Last year, World Beat went to the annual Boon Phra Wet Festival in Roi Et City in Isan. The three-day event celebrated one of the monthly merit-making ceremonies -- heet sip song -- with parades, huge dance performances (10,101 dancers on the streets), Buddhist sermons and nightly molam stages for both popular and traditional artists and ensembles.
On the third day of Boon Phra Wet, in the afternoon, I was astonished to see more than 20 mobile sound systems travelling to the centre of Roi Et to converge and parade their music.
Each one featured a stack of speakers, a generator, basic snare drum and cymbal, temple bells, electric bass and guitar (for local village teams, the phin is used instead of a guitar but for a big event, electric guitars are used for a bigger sound). Out front were a group of klong yao (long drum) drummers and their dancing supporters.
