抄録
This paper examines the interlocking development processes of rural folk songs and luuk thung, a genre of popular music which developed under the considerable influence of folk musical traditions in Central Thailand.
With the drastic socioeconomic changes which occurred in the 1960s, folk song genres in Central Thailand, including phleeng iisaew, gradually declined and were finally replaced by modern entertainment, such as luuk thung. Khwancit Siipracan, a competent folk singer at that time, left her home village for Bangkok to become a luuk thung singer in the late 1960s and recorded a number of popular songs with an identifiable local flavor. In the late 1970s, Khwancit established her own folk entertainment troupe and succeeded in commercializing phleeng iisaew by modernizing the style of performance for contemporary audiences. This fact indicates that, during the period from the 1960s to 1980s, popular music (including commercialized folk songs) in Central Thailand developed on the basis of the direct interplay between rural folk songs and urban popular songs.
