Mo Cheol Thú

 SHAMROCK / MO CHEOL THU

Polydor, 1985, 825 577-1

This is the first and last album recorded by the French band Shamrock founded around 1981 by Michel Sikiotakis, Rachelle Riouah and Emmanuel Delahaye. The fiddler was Michel Ferry originally, later replaced by Olivier Darras. Based in Paris they were one of the few musicians who managed to turn professionals and earn a living with Irish music. With some members of Siskin (see my post dated 3 April 2026) they founded the CMI (Irish Music Center) in Paris and gave courses in Irish music to French people.

There is a story behind this recording : as Shamrock was performing on stage one night Alain Monnier who knew them came with the Irish dance master Joe O'Donovan; at the end of their set Joe told them they were a great band and they should take part in the All-Ireland competition in  the ''Grúpa cheoil'' category. As A. Monnier had real contacts with the organisers of the Fleadh Cheoil Shamrock were allowed to enter the competition without going through the selection stages; and they won in the end ! That was in Kilkenny in August 1984. 
The day after the competition a short video was made outside in a park where Shamrock was asked by some people from Comhaltas to play their set again; unfortunately this film is lost. But because of their sudden fame Polydor Ireland produced the present album for the Irish market; in fact the recordings took place in France made by Sikiotakis but the text by A. Monnier is in English. A poorly printed sheet in French was added afterwards for the French market. 
I find the global sound a bit muffled; Rachelle Riouah was the singer (a band needs a female singer ...) but her voice is not clear enough; she sings in English which was rare at the time in France but Barbara Allen is sung in French after she adapted Sarah Makem's version. 
They liked to play long sets mixing different types of tunes as the last track shows which is perhaps close enough to their winning set. 
Among the four members only M. Sikiotakis had a career as a professional musician until today. 

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JAPON 2 ouest

 

CHANTS DU JAPON 2/OUEST

SONGS OF JAPAN 2/WEST

Le Chant du Monde, ?,  LDX 74443 

Here is the second album about Japanese traditional music issued by Le Chant du Monde for the French market; Again the year is unknown  while the American edition is 1961 (FE 4534 C/D)
Borrowed as well from my local library, I copied it on CD but this CD is unreadable. So I found another copy on Archive.org I converted into wav. 
The concerned areas are the easter part of Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa. The album is organized in the same way as the first album with the same performers. 
The original text in English was the work of Ryutaro Hattori whose name is not mentionned in the French text. 
I included here the French translation.

 

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Snakes alive

 

SNAKES ALIVE

St PATRICK'S NIGHT IN PARIS

Irish Association, 1988, IA 3301

 This album was produced in a limited number by the Irish Association in Paris founded in 1984 by Irish and French people. As far as I know this is the only album ever issued by the association.
The eighties were a time when Irish music was well roouted in Paris thanks to pubs, musicians, dancers and teachers. This album was partly financed by three pubs including Tigh Johnny's which was the best place for Irish sessions at the time.
A concert was organized for Patrick's Day in a college called Lycée Autogéré were many concerts were held over the years. 
French and Irish musicians were invited to perform; an Irish band based in Dublin came over, Killera which had a cassette out the year before. Strangely they don't have their names mentionned so I remember Maire Breathnach on fiddle and keyboard, Cian O'Sullivan on flutes, Frank Spiers (of Scottish origin) on vocals and percussion, ? Foley on bouzouki and maybe another flute player Cormac Breathnach. Niamh Parsons was the singer who is now well known in Ireland and beyond.The band didn't last long I think. 

Another Irish band based in Paris the Boozy Groovers,was there too for some blues music. 

On the French side we had three singers and guitar players : Catherine Drapier, Didier Matherat and Patrick Chauche; uilleann piper Marc Guilloux who died last year; fiddle player Olivier Darras who played with Irish concertina player Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin and piano player Ann Molloy. 
Jim Armstrong was there too as singer and guitar player. He was living in Paris with his wife Avril and now lives in Brittany.

This recording is live with the little usual trouble with the balancing between the instruments but we can feel the atmosphere of that night.

Tunes and songs are introduced briefly in English or French and all the lyrics are avalaible.  

Snakes alive is a reference to St Patrick who is said to have chased all the snakes out of Ireland, snakes symbolizing paganism crushed by Christianity. The choice for that kind of title expresses the change of mind occuring in Irish society among younger people who rejected the power of the Catholic Church and all its  misdeeds and scandals which were beginning to be brought to light.

