Mo[ram]lam
The Mo[ram]lam dance and music for healing, directed by Jitti Chompee, is made possible by the generous support of The James H. W. Thompson Foundation and the Jim Thompson Art Center (JTAC)— two organizations with a history of conserving, uplifting and disseminating Thai folk art traditions— and the partnership of the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Khon Kaen University, and the College of Music, Mahasarakham University. The Department of Cultural Promotion, Ministry of Culture, Thailand, continues to support more research and performances in 2025.
By researching Molam’s roots and working directly with custodians of the tradition, Jitti hopes to chart yet unexplored directions for the evolution of Molam. Embedded in the social and cultural fabric of Northeastern Thailand (Isaan) for centuries, Molam is a multivalent folk music tradition with a propensity for assimilating external cultural and musical influences. Sidestepping the recent emergence of commodified, popular forms of Molam, Jitti chooses to investigate possibilities for decoding the two oldest recorded forms of Molam. Lam Pifah, a shamanistic healing ritual that can induce trance states in participants, and Lam Puen, music that portrays stories from traditional Buddhist literature by mimicry of animal noises and Buddhist sermons, both resonate with Jitti’s research into animalistic physicalities, trance-like repetition of movement and object theater.
In this piece, Jitti digs into Molam’s idiosyncratic sound design and draws inspiration from musical themes in Molam's repertoire such as Pleng Malaeng Pu Tom Dok (song of the tropical carpenter bee)— playfully matched to Jim Thompon’s insect and floral print textiles— and Pleng Lai Wua Khuen Pu (song of chasing cows up the mountain) foregrounding techniques for the reproduction of natural sounds on the khaen (bamboo mouth organ) and the tradition of improvised performance.
The tradition of improvisatory performance and collective trance in Lam Pifah, a shamanistic healing ritual, and the mimicry of animal sounds and sermonizing of Buddhist monks in Lam Puen are decoded alongside the Molam project’s overarching themes. Opening up grounds for the exploration of regional and globalized constructs of gender, the project also subverts the way gender identity is formulated in Molam.
Positing an alternative to the tendency of contemporary dance in the region to be determined by forms and trends from abroad, the Mo[ram]lam project reverses the current of cultural expansion by centering the two oldest and most local forms of Molam. It allows cross-cultural collaboration to radiate from them. The result expresses the plurality of modern-day life that resonates with and introduces Molam to, audiences in Thailand and abroad. When folk traditions are made central, rather than peripheral, to the articulation of Thai cultural identity, a new form of cultural stewardship emerges that encourages innovative and multidisciplinary artistic creation, facilitates exchange between Thai and international artists, and brings new life to local performance traditions like Molam, with burgeoning opportunities for the Thai contemporary art field.