Although their individual political histories differ, the music of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia is almost identical. The musical instruments and forms of this region spring from the same sources: India, the indigenous Mon-Khmer civilizations, China, and Indonesia. In Thailand, three types of orchestras, called pi phat, kruang sai, and mahori, exist. The pi phat, which plays for court ceremonies and theatrical presentations, uses melodic percussion (gongs in a circle, xylophones, metallophones) and a blown reed. The kruang sai performs in popular village affairs and combines strings (monochords, lutes, and fiddles with two and three strings) and wind instruments (oboes and flutes); while the mahori, as accompaniment of solo and choral singing, mixes strings (floor zithers, three-stringed fiddles, and lutes) and melodic percussion (gongs and xylophones) with the winds (flutes and oboes). All three ensembles are provided with a rhythmic group of drums, cymbals, and a gong to punctuate the melody parts. Some of the above musical instruments and their functions may best be illustrated in the pi phat ensemble below.

A slow-moving theme is played by gongs arranged in a circle (khong wong yai) with variations in smaller gongs (khong wong lek), two wooden xylophones (ranat ek, ranat thum), and two box-shaped metallophones (ranat thong ek, ranat thong thum). The last three pairs of instruments vary the theme by playing twice as fast or by repeating, anticipating, and revolving around it. A double-reed oboe (pi nai) hovers above the melodic percussion, providing the only blown sound in the ensemble. Together with the punctuating gongs and drums, the whole orchestra displays a polyphonic (many-voiced) stratification of instrumental parts, using unisons and octaves mainly in the strong beats.

A melody may be broken down into phrase units consisting of two or four measures that may be joined by four other phrase units to make a phrase block, and a given number of blocks constitutes one musical composition. Three speeds of rendition—slow, medium, fast—in either duple or quadruple time are marked by two alternating strokes in a pair of cymbals; a dampened clap marks a strong beat, and a ringing vibration denotes a weak beat.

The tuning system is made up of seven tempered (approximately equidistant) tones to an octave. But the melodies constructed out of this system use only five tones out of seven—which sound close to a Chinese pentatonic scale. This scale may be constructed in any of seven levels or tones of the Thai tuning system. Further, through a process called metabole, melodies may move from one level to another.

In the Cambodian shadow play (nang sbek) two narrators alternate in chanted recitative to explain the role of the leather puppets. Dancers parading these figures across the screen and simulating their actions are accompanied by an orchestra. A limited number of tunes is played to eight dance positions (walk, flight or military march, combat, meditation, sorrow or pain, promenade, reunion, and metamorphosis). In the play these poses are assumed by princes, princesses, monkeys, demons, peasants, or ascetics.

Among different ethnic groups, such as the Khmer Chung (Saoch), Pwo Karen, Bu Nuer, Kae Lisu, Kuay, and Samre, a rural music related to that of the ancient Khmer peoples is played by aerophones (buffalo horns, mouth organs, vertical flutes), idiophones (flat gongs, gongs with boss, cymbals, jew’s harps), chordophones (bamboo zithers), and membranophones (circle of drums). Other important instruments for solo performance or as accompaniment to songs are the three-stringed crocodile zither (chakhe), a four-stringed lute (grajappi), a plucked monochord with a gourd resonator (phin nam tao), and a bamboo whistle flute (khlui).

Vietnam

Although Vietnamese music belongs to the great Chinese musical tradition, which includes the music of Korea, Mongolia, and Japan, some of its musical elements are indigenous or come from other parts of Southeast Asia, and some derive from Champa, an ancient Hinduized kingdom of Vietnam. Archaeological finds in the village of Dong Son revealed that the ancient Vietnamese used kettle gongs, mouth organs, wooden clappers, and the conch trumpet. From the 10th to the 15th century a joint Indian and Chinese element left its musical imprint. The Chinese seven-stringed zither (qin) and a double-headed drum were played together, or a Champa melody was accompanied by a drum. It was at this time that two traditional Chinese ensembles—Great Music and Little Music—and an elementary Chinese theatrical art were introduced. From the 15th to the 18th century the Chinese influence reached its height. Court music (nha nhac) was played by two orchestras. One, located in the Upper Hall of the court, consisted of a chime of 12 stones, a series of 12 bells, a zither of 25 strings (Chinese se), a zither with 7 strings (Chinese qin), flutes, panpipes, a scraper in the shape of a tiger, a double-headed drum, a mouth organ, and a globular whistle. The second orchestra in the Lower Hall used 16 iron chimes, a harp with 20 strings, a lute with 4 strings (Chinese pipa), a double flute, a double-headed drum, and a mouth organ. Ceremonial music, almost nonexistent in the 20th century, was patterned after court music.

