Please join the DC Jazz Collective as we return to live performances post-Covid, right here in DC! Mark your calendars for a late show on Friday, May 12, 2023! Details here:
DC Jazz Collective presents “Jazz Impressions of Bangkok”
With Lionel Lyles (sax), Oren Levine (keys), Ethan Foote (bass), and Will Stephens (drums), and featuring songs from (and inspired by) our jazz exchanges to Bangkok in 2019 and 2020.
Friday, May 12th, 10:00pm-12:00am Marx Cafe, 3203 Mount Pleasant Ave NW, Wash. DC 20010 NO COVER!
Note that the kitchen will be closing 10pm, but Marx will be serving up drinks, and outside food is allowed after 10pm.
**If this gig goes well, we may be able to get a regular stint at Marx, so please come out to support the band and Marx!**
The Bangkok combo of Kom Wongsawat, Pornchart Viriyapark, Juthamas Saisaeng, and Naswin Narintragul met at Bangkok’s Alone Together club to live record their four new compositions for the Sister Cities grant:
1. “Mysterious Path” – Pornchart
2. “Substantial Clusters” – Kom
3. “Drive-into-the-Space” – Aswin
4. “Dorothy” – Juthamas
Please enjoy the Facebook live performance linked above! If you have trouble loading the video on Facebook, you can also play it here.
The word “Marajas” is from the Mahidol College of Music Jazz Department chat group that we use for internal departmental communication. One day, we were going to have an event on campus on the following day. I asked Kom Wongsawat to help print out some posters with a QR Code and post it “here and there” (ที่ต่างๆ, which reads “Tee Tang Tang”) around the room.
Hours later, Kom had done all the work, except that he did not understand what I meant by saying “please produce posters with a QR code and post them Marajas.” I now didn’t understand what Kom was writing about either. When I checked back to the message I wrote, I figured out that while typing (and rushing), my right hand had shifted to the right. So, the word for “here and there” (again, ที่ต่างๆ or Tee Tang Tang) became “Marajas” (มราจาส), which is not a real word in Thai or English. And that word became a topic of discussion for a little while. Some said it sounded like the name of exotic food. Some have tried to shift hands to type this or other new words.
I have liked this word so much (whether in Thai or English spelling) and always kept that in mind. When the opportunity came to commemorate the DC-Bangkok jazz exchange, “Marajas” was given to this tribute.
When we were in DC, most of our time was spent in a peaceful residential area (Mount Pleasant neighborhood), where we stayed and met with great people with great hospitality. The whole trip involved staying with great hosts, getting to know great musicians, playing for really attentive audiences, meeting with an old friend from our old days, and of course meeting with Will and his family. So, this music reflects the feeling of the warmth I feel from visiting Washington, D.C. last year.
In late January of 2020, three other musicians and I traveled to Bangkok as part of a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities grant to perform at the Thailand International Jazz Conference (just outside Bangkok) and to give a few concerts in the city. In addition to myself on bass, there was Herb Scott (saxophone), Amy Bormet (piano), and Will Stephens (drums). We were accompanied by my now-wife Arianna and Will’s wife Trina and their young son Ayaan.
This trip was a special one, and it would come to seem all the more special in retrospect as 2020 became the year we know it as. I had never been to southeast Asia before, and the journey to Thailand included the longest flight I’ve ever been on. Bangkok is a city like no other I’ve ever visited, an exquisitely crowded, hot, and intense place, defined in equal measure by its Buddhist temples and its opulent shopping malls, its palaces and its night life, its cosmopolitain glamour and its pollution and poverty. It’s also home to an ever more vibrant jazz culture, both in terms of university-level jazz education (such as at Mahidol University, where the conference and festival were held) and a local performance scene.
Bringing music to eager audiences in a strange new place was a thrilling experience, one my companions and I were tremendously lucky to have had when we did—at almost the last possible moment before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. For me, the trip now seems like a final, culminating adventure in that bygone world people now refer to as “The Before Times.” I often think of it as a “last hurrah” in my pre-Covid life and career, and so I titled this piece “Last Hurrah, in Bangkok.”
The only instrument in the recording is double bass, and I use it in several ways. In addition to a melody first played pizzicato and later arco, I added percussive parts by tapping on the side of the instrument and by bouncing the bow on a muted string. There is also a smattering of other sounds that are both ornaments to the melodic material and timbral points of interest in their own right. In writing it all, I was inspired, on the one hand, by the speed and complexity of Bangkok, by its tangle of highways, rivers (of water or of vehicles), labyrinthine markets, and constant teeming activity, and on the other, by the languor its tropical heat tends, at a certain point in the afternoon, to induce (while the activity continues all the same). This dual impression of the city forms the basis for, respectively, the bulk of the piece (which is fast), and the ending (which is slow). The complex melody weaves through mixed time signatures and intense syncopation, kind of like our van navigating the chaotic urban maze, amidst the many sounds and smells of the city, on the way to our gigs. The piece also includes a “lament”-style bass pattern (meaning a line that descends from the tonic, especially in a minor key, often used to connote sadness). In thinking back on the Bangkok trip, I’m also reminded of the sorrow that awaited the world, and this context of oncoming sorrow is intertwined with the alternately frenetic and languid feeling of being in the city.
I’ll conclude by saying that I believe the DC-Bangkok exchange is an illuminating, exciting, and needed cultural-artistic endeavor that I hope will continue. It offers musicians in both places a wonderful opportunity for learning and growth, and as I hope “Last Hurrah, In Bangkok” demonstrates, it left a lasting musical impression on me.