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LES MUSIQUES DE CELEBES

 

LES MUSIQUES DE CELEBES / INDONESIE
MUSIQUES TORADJA ET BUGIS

 MUSIC OF THE CELEBES / INDONESIA
TORAJA AND BUGIS MUSIC

Anthologie de la Musique des Peuples, 1976, AMP 7  2906

 I'm glad to post here the last album issued by Bernard Dupaigne and his label. This collection is now completed on this blog because I really enjoyed all these recordings and the information with them; I have always thought that this kind of work is essential to understanding other peoples and, consequently, to the respect we owe them. Dupaigne was born in 1943 and is still alive. He was a expert on Afghanistan, worked for the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, wrote a book about the Afghan fiasco from a French perspective and was the founder of this label. 

Celebes is an island  east of Borneo  in Indonesia but is better known by its indonesian name Sulawesi meaning ''the Iron Trident'' due to its shape. The island  is home to indigenous peoples, (114 different languages are spoken there), some of whom are Muslim or Christians , but whose ancient customs were still very much alive at the time of the recordings especially funeral rites. 
Sulawesi was colonized by Dutch people mainly but Portuguese and English traders were present as well. We can hear the influence of Western type of songs on tracks A8 and B8. On B3 the violin is used but the music is more local; also Islamic influences are quite present in parts of the island like on B5 where Yusuf Landong plays a local lute similar to lutes found in Borneo or the Philippines but sings in a Yemeni way to my ears. The use of circular breath is also a middle east way of playing reed-instruments like on B6 and B7. 

These recordings were the work of Jeannine Koubiç and Christian Peiras during three ethnographic fieldwork between 1967 and 1975 on behalf of the Centre for Documentation and Research on South-East Asia and the Indonesian World. They wrote an interesting text which covers several aspects of this music and culture. 
This second-hand album is not in perfect condition and some of the recordings have some distorsion. But it's a very interesting production ending with a lovely song by children, lute and spoons on B10.
Text in (French) and English.  

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Pays Sounda

 

JAVA PAYS SOUNDA
MUSIQUE ET CHANTS TRADITIONNELS
ENREGISTREMENTS REALISES A BANDUNG PAR MERRY OTTIN 

JAVA SUNDA COUNTRY 
TRADITIONAL MUSIC AND SONGS
RECORDINGS MADE IN BANDUNG BY MERRY OTTIN

Alvarès, 1969, LD 110

 Merry Ottin (1929-2003) was a writer, explorer and photograph who worked in Turkey to study the Hittite civilization but mostly in Indonesia for years. He made the most of his stays to record musicians here in Bandung the main city in Sunda country. But as often like other explorers he was not a specialist of the local music and here he got helped by Viviane Sukanda research fellow at the CNRS who analysed the recordings and wrote the text as well as the lyrics and their translation into French. So back then in 1969 it was important to have some references especially since this album was maybe the first one to present Sundanese music to a French audience as Sukanda says. Gamelan music was already known and has been since the time of Debussy in France at least among a circle of intellectuals and artists. 
Sunda music is based on the suling flute and different types of zithers the flute being the leading instrument which gives the tone to the singers. V. Sukanda highlights the fact that there are no professional musicians so all the musicians here are amateur ones although the flute player Oyo Suwardi is considered as a  master as track 7 shows. There are one female singer Imas Permas and two male singers. Three zithers provide the base  on which the suling and voices build the melodies. Two musical scales are used : ''pelog'' which is known elsewhere in Indonesia and ''sorog'' specific to Sunda.
A great type of music immediately distinctive.
Text in French.

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Musiques du Vietnam tradition du sud

 

MUSIQUES DU VIETNAM TRADITION DU SUD

 MUSIC OF VIETNAM: SOUTHERN TRADITION

TRÂN QUANG HAI & HOANG MÔNG THUY 

Anthologie de la Musique des Peuple, 1976, AMP6 2903

This album  recorded and produced by B. Dupaigne was not recorded in the field but rather at home or in a studio (it's not specified).
Trân Quang Hai is Trân Van Khê's son, born in Saigon but raised in France. He was very involved in the French revival movement at the end of the sixties bringing Vietnamese music and instruments onto folk stages. He was one the founders of the first folk club in Paris (and France)  in 1969 with John Wright and Catherine Perrier among others. 
I remember seeing him on TV on Wednesday afternoons when I was a kid in a programme called ''Epinettes et guimbardes'' launched in 1971 by Lionel Rocheman. Trân was very popular with his spoons which he used to accompany american or whatever folk songs or dances. Track A7 is a good example of his talent. 
He plays the Vietnamese sixteen string zither, the two-string fiddle and the monochord. He sings as well as his wife Hoang. 
The programme presents some folk songs and some pieces for zither. A great way to discover Vietnamese traditional music.
Trân died in december 2021.
Text in French and English

