I thought about it, though, the more I became convinced that it would be an interesting experiment: Perhaps Banyen’s presence transcends the absolutely horrible quality of the video. Possibly not. Oh well, it’s all I’ve got:
What a shame. I’m pretty sure this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Then again, it probably plays better in my memory than it ever would on YouTube. Speaking of which, if you want to see much better videos of Banyen, she is well represented there. Here are two of my favorites: LINK 1, LINK 2
If I ever have a chance to see Banyen that close again, I’ll be sure to have a decent camera. Or maybe I’ll just ask Ajarn Chawiwan to introduce me…
Escolar aka Butterfish aka Hawaiian Walu aka the Ex-Lax Fish…
…aka Oilfish aka the “It” Fish aka Shiro Maguro aka Abura Bozu aka Abura Sokumutsu aka Mutzu.
I have finally found a fish that Japanese won’t eat (raw, at least), and is in fact prohibited to be used for that purpose in Japan, and it turns out it’s all because eating it may make orange jets of oil (specifically, indigestible wax esters) shoot out of your ass.
And yes, I speak of that as a bug, not a feature.
Word Macros I Have Loved and Almost Lost
I’ve recently had to convert MS Word files with tons of zenkaku English text in them to all hankaku so I could forward them to people on non-Japanese language-enabled systems. Luckily, I happen to have written a macro during my salaryman days that does just that.
Looking at the code, it seems I could never figure out how to get a few symbols working (such as the “degrees Celsius” symbol), but other than that it works very well.
If you have the need for such a macro, drop me an email.
New Years in the Fields
As promised, here’s the whole story:
On the second day of the new year, our nanny invited us to her village for the bi-annual emptying of a communal fishpond. We piled into our trusty ’71 Crown, picked up a Japanese teacher who wanted to experience village life, and headed out deep into the rice fields. Actually, we first stopped at our nanny’s village so we could follow a pickup out to the final destination. I always carry rubber mats, wooden planks, and a shovel in the back of my car to get out of mudholes and sandy spots encountered in the back country, but with the family along for the ride it was comforting to have an escort (also, you never know when a feral Brahmin cow will decide to play cape buffalo and it’s nice to have a pickup to play decoy in such situations). The road was non-existent in places and we simply drove over drained and harvested rice fields along the paths of least resistance; I only scraped bottom once when I misjudged the far side of a steep bump. Several times, the pickup driver stopped an got out to warn me about a particularly rough patch ahead and asked if I just wanted to stop and park, but choosing the right lines is something of an obsession when I’m driving and I was lucky enough to choose correctly that day.
We eventually arrived to within walking distance (perhaps half a kilo) of the pond, which was being drained with a pump attachment hooked up to an iron buffalo (large roto-tiller or walking tractor). While waiting for the pond to drain, most of the hunters were out looking for field rats. This is where I started photo documenting the day.
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IF YOU HAD A HARD TIME READING THE LAST POST ON EATING RATS, GO NO FURTHER. GRAPHIC RAT BUTCHERING FOLLOWS (YUM).
The method employed for catching rice field rats on this day was simple and effective. Rats make their tunnels in berms that separate rice fields. A fire is built at the entrance of a rat hole and inside the tunnels, the rats only dig deeper to escape the smoke. Some time after, the tunnels are dug out, and the asphyxiated rats are pulled out by hand.
(As it turned out, most of my photos that day were of preparing the rats for eating. The actual reason why we went, draining the fishpond, I mostly recorded with a camcorder. Some of the footage is pretty interesting but I don’t have time to process it yet.)
All in all, it was an extremely educational day. It’s always nice to be able to hang out with the locals and see how they really live. It’s even nicer when they are willing to show you exactly how they do what they do. On this day, we learned how to empty a fish pond, catch and cook rats, and as a bonus, I learned just how rough a road the old Crown can handle.
Typical Northeast Thai Temple
This is a “side attraction” at Wat Srisawat, located on Srisawat road in Mahasarakham. The other side of the building pictured above features a collection of concrete animals. I took photos of them last year; I’ll try and dig them up.