The “forbidden” songs of the Pkaz K’Nyau (Karen), part of a larger oral tradition (called tha), are on the decline due to lowland Thai modernization campaigns, internalized Baptist missionary attitudes, and the taboo nature of the music itself. Traditionally only heard at funerals and deeply intertwined with the spiritual world, these 7-syllable, 2-stanza poetic couplets housing vast repositories of oral tradition and knowledge have become increasingly feared, banned, and nearly forgotten among Karen populations in Thailand. With the disappearance of the music comes a loss of cosmology, ecological sustainability, and cultural knowledge and identity. Forbidden Songs is an autoethnographic work by Chi Suwichan Phattanaphraiwan, himself an artist and composer working to revive the music’s place in Karen society, that offers an inside glimpse into the many ways in which Karen tradition is regulated, barred, enforced, reworked, interpreted, and denounced. This informative account, rich in ethnographic data, speaks to the multivalent responses to internal and external factors driving modernization in an indigenous and stateless community in northern Thailand. Originally published in Thai as เพลงต้องห้ามของปกาเกอะญอ. Bangkok: Santisiri Press, 2014.

Burgeoning recognition of Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and livelihood practices have led to ‘Special Cultural Zone’ designations for some traditionally Indigenous lands in Thailand. Simultaneously, the Thai government has designated 10 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to bolster trade and investments along its borders without acknowledging the pre-existence of Indigenous peoples. SEZs intersect with sites of notable cultural significance, such as Kho Pho Lu (Pagoda of the Gods), a sacred site for Indigenous Karen near Mae Sot in Tak province. Detailed ethnographic and interview findings show the resilience of these sacred sites and embedded ritualistic place-making practices that persist despite a legacy of Indigenous displacement. Ethnobotanical findings of 39 sampled taxa in the sacred forest of Kho Pho Lu indicate that cultural and spiritual practices support local biodiversity conservation. Potential biocultural conservation approaches include the adoption of ‘Special Cultural Zones’ to promote Indigenous well-being and the preservation of biocultural diversity in Thailand.

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While the tehnaku, the iconic six-string curved neck harp of the Pgaz k'Nyau (Sgaw Karen) people has made a strong comeback after 19 th and 20 th century, scholars lamented its demise, many other traditional bamboo instruments of the Pgaz k'Nyau still remain little-known, not only in academia but increasingly within Pgaz k'Nyau communities themselves, due in part to national forestry laws, resettlement and evictions, modernisation campaigns, and an increasing scarcity of, or restricted access to, certain natural and cultural resources. This ethnographic study investigates the various uses of bamboo in two Pgaz k'Nyau communities in Thailand, illustrating the importance of local knowledge of natural resources and the place of bamboo in shaping Pgaz k'Nyau music, ethics, aesthetics, ecological activity, beliefs and social relations. Bamboo musical instruments, in legends and in everyday application, are co-created with help from rodents and insects, lure wild pigs from the forest, bookend human lifecycles, help to confine spirits to the forest and the afterlife and are reworked from pig troughs into slit-drums used to drum up communal action. This research discusses how these increasingly rare bamboo musical instruments speak to a variety of contemporary contextual issues faced in Pgaz k'Nyau communities. We argue that Pgaz k'Nyau bamboo is instrumental in reflecting and perpetuating longstanding eco-friendly cultural practices embodied in a five-part Pgaz k'Nyau prescription for managing ecological relations within the self, between self and other, between the human and animal world, between human and forest, and between human society and the supernatural world; and it does so in response to Thai political narratives that have inappropriately labelled the Pgaz k'Nyau as destroyers of national forests.