The Temple of Dawn Consort
by Dnu Huntrakul

When meeting new people, I am often greeted with the question: when is the Temple of Dawn Consort going to perform again? After 24 years since the resounding day of the music group, which included myself and friends, the question hits me as a surprise. Always. And every time it makes me wonder, not without great pleasure, how an impression made by music can possibly last so long.

In 1976, freshly back from long years of music studies in the U.S. and the Netherlands, I quickly found an audience in the young crowds of Bangkok and did not hesitate to pour onto them the abundant load of my creation known in the West as "new music". Our group was an unconventional combination of instruments that hardly combined, be it in their nature of sound or in their ethnic associations. New compositions that flowed from our pens bursted forth with brave new ideas and almost competed to show off the weirdest concept of sound that we could create from instruments of various types and traits, musical and non-musical alike. Western and Thai instruments were often coupled; electronic devices and sounds were almost always present; percussionwares spectacularly showcased unexpectable household items such as pots and pans, glass urns, metal bowls, bamboo tubes, alarm clock, etc. Facetious as it may sound, but when we went dry musically, looking into our mothers' kitchens always gave us new inspirations.

Gaining total support from Dr. Regensberg and his team at the Goethe Institute, with whom and where our inventiveness never saw closed door, we ventured into various kinds of musical activity: house concert, orchestral concert, multi-media, multi-stage music fare, free improvisation, workshop, experimentation, etc. We continuously experimented with new ideas, new concepts of music expression, new directions, new horizons. Had it to be an all out change for music in this country? Well, we did not press such demand, but we tremendously enjoyed our kind of revolution and did not care if we went to the extreme. We broke rules and made the audience our enemies. Bad kids we were.

Anuwat Suebsuwan Bruce Gaston

Dnu Huntrakul

And so was our music. It was indeed the kind of music that promised to turn your world upside down, to put you out of context of reality, and, perhaps, to make you mad. And madly were the receptions both for and against. Confusion and bewilderment hung heavily on the issue until someone came up with a simple explanation that it was, for better or for worse, the same thing as what many Thai artists had been doing for decades in their abstract paintings.

As it happened, this episode has played a very important role in charting the direction of subsequent development of my musical thoughts and commitments. With a music briefcase in my hand, I have taken to a road so long and winding that it does not seem to link the beginning and the end. Yet it does. I was then a big part of the Temple of Dawn Consort. But today the daring venture has become irrevocably a big part of me, however remote in time and reference I have come away. And thus am I constantly reminded.

How then do I answer the greeting question? To put it simply, I dream of, and am committed to, the day when I shall reappear on the stage to deliver the best I have to the loving audience the way I once did. The details may not be the same. But the central elements in music making shall be put to force as full as ever. I believe in sharing good things with people around me. And the best way I can is through music, thanks to many individuals who have rendered me untiring support. And thanks to the Goethe Institute who gave me the opportunity, the time, the space, the encouragement, and kindness, all as if they had owed it to me.

On the occasion of a timely review of their path, I wish to express my congratulations on their past success, and to extend my very best wishes for their brave and worthy steps into the future of golden culture and enriching harmony among humanity.

31 May, 2000

Ayuthaya