Page 114 - The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand Vol.XIII-2021

The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XIII – 2021

As a native Thai composer, I, Narongrit Dhamabutra, have been working at

presenting the culture of my motherland and the region of Southeast Asia to
create an intercultural balance of Southeast Asian music and western music. This
article aims to display the composition methods in blending cross-cultural music

materials of ASEAN and the West that I have been experimenting with and have
applied in my compositions. I will begin with the justification of cultural elements
in my composition, then, demonstrate some composition methods of

interculturalism.

Southeast Asian cultural elements for music composition

For contemporary composers, musical elements are not the only ingredient
to create cross-cultural composition. From the Nineteenth century onwards, music

could serve as a tool to convey literature, poem, folktale, geography, history,
religious elements, dance, dialect, and other cultural elements to represent
nationalism. These ingredients along with traditional instruments and ensembles

have been transformed into sound through innovative composition methods.

Southeast Asian has both shared cultures and distinctive features that each
country bears. By understanding the common cultures and unique aspects,

cultural materials can be transformed into musical elements and themes. In this
section, I will classify cultural elements outside music materials that I have been
exploited and employed as the subject of my compositions.

1. History

History serves as a source of pride and cultural heritage for each nation. It
also explains the shared culture of the region and the multi-culturalism that has

been cultivated for centuries. Therefore, it serves as one of the great resources to
use any point in the history as the theme of a composition. For example, in the
composition The Empires, the early civilizations of the Southeast Asian mainland

are the inspiration for each movement of the symphony: Bagan for Myanmar,
Dvaravati for Thailand, Angkor for Cambodia, Lan Xang for Laos, and Champa for

104 Southeast Asian Musical Heritages in Contemporary Composition