The Merriam Webster dictionary named "surreal" as its word of the year for 2016. It's a relatively new word that was only included for the first time in 1967, which was around the time "psychedelia" emerged as a style of rock music; think of Jimmy Hendrix's guitar pyrotechnics from the time as an example. Psychedelic rock took off and rapidly split into subgenres like psychedelic soul and the whole Funkadelic/Parliament movement that brought psych guitars to the funk groove.
In 2016, the word that seemed to emerge any time someone took a band from Southeast Asia was the shortened form of psychedelia -- psych. Magazine writers have been busy revising Thailand's molam music as a category of psych rock, so that a typical molam instrumental band like Khun Narin became a "psych" band when it performed in France. Perhaps this is a marketing ploy, rather like "world music" was invented to market non-Western popular music in the 1980s, or maybe it is one of those tag terms for search engine optimisation.
So, given the word is now part of the linguistic landscape of music again, you can now psych up your life by adding to anything you want people to click on. Look out for psych DJs and psych food, or those with an appropriate attitude ("You're so psych, dude").
The annual Songlines magazine World Music Awards for 2016 are being decided as readers and correspondents vote for various categories and artists from different regions. For the Asian region, bands from the Pacific and mainland Asia compete for the best release of 2016 from Asia. There are some heavy hitters in this region, led by Thailand's own Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band (for their second album Planet Lam), the Bollywood Brass Band from India, Kaoru Watanabe from Japan and Wu Wei & Wang Li from China. This is Paradise Bangkok's second time on the awards list after being nominated for their debut album, 21st Century Molam. Perhaps they will win it this time round.
There was lots of good music in 2016 and despite the cancellation of shows during the period of mourning, I've seen some great gigs this year. One of my favourite gigs of the year was a night at Angsila School in Ubon Ratchathani province with the Mobile Molam Bus. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the school various molam and their musicians entertained us with some sparkling molam and even one or two pleng kantrum songs -- it was a great night.
The DJ vinyl scene has also taken off this year with more and more foreign DJs looking for gigs in Thailand. Vinyl is back and likely to stay. Indeed, many of the labels that released African, Latin and Asian music on CD in the 1980s and 1990s are now reissuing the CDs on vinyl. This is great news for music fans; for instance, Luaka Bop, a label started by ex-Talking Heads leader David Byrne, is reissuing on vinyl a whole range of brilliant Cuban, Peruvian and Brazilian compilations.
One of the best gigs I saw this year was also the last one I saw, on Dec 28, when the legendary Soontharapirom Band performed at Studio Lam. The band was formed in 1956 and while the original members are no longer with us, the band, led by Paradise Bangkok's khaen player "Don" Sawaii Kaewsombat, performed the glawn style of lam, the more poetic style of the genre, as well as one or two more up-tempo sing-style lam songs. It was a lot of fun and a very nice way to wrap-up what has been a "surreal" and "psyched" year.
This columnist can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com.
Molam singer Noi and Nittaya performed at Angsila School last year. John Clewley
