Adventure: Chiang Rai

And the journey begins...

We've just arrived at our first destination today--Chiang Rai. Currently putting up temporarily at a guesthouse called the Cabbages and Condoms Inn. The name's pretty funky but there's actually a really cool background behind the name. I think the people behind the company runs non-profit programs to help the rural Thais, such as awareness programs concerning STDs, and forest replanting schemes.

The next few days will mainly deal with logistical stuffs. We're going to move out of C&C tomorrow, because the room rates per night are pretty costly, and going to go guest-house hunting. Narlae mentioned that she also has planned a field trip to some village, to listen to some of the local music. Got to arrange an appointment with a professor at Chiang Rai Rajabhat Uni as well... not sure what to expect for that! Will also be visiting the university library the day after.

As with any trip to a new place, one must always took about the weather... no matter how banal :P It's been pretty cold, and none of us was expecting it to be so chilly! It's currently 18 degrees, and Noppy says it will only get colder--especially in the villages! Just having to endure the shower earlier was a harsh reminder of the wintry days in the UK. Sigh.

Got to start on the readings soon. Gonna hunt down a decent cafe, which whips up nice drinks and has free wi-fi. Doing work in this guesthouse is simply impossible!

Political Economy & The Culture Industry

The sad reality thanks to the rapid commodification of music--

"There are people that love music. There are even those that work in the music business and still love the music for what it is…They respect it… maybe because they have been musicians themselves, or just because they respect it as a form of art. But there are a lot of people, probably 99 percent of the people that live off the music business, don’t love music. They despise it, and they despise the musicians … So that the only thing that interests them is the money."
Juan de Marcos, in Finn (2009: 196-197)

Finn, J. (2009). Contesting culture: a case study of commodification in Cuban music. Geojournal, 74, 191-200.

Sheila Chandra - Ever So Lonely

Not too enthusiastic about the original 1982 version, but this one's pretty neat...



The dream of every musician--

"Certainly Sheila Chandra never regarded ‘Ever So Lonely’s’ chart success as ‘success’ in itself. For her, the real success was the song’s ability to get listeners dancing to what was essentially a basic Indian raga. If British-Asian dance music is able to renegotiate the colour-coded reifications that pervade British popular culture, then this type of dance is certainly a form of postmodern resistance: all the more canny because dancers are unaware of how their dance blurs boundaries, of how they dance to the tune of the snake charmer’s un-namable pastiche. That Sheila Chandra’s audience, and many of those at Talvin Singh’s ‘Anokha’, may have been white and middle class only adds to the sweetness of that ‘success’."

(Jazeel, 2005: 238)

Jazeel, T. (2005). The world is sound? Geography, musicology and British-Asian soundscapes. Area, 37(3), 233-241.

Entry #1

So I've decided to start a blog to track my journey from the start till end of my thesis writing. All thanks to Meryl who inspired me with her Otter blog. Think it's better this way to keep my thoughts grounded and pen those ideas down before I lose them to outer space...

Just dropped Dr Carl an email regarding some ideas I got from the first round of research, and it seems like focusing on performance spaces is the way to go (for now). At the moment, the idea for my thesis is to study how students from Chiang Rai Rajabhat University negotiate the space they are in, by looking at their adaptations of musical tastes and their productions of hybrid forms of music. Got to look out for students of ethnic minority races who've incorporated elements of their ethnic music to the music they write, and perhaps created fusion forms of music. I'll probably have to do quite a bit of translations when it comes to interpreting song lyrics... definitely got to count on Jip for help!

So I chanced upon this international website for the Hmong community, and it's featured quite a few music videos (posted on youtube unsurprisingly) of Hmong youths performing renditions of Hmong songs. I think the one with the girl singing in the snow is pretty funny... wonder if it'd be the same singing "Singapore Town" somewhere else. Messes with the stereotypes you attach to MTVs and your expectations. I definitely didn't expect to chance upon these... truly amazing.