huai lan naga parade, lom sak
As I'm sure you're all aware, World Snake Day is next Tuesday (July 16). I was going to post about it on the day, but realistically I'm going to be celebrating World Snake Day, not doing emails. So instead here's one in anticipation. You guys ever anticipate? It's a great way to add value to an event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRg410DDeQE
Today we're looking at a video from the Huai Lan Naga Parade, in Lom Sak, Thailand. It's a long musical parade so feel free to jam the link in another tab while you read. If you are afraid of snakes don't worry, there are no snakes as such in the video, click without fear.
Regarding the vid, the main thing I want to say is wow, I would love to be in a parade like this. The whole village is in the parade! There's a band slowly pushing a cart loaded with amplifiers and batteries and a person absolutely blazing psychedelic riffs on an electrified folk instrument, plus electric bass and marching drums. From a people perspective it's pretty economical, I think the band is like 6 people and that includes the person pushing the cart. Generally I don't really like rock music outside, but there's something special about this fuzzed out sound blasting the foliage.
There's a lot of sun hats and a good amount of beer, and the whole thing crawls forward slower than walking pace, slow enough that everyone has to adjust their step, which lowers the threshhold between dancing and not dancing. Everyone's in a cool groove. God this is a great way to do a parade!!! It's not a display of military or corporate power like some parades, it's just people having fun for miles. I wonder if the parade starts with everyone in the town square or if it travels house to house picking people up like a musical katamari. You don't have to listen to the whole thing but around the 3 minute mark the band busts into "Zombie" by the Cranberries. Come on, this rips.
As far as what this parade is "about", I can only really speculate. I mean the main thing for most people is probably "hanging out drinking beer and getting loose to wild tunes", that's an eternal sensation. But as far as having a reason to do these things, I only have rudimentary translations available but I think it's about the Naga in some way.
The Naga are a mystical race of enormous snakes and in Thailand they are a national symbol, drawing pride and reverence to the many waterways they are the emblems of. You can also appeal to them for rain or assume its them when there's strange river phenomena like big waves or strange lights. Wikipedia implies that in Thailand it's not uncommon for them to cause "strange marks on a car hood" but it's possible that some teen edited that part of the page so they could show their parents and maybe get out of trouble. Good luck, honestly.
I don't know what this parade wants from these mystical snakes, if it appeals to them or what, or if it's just a chance for everyone to experience being part of an enormous and powerful snake that winds through the village. It's probably mostly that last one. If you have any more info please email. Like I said next Tuesday (July 16) is World Snake Day, and I realize that it's probably too late to get something like this together, but if anyone wants to try for next year I would love that. I'll help push the cart.
Oh, and there's more videos of this band on the channel, and also I found their bandcamp page! [bandcamp]
If someone forwarded this email to you because they know you love blazing psychedelic riffs or enourmous snakes, you might enjoy my other writing as well. This is Pleasant Realms, an email newsletter about unstressful YouTube videos.