Music soars with the aerialists
The Lanna Orchestra provides stirring accompaniment for Chiang Mai's balloon festival
CHIANG MAI’S Payap University offered a cosier ambience for this year’s Thailand International Balloon Festival than the previous venue, the Gymkhana Golf Club, though the shady trees were missed.
There was also the dust blowing around from the university’s parched football field as the balloons were dragged about between inflation and deflation and participants trotted back and forth.
The festival opened with a parade of traditional musicians and the traditional Lanna lantern-balloons called khom chang (shaped like elephants) and khom mah (horse shapes). The Lanna Orchestra played the local anthem, “Hom Rong Haripunchai”, penned by Suchart Kanchai in 1984.
Onstage there was eclectic music and dance courtesy of school and professional groups, a sampling of Bollywood numbers and flamenco and South Korean pop, as well as a puppet show. Folks might have enjoyed it more if the stage had been higher and not obstructed by photographers, but meanwhile there was a picnic to be enjoyed – and queues to join for rides in the big balloons.
Several booths lining the take-off zone hosted workshops, too. You could learn how to make a crown of flowers and mulberry paper, or paint some pottery, and get a temporary tattoo at the henna stall. There were khon and martial-arts shows and loads of great food from leading hotels in the city. I joined a group of foreigners daring each other to eat the spicy salad at a food truck, and well worth the price at Bt50.
The foreigners were also keen to support the local youngsters helping their parents sell various items. It was painless enough – I bought a bouquet of artificial flowers for Bt6. Elsewhere an art-and-design exhibition hawked work from Thailand as well as neighbouring countries like Vietnam.
The two-day festival culminated with another performance by the 26-member Lanna Orchestra, conducted by Bringkop “Joe” Vora-urai, a lecturer at Payap, just ahead of the balloons’ big “Nightglow” display. The orchestra played the spiritual “Wai Phra Chao” , “Chiang Saen Luang Bucha Fah” (“Fire in the Sky”) and “Look Kui Cha”, a venerable piece once performed during boxing matches.
“I’ve arranged the music in such a way that it ‘echoes’ between the musicians on the ground and the people in the tethered balloons,” Joe said. “It catches the excitement as the balloons rise into the sky. I’ve never been on a balloon before, but I could imagine how it feels!”
Joe said there is no boundary to the charming music of the old kingdom of Lanna and has found the way to incorporate the traditional sound into an orchestral setting. And I soon realised that, when it came to accompanying the stirring sight of huge balloons rising into the night sky, the combined drama of a full orchestra was needed.
