Lady Gaga gets traditional Thai treatment
A new project is bringing amateur Thai classical musicians around the world together via pre-recorded video clips covering everything from Korean pop to 'Bad Romance'
"What can a mere person do to make a difference?” asked Dr. Arbtip Dheeravongkit during a presentation at Ignite Thailand, a movement organizers describe as a positive network aimed at rebuilding the country from its recent domestic turmoil.
“You start from doing something you truly love even though it may not seem significant,” answered the willowy scientist. With that, she unveiled Virtual Thai Concerto.
This worldwide project features amateur Thai classical instrumentalists who perform together via pre-recorded and stitched-together video clips.
Their repertoire ranges from classical Thai numbers to 1950s oldies to contemporary music and even Korean pop music.
Lady Gaga? Not a problem. Check out the above clip of Arbtip -- known as Aom to her friends -- doing "Bad Romance" with another musician, made with some clever editing.
"I think of each participant as a musical note," says Aom. "You can't do much with a single note. But when you put all the notes together, you have a song."
Intentional or not, this concept is rife with symbolism: individual pieces in all their differences coming together to celebrate a common goal –- the nurturing of cultural pride and unity.
"It started out as a hobby which I enjoyed and it grew from there," says Aom.
What began as a hobby, a continuation of a Thai musical project organized by her fellow Thai students from the days when she was pursuing her doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University, has become a worldwide movement.
Since 2005, Aom has been sharing the songs she’d played on her khim (Thai hammered dulcimer) on her personal blog. Shortly after, Thai people both in the motherland and all over the globe started following her in droves.
With more than 8,000 fans on Facebook and more than a million upload views on her YouTube channel, Aom says people are pleasantly surprised to find that a non-chromatic Thai instrument, when creatively tuned, can play an amazingly wide range of musical genres.
Aom poses with NAMO, a humanoid robot created by the Institute of Field Robotics where she works.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive, she says. People have told her that the soothing sound of khim has eased the pain in their lives.
For some, her skill has compelled them to return to the instruments they’d long abandoned.
Some parents have encouraged their children to pursue Thai classical music education --something they themselves once viewed as “uncool” when they were younger.
In a time when rebuilding the country seems such an enormous task, people wonder if there’s anything at all they can do. The dulcimerist says, yes.
“To make a difference you only need to choose something positive that you like to do," she says.
That’s the idea behind Virtual Thai Concerto, which has attracted much attention and is steadily progressing.
"I'd never expected that what I do for fun out of love would mean something to so many people whom I have never met in real life," Aom says.
