Preservation of Traditional Art: The Case of the ... - Wacana Seni

8Wacana Seni Journal of Arts Discourse. Jil./Vol.7.2008The new style of nooraa that has emerged more recently is called nooraa beap saakhon. It isdifferentiated from the traditional style, nooraa beap booraan (Suphat Naakseen 2539/1996:30). This new style, however, is not completely westernised or modernised. Beap saakhon is amix of traditional and modern /western styles. In 1999, I observed a modern nooraa troupe ina festival held in the NakhonSiThammarat province. The performance was an entertainmentshow without any aspect of ritual performance. The festival that I visited is called Ngaanduan sip 6 (the tenth month festival). It is the biggest local festival in NakhonSiThammaratprovince and normally lasts for ten days annually from evening until midnight. During thisperiod, a large number of people come into the city centre and gather at the biggest public parkin the city, where they can enjoy various kinds of entertainment. People enjoy the spectacle,which includes carnival rides, various booths selling goods, and performance stages. Manytroupes, including those that perform nooraa and shadow puppet theatre, nang talung (whichare cultural symbols in the southern part of Thailand), visit and perform daily. In general, thenooraa and nang talung troupes set up their own stages in vacant lots where they perform allnight long. Nooraa that is performed at such festivals can be largely divided into two groups.One is the traditional beap booraan group and the other is the modern beap saakhon group.The modern nooraa troupe that I observed during this festival built a bigger and moremodernised stage than the traditional one, and had a bigger band that included western musicalinstruments like electric guitars, a synthesiser, and drum sets. In this spectacular show, a largenumber of young girls emerged and started dancing, as in the chorus line of the ‘vaudeville’shows that Guelden had mentioned (Guelden 2005: 184–185).From this case study, we find that the modernisation of nooraa brings with it a remarkablechange in various aspects of the traditional performance, including differences in musicalinstruments, the music itself, and the stage equipment. It should be highlighted that dancingwithout singing the text is also a characteristic of the modernisation of nooraa. Making the