sounds of Thailand
audio recordings that evoke the country, the people and their languages and the diversity of the music of the ethnic cultures
Lisu music |
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Lisu | |||
New Year dance music | raucous jollity punctuated by loud firecrackers accompany the dancing which is led by reed pipes and lute |
2.6MB |
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free reed pipes | the three sizes (pali fulu, fulu lae lae and fulu na o) are all heard here | 2.5MB | |
healing ceremony | male and female lead singers; the chorus joins in and asks the spirits to heal an old lady in the village | 2.4MB | |
harmonic flute | this is a side-blown overtone flute, the blowing hole being in the middle of the tube | 743KB | |
song with lute accompaniment | the male singer is accompanied by a tseubeu player | 1MB | |
duet | female and male singers alternate in this courting song | 1MB | |
flute solo | this duct flute has a membrane like the Chinese dizi | 787KB | |
ceremonies in honour of the spirits | extracts from real ceremonies with shamans and chorus of villagers | 3.3MB | |
lullaby | an old lady sings her 2 year old grandson to sleep | 452KB | |
duet | fulu lae lae and tseubeu join in a dance tune recorded at the New Year festival | 927KB | |
Black Lisu | |||
spirit calling ceremony | male and female lead singer alternate followed by a chorus | 1.3MB | |
dance music played on the harmonica | this woman had recently arrived from Burma and had never seen a real Westerner- but does the music remind you of a bourrée d'Auvergne? As women are not supposed to play the red pipes she took up the harmonica instead. | 416KB | |
New Year ceremony | male lead singer followed by a chorus of women- the singing starts at dusk and goes on until dawn for fourteen nights | 1.5MB | |
song (male singer) | 'I'm all on my own and miss my family' | 1.7MB | |
Lisu Laekeesa | |||
song | female and male singers alternate in this love song | 2.2MB | |
flute solo | a courting song charged with feeling (and recorded next to a Formula one racing track) | 827KB | |
dance music | played on the lute (tseubeu) | 1MB | |
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The main Lisu
group (flowery) only occasionally use Instruments and songs in
combination- I have recorded a few examples and was told it is up to
the musicians whether to sing and play together. I have never heard
a singer accompanying himself. Instrumental music is mainly used for
dancing, which is not the case for the dominating song styles. In
addition, instrumental and vocal Lisu music are extremely different
in style. The flowery Lisu normally play instruments solo though on
occasions two reed organ players or an organ and banjo player may
play together when accompanying dancing. Instrumental music has a
strict metre; sung music is freely metred. The two repertoires do
not mix though sometimes a musician will play independently while
singing is taking place. There is no tradition of music for
percussion. Different song formulas are used, one preferably by the young unmarried people, two by the elders mostly during marriage and New Year festivals, one exclusively for soul-calling ceremonies; in addition there is a dance song and the special song and chanting of the shaman. Larsen (op.cit.) noted that in Lisu songs the melodic line is typically descending in contour, using 6 or 7 tone scales. The interval of a perfect fourth, formed by sustained notes, is structurally important. Songs are in free metre and singers are fere to create their own variations around a basic structure. Song texts are improvised, but the singers draw from a stock of known and accepted motifs. In courting songs these will be love, longing and jealousy, or the pain of separation. Other songs stress the importance of tradition and affirm the basic values and rules in Lisu society. Lisu dance songs are very different from their other songs as most follow a fixed 4/4 rhythm to suit the dance. There is a lead singer and a chorus of anyone who feels like joining in to make a call-response pattern. Lisu courtship songs are highly ritualized and sung by groups of men and women to each other when they meet for the first time. There is also more intimate courting music played or sung by individuals, often involving a private coded language. Ceremonies involving music still play an important part in the life of Lisu villages and some have made an effort to teach the skills to the young. The Lisu groups I have recorded (flowery, Black and Laecheesa) have mostly the same style of instrumental music, with some different tunes. The Black Lisu are particularly noted for their singing marathons. Songs, mostly pentatonic, follow a call-response pattern with a lead singer and up to 100 chorus. The call and response overlap with each other on the final note. |
I have now released an album of field recordings of Lisu music through Believe which can be sampled and bought on the sites of several major distributors. Link for the Believe player shown below. | |
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music of Thailand's ethnic cultures
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all sound files in compressed mp3 form click on track title to hear the recording
sound files are extracts from longer files in wav format