Mor lam sing (Thai/Isan หมอลำซิ่ง) is a fast-paced, racy, modernized version of the traditional Lao/Isan song form mor lam. Sing comes from the English word "racing" (a reference to the music's speed and its origins among Isan's biker fraternity). A lead singer is accompanied by the khaen, a bamboo mouth organ, Western drums, electric guitar, and electric keyboards and bass guitar. The style was invented in Chaiyaphum province around 1985, and was popularised over the next few years after it was taken up by Ratdri Sivilai in Khon Kaen. It is based on the Khon Kaen style of lam tang san, but it incorporates string instrumentation, luk thung singing styles and extensive use of the Central Thai language rather than Isan.
The songs are generally about disappointment in love or the hardships of life away from the Northeast of Thailand. Sexual innuendo is prominent, and feature young, fancifully dressed female dancers, called "hang khreuang".
Among the most popular mor lam sing artists are the groups Rock Salaeng and Rock Sadert.
Famous quotes containing the words mor and/or sing:
“There is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? Mor come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape, I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)