Good morning, Vientiane

it's been a few years since World Beat visited Laos to check out the music scene in Vientiane. To rectify this absence, I made a trip there recently by train, crossing the Mitraphan Bridge over the trickle that is currently the Mekong river.

Pouvieng Vathalisack

The bridge crossing was an anticlimax though: it only takes 15 minutes to go from the Thai railhead at Nong Khai to Tha Nalieng station on the Laos side.

The SEA Games last year certainly had an effect on Vientiane. There is a spanking new road system, new restaurants and hotels, and a multi-storey shopping mall has replaced the low-rise buildings at Talat Sow, the best place to spend a few hours searching for music. Sadly, the buffalos that used to graze around the That Dam stupa in downtown Vientiane have been replaced by parked cars.

What is immediately apparent is that Lao pop music - mainly pop, rock and hip-hop - has developed pretty quickly over the past few years. Hip-hop, for instance, was once the preserve of the Lao diaspora, with most recordings made in Los Angeles, where a substantial Lao community exists.

That has changed as homegrown musicians such as the band Hip Hop Ban Na have started to put out their own albums; Lao rock by bands like Crocodile and Sapphire have been popular for some years now, as has Lao pop by superstars like Alexandra Bounxouei and James. The Lao rock band Leprozy is scheduled to perform at the Pattaya International Music festival this weekend.

The loosening of restrictions on independent record labels and on the movement of bands between provinces by the government in the 1990s has boosted the local music scene. There are so many small labels putting out all kinds of lam (the name for most music made by lowland Laos; in the North it is called khap), from traditional acoustic to electrified and more uptempo sing styles.

To find some music, head down to Talat Sow and find your way to the third and fourth floors, where most of the music stores are. Shop owners are happy to open CDs and VCDs and play them for you before you buy and they will point out which songs and musicians are currently popular. It helps if you can speak Thai or Lao, but if not, it doesn't matter - people are always happy to introduce others to their own music.

It is good that you can sample the music first, because there are some dire productions and much of what you can buy is not available in audio CD but rather on badly produced VCDs (too much keyboards and syn drums - similar to those awful luk thung and lam cassettes that were swamped by bad Casiotone players in the 1980s).

One VCD, a traditional acoustic set of lam songs by Acharn Song Sawan and Acharn Rasamee Phudingdong, Hack Num Sip Lor has no lyrics, no track names and just a telephone number for information.

The music is terrific but the video, shakily shot by someone's uncle, clearly did not have a budget for lip-synching. I would love to have an audio CD of this band because the music is so good.

But the best album I found was by Pouvieng Vathalisack, known locally as the 'Queen of Lao Folk Song'. She has a beautiful, powerful voice (her opening call of 'oh la naw' on many is spine-tingling).

Her audio CD, Volume 1, is packed full of pulsing lam Saravane (the style of lam in Thailand is mainly the Saravane style, but in Laos each province has its own style), lam tum Luang Prabang (Northern style) and lam Pootthai (Thai style). Well worth checking out if you visit Laos; she is a great singer.

Also worth a listen is Acharn Sai's excellent lam sing style album, Hack Sombatana Khan Ngum. Look out for the track Lap Lam Ploen.

I also found the latest albums by the famous Nouhuang Brothers, known for their lam sing songs, while one of the three brothers, Boongert, releases luk thung Isan albums (this style originating in Thailand in the 1980s), which are very popular in Laos. His covers of songs like Kit Thung Sao Khon Kaen are top of the hit parade with the Isan food vendors in my soi.

You can find other music vendors on the side of the new Talat Sow mall, and across the street from the mall there is a small market that features tribal products like textiles and herbal remedies but there is also a corner there that has several Hmong music vendors, which somehow I'd always missed on my trips to Laos.

One of the top singers, I discovered, is a lady called Pajzaub Lauj. I found two of her most popular karaoke VCDs and was mightily impressed by the beautiful scenery of her village and the weird, almost psychedelic and luridly colored backdrops to some of the songs.

The music is mainly Lao-style lam and I have to admit it took me a while to get used to lam sung in Hmong (the khaen sound is different because Hmong use a different khaen to Lao lam musicians). But Pajzaub has a terrific voice and the productions, perhaps done with support from Hmong Productions in LA, are of pretty good quality. More on Hmong music on my next trip to Laos.

Pajzaub Lauj are two excellent examples of contemporary Lao pop.

There are some useful websites on the internet that feature Lao music. Just Google and you'll find many sites.

If you want to get an idea of the wide range of Lao lam styles (with excellent liner notes in English), get hold of Laos, Molams and Mokhenes: Singing and Mouth Organ on the French Inedit label, which was released last year. You'll find it on amazon.com or on fnac.com

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