Siamese lakhon troupes at the end of the 19th century

I am trying to make sense about how Siamese mahorasop (dance, drama, and theater) has developed during the Bangkok period (the second half of the 19th century).

The more I try to get into the topic the more I feel how little I know about Thai art. So, if anyone know anything, please throw in your ideas and corrections.

My main purpose is I want to have a picture of the interactions between the performers and the audiences back then.

The performers were large dance troupes owned by Siamese aristocrats. Main types of performances were lakhon nok (showed outside the royal court) and lakhon nai (showed inside the royal court).

lakhon nai was originally associated with the symbol of high status in the society, that of the king. So King Mongkut issued a decree forbid the lakhon nai to be performed outside of the royal court.

Dancers of the troupes tended to be female because under the Sakdina system, male phrai and tad were liable to work in drudgery.

Here there were two types: the lakhon luang (royal) troupes and the private lakhon troupes. The latter one seemed to be closely associated to the gambling halls which scattered all over.

So, The audiences were the King and nobles and those people who went to gamble. Private troupe could be one of the source of revenue for the aristocrats apart from those who gained income from other economic activities. This needs to be explore further since I don't have any idea how much the audiences were charged for each performance.

The interesting thing came at the end of the 19th century, when there were two things that, I think, affected performers directly.

First, the abolition of slavery. What I really want to see is what those people who belonged to the lakhon troupes in the sakdina period did after they were released. Though they were no more obliged to their nai, I am not sure they just abandoned their performing skills they had.

Second, the suppression of the gambling halls. Some academics see that private lakhon troupes declined after they couldn't find a place to perform. I wonder if that was the case.

I will come back to this topic when I have a clearer picture.

(This ideas are from Mattani Mojdara Rutnin, Dance, drama, and theatre in Thailand: the process of development and modernization, 1993)

Satchmo and the Cold War

Cultural dimension has been on the interest of many Cold War historians for quite sometimes, especially since the latter half of the 1990s onwards.

They see that the US domination in the global scale during the height of the Cold War (after the 1950s) did not come by accident. It was well planned. In order to protect the US led capitalism to other places of the world, a line was drawn to prevent the spread of Russo-Sino Communism (so called the Containment policy).

Cold War in Southeast Asia began after the area of conflict moved from the Korean War down to Vietnam.

By preventing the spread of communism, solid cultural policies were needed in order to fight against the Communist propaganda.

Including jazz.

Satchmo blows up the word: Jazz ambassadors play the Cold War (2004) is one of the recent works trying to point out how American jazz musicians were one of the forces to assimilate American values (democracy, freedom, etc.) abroad. Jazz was picked by Washington seeing as fit to the image of the US, as it is a distinct form of art unlike Europe's Ballet, Classical music and all that.

However, jazz ambassadors carried more that what they were assigned to do. Read this interesting book and you'll see why.

I think it should be good to end with this quote :

From 1955 on, Armstrong was greeted enthusiastically by foreign audiences wherever he went. Whether on official State Department tours such as his 1960-61 African trip, or on unofficial journeys such as those to Ghana in 1956, Latin America in 1957, and East Berlin, Armstrong was Ambassador Satch. (p.12)

If you love jazz, and if you love history, this book is worth reading, indeed.