Janram
What's up
“We are bringing the “old arts” to serve the “present.”” ~Janram band
“There are many beautiful tunes, especially in the Southeast Asia music, that already have been forgotten; our mission is to bring those tunes back to life with Janram’s performing style.” ~Janram band
Janram band was founded by three musicians [viola] Dr. Juckrit Charoensook, [guitar] Nattakrit Plewjit, and [percussion] Thayarat Sopolpong. The core concept of the band is to revive the old folk and traditional tunes with a new flavor for the new generations. The Band had successfully transformed and presented the beauty of forgotten Thai folk music to newer generations. The first album of Janram focuses on “Rong-Ngeng” music, an old traditional dance music, was widely popular in the Southern part of Thailand, Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat provinces. There is no evidence shows exactly where and when Rong-Ngeng has started. Some says that the Rong-Ngeng has established in Thailand since around 1500, when Portuguese merchants came to the Malay Peninsula to deal businesses, and they also brought their traditional dance music to perform as well. After been exposed to the western style of music, the locals imitated and adapted the style of playing with western and local instruments to create their own celebrating music, which evolved into the Rong-Ngeng today. The instrumentation of the Rong-Ngeng music typically features violin (or fiddle), accordion, mandolin, guitar, ramana (traditional tambourine), and traditional gong. In the current single releases, Janram selected three beautiful pieces, Bunga-Rampai, Lenang, and Lagudua, which represent different characteristics of the Rong-Ngeng but still come with unique flavor of the style. The arrangement of the pieces focuses on the original materials and the combination of unique characteristics of each instrument in the Janram band, to gain deep and rich layers of sounds performing by only three musicians. All musicians of Janram are with strong background of the western classical music. They blend classical playing techniques with “loosely improvisation” of the folk style and create a new flavor, which is called “Classical-Raw Style.”
