Customer Reviews

The Flower Of Isan: Songs And Music From Northeast Thailand

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This is superb music and well worth the money. There are several instrumentals and a two solos featuring the kaen, a bamboo mouth organ with 16 tubes. The CD is well put together and has great sound. It's a shame that there are no clips available to preview because I'm fairly confident that the first 30 seconds of the first song would sell this CD to just about anyone that is interested in this kind of music. It's excellent!

I was very pleasantly surprised at the crystal clarity of this collection, recorded and digitally mastered in London some years ago. The alternating instrumental and vocal selections demonstrate several styles of the haunting and folksy style of music which has always attracted any foreign student of the Thai and Lao languages. The only thing more that I could have hoped for would have been the accompanying verse written in Lao. What a great language learning tool that would be! This is difficult and time-consuming material for most foreigners to study strictly by ear. While the accompanying brochure notes that the words are traditionally written down for the record, I have never been able to find any such thing. Understandably not included in this collection are the many rather "racy" versions of Mo-Lam songs [like Mao-Lam Khen Dao Lao's unforgettable Teng Sanghan Saow] from the era when the American military presence in Northeastern Thailand was a sometimes troubling but mostly well-tolerated aspect of life for the natives of the Northeast. None of that quaint and humorous social commentary has yet been made available to the foreign public. Anyone who ever stayed late into the night at the Mo-Lam shows at the "Thung Sri Muang" in the heart of Ubon knows what a treasure that work is.

These artists produce a great sound on this CD. The songs are great and this CD is most likely one of the best of traditional regional Thai music. If you like Laotian music as well or are interested, the sound is very similar. I was not dissapointed at all, this CD is worth the money.