Melancholic Cries from Border: A Study of Northern Khmers’ Songs about Mourning the Late King Rama IX as their Poetry of Sorrow

Authors

• Direk Hongthong

Publication Date

2023-12-28

Abstract

After King Rama IX passed away in 2016, many groups of Thai citizens, including Northern Khmers in the southern part of Northeastern Thailand, produced literary texts for mourning the late king. This research paper aimed at examining 29 pieces of Northern Khmers’ lyrics composed for mourning the late King Rama IX and posted on www.youtube.com from October 16th, 2016 to October 14th, 2017. This study, which applied Chatuporn Misakul’s research on Thai poetry of sorrow (2013) as guideline, revealed that the data, which were Northern Khmers’ new group of literary works, were presented in 5 main aspects: (1) mourning the death of the late King Rama IX (2) eulogizing him (3) recording information, events and experience relating to him (4) making pledges to him and (5) making wishes for him. The data’s main contents were presented in correspondence with the characteristic components of three Thai literary genres: lamentation, eulogy, and life recording genres, which were combined to establish a Thai literary genre called ‘Poetry of Sorrow.’ Meanwhile, their remaining contents expressed their shared characteristics with Thai contemporary literary texts composed for the same situation. However, some of their details expressed the influence of Northern Khmers’ traditional literary text and concept and the influence of Khmer linguistic culture in Cambodia as well. This study did identify the characteristics of Northern Khmers’ new group of literary texts and broadened many perspectives towards Thai citizens’ Poetry of Sorrow in terms of textual compositional methods, scope of data, languages used, groups of textual producers, and channels of textual distribution.

First Page

110

Last Page

145

Recommended Citation

Hongthong, Direk (2023) "Melancholic Cries from Border: A Study of Northern Khmers’ Songs about Mourning the Late King Rama IX as their Poetry of Sorrow," Journal of Letters: Vol. 52: Iss. 2, Article 7.
Available at: https://digital.car.chula.ac.th/jletters/vol52/iss2/7