Thank Conan! Sorry for taking so long to reply…

It is easy to underestimate just how important it is to keep things light, because it all adds up and, as I often say when trekking with equipment, “every kilo becomes a tonne”.

Sometimes I think I’m overdoing it (or should I say “underdoing it”?) but then I talk with someone who also travels and records and we exchange notes, solutions and ideas. For example, I recently spoke with Tim Cole, and for the Small Island Big Song project he saved weight by not taking microphone stands; improvising on the spot using stick stuck into the ground, or hanging mics over branches!

We all find ways to make it work, and, in the process, determine what we consider priorities and what we can get by without. Even though I’ve been doing this for years, I often lay in bed wondering how I could simplify the rig further – change equipment, imagine a stereo bar that would allow me to set up faster, and things like that…

Greg, I love your setup… realising the potential and meaning of “Ultra portability” Travelling light is hard to come by especially if one was to capture audio in the most remote areas.

Oh, I should’ve put this one in as well. When I had finished with Seng Boun (the 100 Year Old Lady) and had started packing up, she had a burst of energy and started singing randomly. Thankfully, we captured some of it with a camera with a Rode shotgun on top. Here:

https://youtu.be/B3Y73I2yiQE

Please do not share or otherwise disseminate these beyond here. All rights are reserved between me and the performers. I always pay the performers for all of the recordings/videos I make, and I own the mechanical rights to them. That means if any part of these end up in someone else’s music or video without my permission, there will be lawyers involved. [I have to put that awkward little qualifier in because it’s amazing how many people seem to think they can just take this stuff and use it with impunity on the assumption it belongs to ethnic groups with no legal representation.]
_______________________
This video features Moken musicians Tat and Sabai Klatalae of the Surin Islands off the West coast of Thailand. Sabai is blind (possibly due to cataracts) and so you will notice Tat prompting her with his hand at the start and end. I have captured many songs from these two, but this is my favourite. It’s called ‘Baap’ and is about summoning the spirits of the sea and the spirits of their ancestors for safe passage.

https://youtu.be/f4w0ALC3AOw
___________________________

This video is Tat and Sabai talking about their lives. You will hear themes of displacement and of infant deaths that tend to recur with many of the older people I record and film.

https://youtu.be/lFgjjWyRi_Q
___________________________

This is the ‘famous’ 100 Year Old Woman from one of the villages in Northern Laos. She is from the Khmu Kwan tribe and, as it turns out, is doing her own version of what I’m doing: collecting local music and trying to keep it alive. She could not sing well on that day. I had planned to go back and meet her again, but covid got in the way. I hope she is still there when I make it back. I had two, maybe three cameras on this, this footage uses just one of them. There is one directly in front of her as well but it’s not seen here.

https://youtu.be/9pYwXg5P-rY
_________________________

And finally, this is Phoud from the Phou Noi (small people) of Northern Laos. She starts off with a short life history, then eventually we get to a song. I had two friends with me on this visit, so we had three cameras in total. For this video I quickly threw in footage from all three cameras to remind me that I’ve got more than one camera angle to choose from. It is not edited at all, and I’ve left in all the false starts and so on with me in it for now, just to give people a feel for how these sessions go – because communicating is often difficult! Of course, in the final version I will take that stuff out. I need to return to her village with a translator to finish the subtitles.

https://youtu.be/xNwEwZj-M8A

I hope you enjoy these. This last one I made for the crowdfunding project I did back in February of last year. It’s a bit rough and there are some audio/video sync issues at the start. I remember what I did that caused them, but I forgot to go back and fix them before uploading in time for the deadline for when the campaign went live. Nonetheless, it should give you the idea…

https://youtu.be/RtFddUT-ulQ

ENJOY!

They’re all still works in progress, unfortunately, and covid hasn’t helped at all.

Subtitles is the biggest challenge; if I cannot get translations and interpretations sorted on the day or while I’m in the area, I have to put them aside for next time.

My current focus is on the endangered music of the Moken ethnic group (aka Sea Gypsies of the Andaman Sea), and also on some of the ethnic minority groups living in the hills of Northern Laos – the Phou Noi, the Khmu, the Lanten and the Sida.

I will put some links in the following reply. They are to works of progress, mostly put together in a hurry on-the-spot to give to the performers and/or to get subtitles done. They are by no means finished, most are just the raw video footage synced with the raw audio files so I had something to work with and to hand back to the performers. In some the subtitles might go off the edge of the edge of the screen, simply due to doing it on the spot with a local translator and needing to move fast. I will fix those types of things before they are disseminated. The important thing is that I’ve got the translation and interpretation.

See next reply…