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Chants et danses des Sioux

 

CHANTS ET DANSES DES SIOUX

SIOUX SONGS AND DANCES 

Anthologie de la Musique des Peuples, 1977, AMP 7 2904

Danièle  Vazeilles was a scholar at the university of Montpellier (France); she went to the USA in order to meet and work on the Plain Indians we call Sioux between 1969 and 1975. Those Native Americans call themselves Lakota meaning ''friendly people''. 
As it is the case for the other albums of this series, D. Vazeilles wrote a presentation text which is useful if you don't know anything about Indian nations. 
She attended rallies known as ''pow wow'' where Indian people can express their unity and take part in their culture through singing and dancing. 
Most of the tracks are war dances (6 out of 13) sung by men and women sometimes. The album starts with the Sioux national anthem expressing Indian fidelity to the American flag despite a tragic history that saw a large indigenous people nearly disappear.  
The sound level is variable at times because of the different places and time of recordings but also because she was not always close to the singers and had to adjust the recording level. 

It was at the time a good way to discover this culture through a French production but  other interesting albums from Canada and the USA have been available since the seventies as well with labels like Canyon Records or Everest for example.

I must say that this is a borrowed album which had two tracks damaged enough; so I replaced them with two other tracks found on Archive.org.
Text in English (and French)

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Musique des Hmong du Laos

 

MUSIQUE DES HMONG DU LAOS

Cour d'Amour et Culte des Ancêtres

HMONG MUSIC FROM LAOS

Love-songs and Ancestor-rites

Anthologie de la Musique des Peuples, 1981, AMP 8.2911

 Before introducing this album I would like to thank you who have visited this blog over the past five years. Yes I started this blog on the 8th of May 2021 a few months before I retire. 
I took inspiration from a few brilliant blogs which gave me the idea to post my own records.
So thanks to you all again !

This second-hand album (but in perfect condition) I bought quite recently is another  item from that French label founded by B. Dupaigne. 
Eric Mareschal stayed with Laotian Hmong  between November 1974 and February 1976.  The Hmong are now scattered over China, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. They were originally from China but migrated southwards over the last centuries to escape Chinese Han rule. The text by Mareschal is informative enough about their history.
Most Hmong  people left Laos after the takeover by the Communist Pathet Lao in May 1975 and settled in Thailand. In fact only three tracks out of fifteen were recorded in Laos while the others were recorded in Thailand. Around 5000 Hmong left for France and French Guyana in 1975.
Singing and mouth organ music  predominate; each track is well presented. 
Text in French and English.

Although this is fifty years old  I think that this kind of field recordings help us to remember that diversity be it human, animal or floral is essential to our survival. 
I believe it was Dupaigne's aim to preserve part of this diversity. Mine is to post all the albums by AMP.

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Musiques de l'Île de Pâques

 

MUSIQUES DE L'ÎLE DE PÂQUES 

 MUSIC FROM EASTER ISLAND

 Anthologie de la Musique des Peuples, 1976, AMP 2908

 Another album from that excellent label I borrowed from a library. 
Christos Clair-Vasiliadis went to Easter Island (Rapa Nui in the local language) between 22d of February and 8th of March 1976 and recorded there villagers of different ages. 
Singing is the primary form of expression with dancing while only percussion  instruments are in use traditionally. Of course the guitar found its way to Easter Island to accompany newly composed songs. 
So  we can listen to different types of songs like choral singing, kai kai which is a song for a game with a set of strings manipulated with the fingers to form shapes, love songs, religious songs, songs of thanks, ...
The island ''discovered'' in 1722 has been part of Chile since 1888 but the original people became full Chilean citizens in 1966 only. The number of indigenous inhabitants was roughly 1500 at the time of the recordings plus several hundred ''white'' people. Despite tourism, the main activity on the island which threatens the Pascuans' way of life, traditional music was very alive back then with many new songs with an obvious influence by Polynesian modern music through the formation of folk groups.
A very interesting recording; but once again I didn't copy the English text so I include picture of the cover with part of the English text found on discogs. 

