058: Music from Southern Laos, by Molam Lao

Molam Lao (Laos)
Music from Southern Laos (1994)
11 tracks, 61 minutes
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I implore you, dear reader, to listen to the first two tracks of this album along with me. It starts with ‘Pheng Sat Niao,’ which is a duet for two khaen players. If you’re listening along, you probably already understand why I love the khaen and this music so much, right from the first few notes. The rhythm has a heavy swing, the pentatonic melody is really bluesy and the instrument’s quite harsh tone makes the frequent dissonances all the more juicy. It’s so funky! The next track is ‘Lam Saravane.’ It starts again with solo khaen, but then in comes the ensemble: finger cymbals, rattle, a mandolin-like kachapi, and then a singer with such a cool voice, yodelling slightly and sounding every bit the South-East Asian blues singer. It’s so funky! Again!

Those two tracks encapsulate the album so well. Let’s talk a little bit about what we’re hearing, then. This is molam music from Laos (it’s also found in north-east Thailand). It’s essentially country music; it deals with tales of everyday life and love in the rural areas, with a lot of humour to go along with it. And what about that wonderful instrument that sounds half like a bagpipe and half like someone sawing a plank of wood, the khaen? It’s a free-reed mouth organ, which means that it is quite similar to a harmonica organologically…although not to look at: it has two rows of large bamboo pipes that are blown into all at once, and sounded by stopping a hole in each pipe.

I just can’t get over how much of this music – so important as a folk tradition in Laos and Thailand – sounds so much like so much else, while remaining obviously traditional. You can hear so much in there if you tune your ear for it. There’s funk, there’s blues – I spent a fun five minutes earlier jamming some mouth-blues along to ‘Lam Thangvay,’ then the next piece, ‘Phet Sat Soy,’ switched it up again and gave me real Steve Reich vibes.

When I first properly listened to the khaen and molam music, I thought I had the idea that it would sound great alongside some dub production. Well, it was a good idea, but too good because it had already been done: Jah Wobble got there roughly 15 years before me with his album Molam Dub, featuring many of the same musicians as are found on this one. The artwork for Wobble’s album is even by my mate, the gentleman Neil Sparkes – how did I not know about this?? Ah well.

By making all these comparisons, I realise that maybe I’m devaluing the music somewhat. I assure you that that is just a function of my lizard brain making snap connections between similar types of pitch manipulation and acoustic beating along with probably some deeply ingrained and barely avoidable Western frame-of-reference. Molam music doesn’t need my comparisons – it should, can, and very much does stand on its own. Enjoy it – whatever you get out of it.