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 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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