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At San Francisco (jugalbandi)

 

JUGALBANDI

USTAD ALI AKBAR KHAN & PANDIT RAVI SHANKAR

with Ustad Alla Rakha tabla

AT SAN FRANCISCO  

 EMI, 1983, ECSD 41516

In fact,  I don't have the vinyl version but a probably pirated copy on tape that I found in a cassette shop in Paris. 
San Francisco and California in general was a place where many Indian musicians and singers performed on stage, recorded albums and teached young enthusiastic American people. Some of those artists lived there for a while too. Ravi Shankar performed and recorded an album there already in 1967.
Ali Akbar Khan founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in 1967 at Berkeley. 
R. Shankar and  A. Akbar Khan met several times on stage for great jugalbandi like this one. 
They played the raag khamaj (alap & gat-madhya & drutlaya : trital) on side 1 and raag durga (alap & gat - japthal) on side 2. It is only a fraction of a longer concert  recorded at The Palace of Fine Arts.  Reissued on tape in 1990 but never digitally.

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Chants du Japon/1

CHANTS DU JAPON 1/est

 

SONGS OF JAPAN 1/east

 

Le Chant du Monde, 1988 (?), LDX 74442

 

 The French label Le Chant du Monde released many Folkways albums for the French market but  many have still not been reissued as parts of their catalogue or are not available digitally on Folkways Records website.
There are two albums about those songs from Japan : one for the eastern part of the country and the other for the  western part. 
So the eastern part of Japan  is the island of Hokkaido and the eastern part of the island of Honshu including Sado island. 

The recordings were made in 1961 for Folkways but I'm not sure about the French release.
All the songs are performed with a small group of shamisen, shakuhachi and percussion players. These songs are folk songs  of the Japanese people (fishermen, horse drivers, for rice husking etc...) but only the lyrics in French are provided with the titles and the relevant districts (Hokkaido, Yamagata, Miyagi, Iwate, Arita, Tochigi, Gumma, Ibaragi, Saitama, Hakone, Nagano, Sado). All these songs are of the min'yo genre.
Unfortunatley no singers' names were given.
I borrowed this copy from a library and I kept the text in French only not the pictures.

 

 

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Musiques du Cambodge des forêts

 

MUSIQUES DU CAMBODGE DES FORÊTS

MUSIC FROM THE FORESTS OF CAMBODIA

Anthologie de la musique des peuples, 1976, AMP 72902

 As far as I know none of the albums issued by this label have been reissued on compact disc or are digitally available. Which is bad really given the great quality of these field recordings. I already posted four of these discs plus this one but there are much more of them I don't have.

This is a copy of an album found in a library a good while ago. 

As usual the people who recorded in the field always give a good picture of the area where they  were about the geography, the history or the people they recorded. Bernard Dupaigne as founder of this great label couldn't do less. He met the Pör people west of Cambodia in the Cardamom Mountain region and the Kuy in North Cambodia in 1969 and 1970. Then Cambodia was drawn into de Vietnam war. Dupaigne asks himself in the text he wrote what happened to those people who were heavily bombed between 1970 and 1975. So these  recordings are quite precious for us and for Cambodian people as well so that young generations might retrieve parts of their culture despite the war and  the ''Khmers Rouges''. 
As I copied the English text as well you can discover in details what these recordings are about.
Note that tracks B1 and B2 are grouped together. 

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SISKIN

 

