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THOUGHTS ON THE VIOLIN AND N VIOLINSTS
Heinrich Heine (1843)

The result when he plucks would not be considered ethereal by even the most rabid lover of Thai folk music. The major sound is too twangy (albeit too soft to be really annoying). The tune he plays lacks any real interest. Typically (or not so typically in today's hi-fi, disco-dinned world), it is a simple five-note theme of far from lasting appeal.

"But now listen," Kamol says, "listen to the second tone, which comes out of the first."

Yes, there it is. A single note, barely heard, which seems to come straight out of the heart. Like the harmonic overtones on a violin (or those resonant notes when one plays the piano with the echo pedal held down), Kamol has created an overtone on the instrument: a sound which lies somewhere between echo and harmony.

One must be almost an initiate to hear it. But Kamol Setsiri was initiated into traditional Thai folk music almost five decades ago. Like Bela Bartok and Ralph Vaughn Williams, who had thwarted conventional music training in the early 1900's by going to the roots of the countryside, Kamol discovered his Thai roots in the farmland of eastern Thailand

It was hardly easy, as Kamol discovered. Born in Surin Province, the son of a schoolteacher, he was grounded in Thai classical music-the "only" music for serious students. Folk music was either ignored or looked down upon as frivolous and too simple.

"But I was interested in both musics when I was young," Kamol explained. "Yes, as a boy scout I played in the town band, and later studied older music at Silpakorn (Fine Arts) University. But Whenever I mentioned the music from villages near Surin, they laughed at me in Bangkok. That music, they said, was primitive."

"In a way, they were right. The music is primitive compared to court music. But it certainly isn't uncivilised."

Ethnomusicology was unknown in Thailand during the 1940s, and Kamol had no help in his search. But Surin, he knew, was very special to the searcher of original music.

"Look at the geography of Surin," he explained. "We are next to Cambodia, and many of the older people speak only Cambodian. This brings the music back to the 14th century, when the Khmer Empire was at its height. At the same time, there are Lao influences and of course Thai influences. But the sounds are certainly different, as I discovered."

The discovery came through sheer hard work. Without even a tape recorder, Kamol went from village to village in Surin, listening to the songs, discovering the instruments in the jungle. His discovery of the khaen - the Laotian "panpipes" with its drone and syncopated melody - gave him great joy, because the instrument is so dynamic.

But the khaen was already well known. The gourd-lute was totally different.

"I found it by accident," said Kamol. "I had been teaching in Surin and went up to the jungle one weekend on my usual sort of jaunt. There I found a village around 10 miles away from the city. But it was much further in time. There were no roads, no connections except through the jungle. I saw one old man playing this one-stringed instrument. I liked the sound so much-just a simple tune but with this echo effect when you listened carefully-that I requested to learn from him."

"Of course he wouldn't take money. (I don't think money was of much use in the village anyhow.) But I gave him one baht as the homage of a student to a teacher. That was the way it was in those days.

Later he made me an instrument, and I've made many others just like this."

Back in Bangkok, Kamol had no success in telling fellow musicians of his discoveries. While working in Lopburi, though, as a museum guide, a group of Americans found themselves fascinated with the instrument and the history behind it. Kamol was invited to the United States in the 1960s, giving demonstrations, recitals (with several Thai instruments), lectures, and learning more formally about musicology.

None of this helped much when he returned. While Kamol is too shy to admit it, Thai reaction at that time of a musician playing folk melodies instead of more classical tunes, and of a musician playing with his shirt off was ... well, it was almost scandalous.

Kamol may have been bitter at the time, but today he feels that his research has exonerated him. Over the past 30 years, folk music has been re-discovered by scholars and by television stations scarching for Thai esoterica. Kamol even performed before His Majesty the King, who was reportedly highly impressed with the research and the instrument.

But what is this about Kamol performing in public without a shirt? It was true -- but by the nature of the instrument, it is absolutely imperative to make the instrument come alive for the artist.

"You see," says Kamol, "playing the single string gives no resonance at all. The sound is controlled by the fractional distance from the chest of the player. The resonance -- the echo or overtone and the original tone -- all depend on how I hold the gourd, where it is in relation to my breath.

There is also the problem of timing the third-finger plucking of the tone with the other finger lightly lying on the same string. It takes some coordination to do that. it isn't very easy."

Nor was life easy for Kamol after his return from the United States. He taught some, did more research, but relative fame didn't come until last year, when the public began to perceive -- almost too late -- that Thai folk music was not low-class, and was as much a part of the Thai fabric of life as the more "literate" pastimes.

"My instrument will never become popular," Kamol said sorrowfully, "even with my research, even when I write about its origins and its relation to the Greek overtone scale. But the sound is too soft, the songs are too limited.

In one way the future of Thai folk music is becoming officially stronger with the cultural committees coming up. In another way, perhaps the music is dying."

Kamol plucked out a few notes, then played the wispy overtones.

"That's too bad," he said, "because my music is soft and so sweet."