Take a sad song and make it better...

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A common feature of traditional Khmer music and folk song is the slow introductory part that lasts about a minute. This can be heard in the music of other Southeast Asian countries as well. In morlam music this part of the song is called "gern".

But even much further afield you can find something similar. For example, here's a traditional arrangement of the well-known Beatles song Hey Jude . It starts off slow and sad but ends in a foot-tapping Celtic frenzy.

Interesting. And I wonder what the words, "morlam" and "gern" translate to in Khmer.

The article, "The Morlam, The Merrier,":

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Morlam, also spelled "Mohlam"--transliteration from Thai and Laotian into English isn't always exact--is a brand of folk music from the Isaan region of northeastern Thailand. The word itself derives from two words in the Isaan dialect, "mor," meaning "expert," and "lam," meaning "song." In Laotian, the music is called "lamlao."

In Thailand, Morlam music is normally used as a social force, uniting the Isaan people, who often leave their villages to find work in Bangkok as laborers, street vendors, cleaners or bar girls. To a large extent, the lyrics tell their singers' own stories, making references to village life, people they miss, lost loves and cultural exploitation.

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Don't we use the word,"lamlao" also to explain a style of dance/song? The traditional instruments of morlam sounds very similar to this Hey Jude celtic version.

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Originally, the instrumentation for this music included the khaen, a multireed, multipipe mouth organ; the guitarlike phin; a bowed string instrument called a sor; a hand drum; and a circular panpipe.

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The writer also remarked on the dance style of morlam:

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I actually went back to some photographs I had taken of relics at Angkor Wat in Cambodia and My Son in Vietnam," he says. "And we see these scantily clad dancers doing public stuff dating back to the 12th century. So actually, these dancers are more Eastern than they are Western.

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http://www.thaisunday.com/news/Morlam.shtml


[Message last modified 11-20-2004 01:37pm by vouth]

this is probably the word for morlam in khmer?

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From Surin in Northeast Thailand, the traditional music of the Khmer-speaking people is known as kantrum (gun-troom).

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http://www.monsoon-country.org/

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Originally posted by vouth
Interesting. And I wonder what the words, "morlam" and "gern" translate to in Khmer.
[Message last modified 11-20-2004 01:37pm by vouth]

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Do you have a word in Khmer for "master" or "doctor" that sounds similar to "mor" (maw)? If not, how about "bairt"? Could that be used? Then we'd have "bairt ram" as the Khmer equivalent.

The word "gern" (gun) means "introduction". Do you have any suggestions for a Khmer equivalent? Lots of Khmer songs have that same 1-minute introductory part, such as this example from Monsoon-Country.

i think morlam in khmer is lamtone (which is a type of music and dance). lam, means sound, and tone is a type of drum. so lamtone means "music of the tone drums."
in my family, we refer to the "gern" part as "lam" or....hmm, i forgot. there's another word. i'm going to have to ask my mom.

lamliew, or lamlao, is a type of khmer music that has been inspired by lao music-generally has a faster tempo. it does not mean it is lao music though! khmers however dance faster than their lao and thai counterparts (contrary to what many khmers think).

kantreum is a folk/country music of khmers who live in surin and the western part of cambodia.

btw, ram, or rorm, is the khmer word meaning "to dance." so ramwong would mean "dance in a circle" or "circle dance."

lamvong in laos/thai means "circle music."

Alot of metal songs are like that. The first part can be acoustic and soft and then the electric guitars come in and damn, u would have thought that hey were two different songs..hehe.

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Originally posted by Corey
i think morlam in khmer is lamtone (which is a type of music and dance). lam, means sound, and tone is a type of drum. so lamtone means "music of the tone drums."

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This is great information.

What's particularly interesting is that the name "lamtone" refers to a type of drum, because the original name for kantreum also refers to a drum. This is what John Clewley wrote in The Rough Guide to World Music

"Cho-kantrum, the traditional form, incorporates a pair of singers, two kantrum drums, ching (temple bells), krab (wooden sticks) and the tro, a two-string fiddle".

So it would appear that drumming was an important aspect of traditional music for Khmer, Lao, Thai and perhaps Vietnamese also. But I haven't heard any of it on CD or on the internet.

Do you have any recorded examples of traditional "tone drumming" or "kantreum drumming"? Please let me know if I can get them anywhere.

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Originally posted by I3ig_Machine
Alot of metal songs are like that. The first part can be acoustic and soft and then the electric guitars come in...

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Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven springs to mind as the prime example.

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[Message last modified 11-23-2004 09:40pm by Seamus]