SISKIN/LAMENT OF OWEN ROE O'NEILL 

Shirak, 1979-1981, SSK 3309

 The Paris-based band Siskin was active between 1978 and 1982. It started with a lot of musicians (about eight of them) ending up with five then four musicians : Mario Forlot on harp, Olivier Darras on fiddle and viola, Serge Hamon on flute and whistle, Christian Lebon on percussion. The fifth musician was the piper Denis Kersual who toured with the band but didn't make it to the recording studio.
They managed to produce an album in 1979 in France which was released also by the Italian label Shirak Records  for the Italian market in 1981 with French text plus a presentation sheet in Italian that I included in the scans.
Siskin ( the name for a bird in English) was a group of its own with a highly creative sense of music. The music is Irish with a lot of original compositions by S. Hamon and M. Forlot; all the arrangements are O. Darras' work.
They wanted to bring us back in 1641-1649 in Ireland during what is called the Kilkenny Confederation when some Old English and Gaelic lords (all Catholics) rebelled against the English government of Charles the 1st and after his beheading against Oliver Cromwell. 
The landlords in central Ireland were threatened by a major colonisation plan like what happened in Ulster previously. The title of the album refers to the man who led this rebellion, Hugh O'Neill's nephew raised in the Spanish Netherlands where his family fled after Hugh O'Neill's defeat at Kinsale in 1601. Soon after the rebellion broke out it was decided to ask Owen O'Neill to lead the army which he did in 1642 bringing 300 Irish veterans with him. In the end Cromwell defeated him; he died in 1649 not in battle but poisoned according to the legend by an Irish women while historians think he died from illness.
This historical and musical representation starts on side 1 with tunes that might evoke Ireland at that time  to set the scene before the final battle. The main character is Captain Moloney who will die in battle on side 2. Tracks 2 and 3 are grouped; track 5 (6 on the record) is a traditional Breton tune played during weddings to make the bride cry when leaving her family and home. 
Side 2 is divided into two main sections; the first one is called ''Battle Cry of Munster'' (a traditional Irish march) grouping tracks 9 to 14. the second section is called ''Lament for Owen Roe O'Neill'' with the three last tracks.
Siskin composed five tunes to illustrate the atmosphere of the battle and what Moloney felt before it and in the end when he's dying on the battle field. To be more graphic maybe they resorted to a lot of sound  tampering. The effect is quite convincing I think with daring chords and a wall of sound  which take us  alongside Moloney. This is what I understand. Besides these musicians were influenced by metal and rock music according to O. Darras taking to the stage in long coats and leather dress. 
So  Siskin was like a a meteorite in the Irish landscape in France perhaps not completely understood by the regular French audience. It seems they were quite popular in Italy though.

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Gongs Asie du Sud-Est

 

GONGS ASIE DU SUD-EST

MUSIQUES & TRADITIONS DU MONDE

GONGS SOUTH EAST ASIA 

WORLD MUSIC AND TRADITIONS

CBS, 1974,  CBS 65964 

Another unreissued album from the series launched by Hubert de Fraysseix. 
Again this is an album I borrowed a long time ago. 
Jacques Brunet recorded these tracks in the field in Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia. 
South East Asia is characterized by the use of bronze in gongs, ''bronze drums'' and gamelan like instruments. As Brunet says : this album showcases a wide range of uses for gongs in Southeast Asia, from indigenous peoples to advanced civilisations. It is difficult to determine the origin of the gongs in Asia although we know that bronze appeared during the fourth century BC. Brunet emphasized the fact that these instruments were made to play ''local music'' that was not influenced by Hindu music. I suppose that these tracks were previously unpublished...
A nice example is the royal gamelan of Trengganu in Malaysia; it is an javanese-like orchestra but based on khmer scale.
Text in French by J. Brunet.

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le fiddle irlandais

 LE FIDDLE IRLANDAIS par TED FUREY

SPECIAL INSTRUMENTAL

THE IRISH FIDDLE by TED FUREY

INSTRUMENTAL SPECIAL

Le Chant du Monde, 1973, LDX 74487

Recorded in March 1972 and released in 1973, this album was a milestone in the establishment of Irish music in France. 
At the time very few records from Ireland, the United States or Britain were available in French shops so when le Chant du Monde included some Irish fiddle music in this serie it was a great discovery for me and many other young players. 
The man behind was John Wright, an Englishman settled in France from 1967 to his  death in 2013. He was first a jew's harp player and then a fiddler after meeting Irish musicians in London in the early sixties. He was one of the founders of the first folk club in France in december 1969 in Paris. It was called ''le Bourdon'' (the drone).There you could start learning Irish music with him and others but the main diet was French folk. 
J. Wright invited Ted Furey to teach and perform at Le Bourdon and it was J. Wright also who convinced the label to produce an album. Furey came with a guitar player by the name of Patsy Whelan from Dublin. T. Furey was born in Athlone but lived in Dublin.
What was intersting for French people is that Furey was a member of the Travelling People or Pavees although the name Irish people used was Tinkers. And this community both feared and admired was known for the huge repertoire of songs they kept alive and their way of playing dance music; some people would say it's raw others would say it's spontaneous and straight. So it was a big constrat to the music played by bands like Planxty or the even the Dubliners.
The repertoire is quite ''classical'' with standard tunes including ''the Lark in the Morn(ing)'' one of the first Irish tunes I learned and played in Ireland in 1973 or 1974.
On some tracks J. Wright is the ''second fiddle'', P. Whelan playing on all tracks. It is said in the text that Whelan was the right man for the backing but I find him years later not really good; but let's remember that guitar support was not that developped in Ireland at that time; some traditional musicians couldn't stand it in some areas.
Ted Furey was born in 1912 and died in 1979. 
Text in French.

