Bow thung

Luk thung ( Thai ลูกทุ่ง ; literally. “Child (child) of the fields”) is the most popular style of music in Thailand . The term is an abbreviation for phleng bow thung ( Thai. เพลง ลูกทุ่ง ; literally. “Field child song”).

Onion-thung songs usually relate to the hardships of everyday life among the rural poor. The tempo in these songs is usually slow, and the performers use an expressive style of singing with a lot of vibrato and voice variations, as in the style of country music in the USA, although there is practically nothing in common in the sound of the songs.

Despite the fact that the style itself appeared in the first half of the 20th century , the term bow thung itself was first mentioned only in the 1960s. The first stars of this genre were Phongsri Voranut (ผ่อง ศรี วร นุช) and Suraphon Sombatcharen (สุร พล สมบัติ เจริญ). They were influenced by the music of Latin America, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and especially the music of country music and soundtracks for American films. Many of the popular thong bow stars were born and lived in Suphanburi , including the megapstar Pumpuang Duangchan (พุ่มพวง ดวง จันทร์). It was she who, in the 1980s, first combined this genre with Thai pop music, creating dance tracks in a style called "electronic bow thung." In 1992 , when Pumpuang died, many fans thought that the thung bow would die with her. But the genre survived, and in 1997 , with the advent of new songs on the radio, revived.

Since the 1990s, the interpenetration of bow thung genres, Thai pop music and folk style malls has been occurring . Pop musicians began to sing onion thung songs, and onion thong artists began to advance as pop singers, focusing on youth and appearance. The influence of the genre of malls gave rise to a new style called onion thung isan or onion thung prayuk, whose peculiarity is a faster pace, which is characteristic of the style of malls.