Recanting my experience traveling to Thailand in January of 2020 is just as surreal as it was to come back to a country completely unaware the fate that the year had in store. When I was told that we were heading to Thailand, to be honest, I had forgotten that we even applied. Furthermore, I had never traveled that far before and knew absolutely nothing about Thai culture and history. I quickly prepared as best I could—searching Youtube, Wikipedia and Google for as much information as possible and, I even got a Lonely Planet travel book for Christmas that I brought with me. When I learned that the movie The Beach was shot there, I could not wait to find a way to go there at some point during our stay. I started to make a mental checklist of places I hoped to visit outside of Bangkok, since I did not know the next time I would be able to come back.
Quickly my excitement turned to worry when American news outlets were reporting this new virus—though based in China at the time, it was deemed highly contagious. I mentioned my worry to our group several times before we left, and each time I was assured that not only would we be fine. I was worried the entire flight there, but by the time we landed and settled in, my worries quickly subsided. Immediately noticeable was the warm weather and the very friendly students who picked us up from the airport. Mahidol University’s campus is beautiful and so serene; starting there on our trip really helped ease me into the hustle and bustle of Bangkok later on. And to hear these incredible students in Thailand, playing Jazz music, was incredible. In a lot of ways I felt at home amongst a community of people that speak music despite us not speaking the same spoken language. It was also great to meet and hang out with the other acts—legendary musicians that I would probably never meet in D.C. I had a great time having lunch with saxophonist Javon Jackson as he recanted stories of him on the road with the Art Blakey band.
Although I felt very comfortable at the festival, I could not help but wonder how much American culture has changed Thai culture. And as a Black man, how our music has influenced Thai music. I know that while Jazz is an American-born genre, there has been a huge decline in venues, album sales and popularity, and now many of the consumers are also musicians themselves. I wondered if hip hop had the same effect in Thailand. My quest brought me to an online article published by High Snob Society that listed the “10 best Thai rappers you need to know,” and while going down the list I was amazed how much our American rap had influenced Thai youth. I became an immediate fan of one of the only female artists on that list, who goes by Nur$etime. I played her song, D Tor Jai, over and over, and despite not understanding what she was saying I could totally feel the vibe of the song. It also helped that she threw in bits of English throughout the song.
The festival came to a close, and we were to head to Bangkok to perform at Jazz clubs there. While excited to do that, I still wanted to find a way to get to a club that played Thai rap. I started making plans before we left the university for Bangkok of places that I would try to see in between performances. I knew I wanted to go to Phuket, Chiang Mai and possibly Pattaya and that beach from the movie, The Beach. Once we arrived in Bangkok, we checked into our AirBnB, and first thing I did was plug in my phone to charge, as it had just died. And that was the last time my phone was on during that trip. My phone never came back on, and I knew that my plans to escape to those other cities were canceled. Luckily, I had my iPad with me, and I could communicate with friends via social media, but I could only use it when connected to wifi. I did not want my phone to ruin my trip, and I was saved by the fact that my long time friend, Amy, was on the trip, because she let me use her phone and we could explore together. We went on as many adventures during the day as we could. We went to Wat Intharawihan, Jim Thompson house, traveled by canal and went to a night market and shopped. But I still longed to experience the nightlife beyond the Jazz clubs that we were playing. I figured the safest alternative was to explore the nightlife of the neighborhood we were in. Our place was on Soi 11, and I found a bar close by that had live music called Apoteka. It was a safe first start, and I noticed a lot of expats, so I figured I could find out more information about where to go from them. During one of my first nights out, I met a beautiful Thai woman and we ended up meeting up several times before I left. Mainly to learn about each other for the short time I was there. I also was the only person in the group that was not married or engaged, so when the gigs were over, I did not want to just sit in my room alone. By the end of the trip I had fallen in love in many different ways—Nur$etime’s music and Thailand and beautiful country and delicious food and this beautiful young lady. That experience later became commemorated in two songs. “Private concert” is a romance song, with a vibe similar to the Nur$etime song and the bells and chimes that are played throughout are similar to the sounds and tranquil spirit of the Thai temples. The second song, Soi 11, plays on a theme that is reharmonized four different ways, but the melody is basically the same. The four of us—Will, Amy, Ethan and myself—all played Jazz together at night, but had completely different experiences during the day and after the gig. Both songs hint at the feeling of desire, yearning and wanting. And when we got back to America those feelings lingered as we were we told that we would have to quarantine. I hope to return to Thailand if not to see the young lady again at least to satisfy my longing to see that beach.
In late 2018 I was afforded the opportunity and privilege to join a newly formed initiative named “The DC Jazz Collective.” The Collective is an assortment of diverse musicians that are brought together to be ambassadors for Jazz music in Washington D.C. In 2019, the Collective traveled to Bangkok, Thailand to tour the city and participate in the “Thailand International Jazz Conference” (TIJC) at Mahidol University. While in Bangkok, one of the stops we performed at was a jazz club named “Jazz Happens!”. This is a regular jam session spot for the local community as well as jazz students of the nearby universities. For me, the experience of opening the session that night with a set of original music and compositions was an incredible one. The fellowship and music was so amazing and authentic. People came out really supported the event. From my time there and especially at “Jazz Happens!” I was inspired to compose this song. “Jazz, Happens!” because….JAZZ HAPPENED!!! I hope you enjoy my musical interpretation of that evening.
The DC Jazz Collective 