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Witty Witch

 

WITTY WITCH

IRISH  TUNES AND SONGS 

Auto-production, no date, WW 193

This album is an example of what Irish music was like in France around 1980. I know all these musicians who were  part of the Irish scene in Paris. One of them Marc Guilloux passed away in Brittany recently. He was one of the pioneers of the uilleann pipes in France and was among the founders of the Parisian equivalent of the Piper's Club (Na Piobairi Uilleann) in Dublin in 1981.
This band didn't last long as far as I remember but they managed to record this album in 1980 or 1981. We can feel the strong influence of Irish bands like Dé Dannan or Bothy Band. 
One of the main aspect for a French band was  to have an Irish singer because if plenty of French musicians could play Irish music (rightly or badly)  very few of them could sing in English let alone in Irish. So they worked with Ollie Gallagher who stayed in Paris for a while.
My feelings about the global result are mixed; for example the fiddle player already mastered the typical (and difficult) ornementations of Irish fiddling but he spoiled  it with hazardous harmonic variations or distorsions. I suppose it was what most players were exposed to in France from Irish bands and their approach to music.
A bad aspect too was the sound recording with a poor balance between the insruments or it was the mix maybe. 
Note that Brieg Henry's composition ''the Silver Goblet'' refers to the pub of that name (in fact le Gobelet d'Argent was the real name), the first pub owned by an Irish man in Paris Anthony Prett who opened it in 1980. This pub was for a while the only place where Parisian musicians could play together on a regular basis.
It is a rare document nevertheless since very few copies were made. 

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Visages du Laos

 

VISAGES DU LAOS

FACES OF LAOS

Le Chant du Monde, 1965, LDX-A-4331

Another  album I borrowed from my local library when vinyl records were still around. 
Marc Reinhorn recorded the music and wrote the text that shows he was not a specialist or musicologist but a teacher of the Lao language at university. He died in 2001.
His description of what we can hear is quite literary but this kind of product was for a relatively large public of ordinary but curious listeners. 
The text doesn't say when and where exactly Reinhorn made his recordings. The album is divided according two  climatic seasons : the rainy season on side A and the dry season on side B.
We can hear orchestras with xylophones,  bowed instrument, flute and percussions; the khene appears twice. Six tracks are songs plus one with chanting monks. 
He added two short tracks with buffalo toads and gibbon monkey for more local colours.
The quality of the sound is not perfect but it must be taken as a document about a country and its people in 1965.
I separated by mistake the song from the dance of the boatmen (track A6) hence a total of 15 tracks instead of 14.
Text in French.

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les Môns de Thaïlande

 

LES MÔNS DE THAÏLANDE

MUSIQUES & TRADITIONS DU MONDE

THE MONS OF THAILAND

MUSIC & TRADITIONS OF THE WORLD

CBS, 1976,  81389

 The man behind this great series is Hubert de Fraysseix; he was born in 1937 and was a mathematician and Senior Research Fellow at the CNRS. 
He was also attracted to different ethnic musics like Asian ones and he recorded the material for this album himself : the ensemble called Hum Rong Krathai Tên founded by Mrs Dyripiraneet. There are xylophones, gong ''khawng mawn'', a set of seven little drums ''perng mang khâwk'', a two-side percussion, ... This art music is close to Thai music whose some instruments are also used in this orchestra ("ramad'', oboe ''pee''). This type of formation is primarily necessary for magical ceremonies or religious ceremonies held in monasteries. 
The programme starts with a set of percussions solo followed by music for a cremation, for children's haircut and battle music; side B has more music for a cremation, a love song and offertory music. All tracks are instrumental. 
Text in French that I photocopied from a borrowed album. 

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