In Buddhist ceremonies, prayers were recited in three ways: as recitation in a low voice, as a cantillation (sung, inflected recitation) following the six tones of the Vietnamese language, and as chant accompanied by an orchestra of two drums, bell, gong, cymbals, and fiddles.

Music as entertainment is mostly a vocal art played without ritual outside the court and still enjoyed by many people. The hat a dao found in the north is the oldest form. It is a woman’s art song with different instrumental accompaniments, dances, a varied repertoire, and a long history of evolution.

From the 19th century to World War II, Vietnamese music reaffirmed its character. Although the playing of court music was restricted, popular music was encouraged, leading to northern and southern styles that were patronized by both the aristocracy and commoners. Western musical influence in this period was manifest in the use of the mandolin, the Spanish guitar, and the violin, as well as by the introduction of European classical music and composition following Western forms. In the later 20th century traditional Vietnamese music began to disappear, but attempts to revive it began in the early 1970s.

Vietnamese rural folk music is built on the same musical principles as court music. The main difference lies in its application to village activities—work, games, courting, marriage, cure for the sick, entertainment, feasts.

Common elements characterize and unify all Vietnamese music. It is based on an oral tradition, with written notation serving only as a reading guide. Melodies are generally built out of a pentatonic system (for example, C, D, F, G, A) to which two auxiliary tones (E, B) may be added to make other pentatonic melodies. A song, usually preceded by a prelude, may be sung in slow, moderate, or fast tempo divisible by two or four, with a simple contrapuntal (countermelody) accompaniment using unisons and octaves at beginning points of phrases. Outside of the first beats, intervals of fifths, fourths, thirds, and even seconds are allowed. An important aspect of melodies is the idea of mode (dieu), the elements of which do not essentially differ from those of Javanese and Burmese music.

Indonesia and Malaysia

Java

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A Javanese philosophical concept based on mysticism, the state of being refined (alus, Indonesian halus), and the inner life as related to Hindu, Islamic, and Indonesian thought may best be represented in music by the Javanese gamelan, an orchestra made up mostly of bronze instruments producing homogeneous blended sounds. The instruments in the ensemble may be divided into three groups of musical function. The first group comprises thick bronze slabs (saron demung, saron barung, saron panerus) on trough resonators playing the theme usually in regular note values without ornamentation. The second group consists of elaborating or panerusan instruments, which add ornaments to the main theme. In this group gongs in double rows (bonang panembang, bonang barung, bonang panerus) play variations with the same ratio of speed as the saron group. In softer sounding music for indoor performance, other panerusan instruments with very mellow sounds come in. These are three sizes of thin bronze slabs with bamboo resonators—gender panembung or slentem, gender barung, and gender panerus. Other elaborating instruments are the wooden xylophone (gambang), the zither (celempung) with 26 strings tuned in pairs, an end-blown flute (suling), and a 2-stringed lute (called a rebab by the Javanese), which leads the orchestra. In loud-sounding music, the soft-sounding instruments are not played, and the drum (kendang) leads the orchestra. The third group provides “colotomic,” or punctuating beats in four rhythmic patterns played separately by four types of heavy, suspended, or horizontally laid gongs.

Two tuning systems prevail. The slendro tends to have five equidistant but flexible (or varying) pitches in an octave, while the pelog, with seven equally flexible tones, has a more varied structure. One tuning with intervals expressed in cents (140, 143, 275, 127, 116, 204, 222) may roughly be represented by the following notes in a descending scale: C↑, A ♯, G ♯, G↓, F↑, D ♯↓, C ♯↑, and C. (Arrows up are tones slightly higher than Western tempered tuning [in which a semitone is equivalent to 100 cents] and vice versa for arrows down.) Melodies from these tunings are governed by a modal structure (patet) the elements of which are similar to those of Vietnamese and Burmese music.

In West Java the most popular ensembles use a vocal part, a two-stringed fiddle (rebab) or a bamboo flute (suling), and a box zither (kacapi). In the gamelan, submodes (surupan) are formed by the use of vocal tones—sung or played on the suling or rebab—which amplify the number of scales in both the pelog and slendro systems.