The Development of Thai Country Song Communication through the Storytelling of Thai Social Values from the Past to the Present

Abstract

The Research titled “The Development of Thai Country Song Communication through the Storytelling of Thai Social Values from the Past to the Present” has the main objective to study the development of Thai country songs communication via localized folklore, which fits accordingly with the social value of particular perspective. The second objective is to studying the process of creative ability in the Thai country songs as well as what is the factors that directing the Thai song storytelling from the past to the present. And the last objective is to study the social value issues in Thai society from the past to the present that have been presented through Thai country songs during the period 1957 – 2015.

Implicitly, the social value information reflecting a different culture at a specific period is relevant to the meaning and storytelling of the Thai country songs at that time. Most of these songs have a subtle and indirect message that needs to be interpreted and studied within contexts in order to assist in the content analysis such as interviewing of artist and those who are involved, along with the historical evidence from specific time.

As a consequence, the research methodology used in this study is the qualitative methodology as the main approach that is an in-depth interview of the representatives of the industry. This includes composers, music company directors and disk jockeys. The qualitative information will be presented by a descriptive analysis. Using this quantitative analysis as a support for the interpretative textual analysis that is combined with song content analysis, which categorizes the songs to the four main periods to connect the social value issues and social situation of each period.

            The research found that the development of Thai country song communication through the storytelling in Thai social values from the past to the present is relevant This is in line with the major social transition in many aspect; social history, politic, economy and technology. According to the result of the representative example interviewing and the interpretative textual analysis combine with song content analysis during the period from 1957 – 2015, the songs can be classified into four eras to cover the historical major changes in the social situation of particular period, which would influence social value in each period. The four divided periods are - the era of Thai country songs during 1964 – 1972, 1973 – 1997, 1998 - 2007 and 2008 - 2015.