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Music and Recording in King Chulalongkorn’s Bangkok
James L. Mitchell
Silkworm Books: 2022
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Music and Recording in King Chulalongkorn’s Bangkok is a history of Siamese music during the latter part of the revered and influential monarch’s reign (King Rama V r. 1868-1910). The period covered by the book was one of great social change as Bangkok was transformed from a bustling marketplace to a cosmopolitan city.

Mitchell’s second book on Thai music follows his 2015 work on the popular luk thung genre. This time the author focuses on the period from 1903 to 1910, when sound recording technology arrived in Siam (as it was known until 1939) during the last decade of King Chulalongkorn’s reign. Mitchell quotes the Italian Salvatore Besso’s observations on Bangkok in 1912: ‘Bangkok is a marvellous city! A city of a thousand contrasts and illusions; a city of Indians, Malays, Chinese, Annamites, Tonkinese, of people of infinite variety, amongst which there is hardly a trace of pure Siamese; an incredible clashing of architecture and landscape.’

• Tags: Issue 27, James L. Mitchell, John Clewley, Thailand