"Culture" Shock

It's nearing finals time for students here at Chiang Mai University. In super rad fashion, many of these students have compiled their learnings into half hour presentations that are shown for the public. Never ones to decline entertainment, especially educational entertainment, we decided to attend as many of these as possible.

Wednesday's scheduled performances were a concert of adapted Bob Dylan songs that supposedly had meaning for the contemporary Thai student and a musical presentation on Black culture. High hopes were abundant.

I entered the courtyard for the Dylan concert, excited to see a little taste of Minnesota all the way over here in Thailand. We were given adorably classy little programs that included the lyrics to the four songs the group had adapted. Kicking it off with "Times They Are a-Changin'," pronounced "shanshing" in a pseudo-stereotypical but wholly humorous way, the group gave the legend a bit of a alt-rock kick. There were a trio of guest lead vocalists to provide the spotlighted lyrics, and the first fellow did well. Second up was a duet with the first guy and a lady. Singing "Blowing in the Wind," it was, well, fine. Until the lead guitarist/presentation leader announced that they had picked the song because of its message of racial equality. This was the first of my many "huh?" moments of the night. Sure, "Blowing" is an anti-war song, but does that make it pro-racial equality? I am unconvinced.

The third song was the classic "Like a Rolling Stone," of course said as "roaring stone." I'm sorry, but it was funny. Another duet, this one featured the same female with a gent dressed in a tight white jumpsuit like outfit, topped with a popped polo collar. Sporting one black bicycle glove and a pair of goggles around his neck, not to forget his shimmering silver slip-ons, this guy was quite the site. Here's where the train started to slip a bit. Those familiar with "Like a Rolling Stone" know the chorus is fairly monotone, which works fine for Dylan's trademark wail, but doesn't do a lot for a 19 year old girl trying to show off her vocal range. Her repeated near misses (more like near hits) of the notes made it hard to avoid cringing a bit. I tried to maintain a smile for her, but it was challenging. They closed with "All Along The Watchtower," done, like Dylan does now, in the style of Hendrix. Sung by Mr. Big Red and accompanied by a professor named Wayne, the song was done well.

This meant it was time for the Black culture presentation. We worked our way over to the auditorium hosting the event and took our seats. The stage was decorated with printed off pictures of, well, famous people. That was the only correlation I could find. Faces ranged from Bush to John Lennon to Che (I hate Che) to Ray Charles to Charlie Chaplin. Go figure. The show started with a woman talking about things I honestly couldn't really understand, but I did catch the word “slavery.” Then three Thai males walked on stage and sat at their instruments (keyboard, bass, and percussion). They were followed by a tall Thai male. He proceeded to make lewd comments about the woman. This was followed by him rapping the song “I Wanna Fuck You” by Snoop Dogg and Akon. His rapping was accompanied by the video for the song being played, off of YouTube on the projection screen, a video chock full of scantily clad women. That’s right, we went from slavery to Akon in about 2 minutes.

When the woman stormed off stage, he proceeded to sing, I believe, another Akon track, again accompanied by the video. He then needed to sing a love song (and something, you know, that hasn’t come out in the last three years), so it was time for “Georgia On My Mind.” He sang it fairly well, the dude had a good voice, but when it ended he said, and I quote, “That song left us with one thing: equality.”

WHAT?!

His sweetness of course caused the girl to return and agree to duet with him, which I guess was suppose to show us that African Americans can be misogynistic as long as they also sing love songs, about equality, about 1/4th of the time. Their closing duet was called “Love is Colorblind” and was boring. Then it was time for Mr. Rapper/Apparent Black Culture Guru to talk about how his presentation was ACTUALLY about racial equality. He explained that, because all the faces on the stage were printed on different colored paper, it showed that we can still recognize people regardless of their race (including the quote “Mao Zadong’s still Mao even though he’s in yellow,” which I thought was a poor choice).

SO

In order to show us that we’re all the same, he sang us songs by African-Americans. Three of four of which were about girls (or equality, according to him). Huh.

Tonight’s presentation is “Phantom of the Opera.” Who’s excited? This guy.