Published on November 11, 2005

A huge benefit concert gives the battered tourist town a chance to dance the night away. In a year of natural catastrophes across the world, August’s disastrous flood in the tiny resort town of Pai in Mae Hong Son province didn’t rate very high on the scale of global tragedies.

Yet the way the town’s residents joined together to overcome the loss of life and property stands as a lesson to communities everywhere who face hard times. The rebuilding process has been on for a while but the giant benefit concert and art show held last Saturday took the prize for maximum impact. It featured many of Thailand’s top bands and a series of bittersweet monuments created by six national universities.

Needless to say, it was bigger than anything the small town had seen. The project’s organisers conceived it as a way to give back something to a place they love and help cheer up its residents.

Like everyone in Pai, Suwat Arvut, a soft-spoken artist and owner of Taku Art Bar, was overwhelmed by the flood and mudslide that swept through the town at dawn on August 13. Like many others, the 46-year-old pitched in to chip away at the mountains of mud that wiped away lives, livelihoods and entire houses. But he wondered whether there wasn’t something more he could do.

Aggravating the damage were huge heaps of wood that had been swept into the town by the water. Piles of twisted timber were strewn all over, making clean-up efforts pretty complicated. Despite this, some pieces, sculpted by Nature’s own hand, had emerged from the chaos looking undeniably beautiful. As he surveyed the damage, it struck Suwat that these accidental masterpieces would make appropriate monuments to the tragedy.

Casually mentioning this to his friend Phi Lot, Suwat set off a chain of events he could not have foreseen. The man behind the Old West bar in Bangkok and Take Off in Chiang Mai made use of his connections to enlist the venerable Caravan band to perform for free in a benefit concert for Pai. Other top-drawer bands quickly followed - Carabao, Moo Pong Thep and Job to Do. In a short time, the list included more than 12 outfits. And nobody wanted to be paid.

In fact, the primary purpose of the concert was not to raise money but to bring people back to Pai. Plus, Suwat and Lot wanted to give the locals a boost. And what better way to do that than hold a huge party?

The concert went off without a hitch. Though Carabao tends to attract a certain rambunctious sort, no altercations were noted. Everyone was so well mannered it was easy to worm one’s way to the front of the stage and take pictures of superstar Ad Carabao, or even go backstage and mingle with the performers. Such order despite the fact that more than 20,000 people showed up, ready to dance until dawn.

And dance they did. When Chiang Mai favourite Took from the Brasserie closed the show at around 6am, crowds of revellers, both young and old, were still jumping up and down, grateful for so much free fun and music.

Perhaps even more significant than the music, though, were the monuments, all of them fashioned from wooden debris by artists from six Thai universities and local freelancers. Taking the dark and turning it to light is a technique many Thai artists specialise in, and Suwat and many of his pals did just that.

Most of the installations were made of logs fashioned into wooden animals for children to play with. There’s a seesaw horse, a towering giraffe (Suwat’s contribution) and a playful elephant. Other more melancholy pieces include a series of upside-down trees. For years to come, the sculptures will stand not only as a testament to loss but also as a source of inspiration to overcome the odds.

They might hold a lesson for the future as well. Some sources maintain that rampant development was to blame for the destructive floods that many parts of the North suffered from this rainy season.

The day after the concert, Suwat looked happy but exhausted when I looked in at the Taku Art Bar. The event had required a massive effort to pull off, but has certainly served its purpose. The demons of negativity have been banished and the high season is just round the corner. Pai is more than ready to show the world its true face - clean, bright, positive and cheerful.

Most of the town’s resorts are now fully operational, the debris has been cleared up and measures are being taken to prevent a similar debacle from occurring again.

In addition, the feasibility of hosting such an event in Pai has been proven. With its large tourist infrastructure, wide-open spaces and easy accessibility from Chiang Mai, the town could very well become a site for many more successful festivals to come.

Oliver Benjamin

Special to The Nation

Post your comment to this story here