Thailingual 对于说唱,她有不一样的见解

March 29, 2021 2021年3月29日

Rap in Thailand has become very big. It’s big business with big streaming numbers and big personalities. But it’s still young as a culture. There are only so many roads available to success and it’s pretty much a boys’ club. Tsunari wants to help change that. As a mixed-race woman who grew up in different parts of the world and made her name without corporate help, she thinks she’s got a new perspective to offer on rap.

Her music video ”Mula” is immediately clear upon viewing that it’s a banger. But with a Black woman front and center, posing in front of a cold grey city, the whole package isn’t obviously Thai—that is until you realize half of the autotuned lyrics are in fact rapped in Thai. “I call it ‘Thailingual’,” she smiles. “It sounds better than ‘Tinglish’, which is what it’d usually be called.”


说唱音乐是个庞大的产业,这里人才辈出,从不缺少流量和观众。目前,像世界范围内很多地区和国家一样,泰国本土也正在被这股文化旋风席卷。

想要在嘻哈领域取得成功有很多途径。而在这个以男性为主导的说唱世界里,Tsunari 想用自己的努力改变这一观点。混血身份的她,曾混迹于不同国家和地区,在乱战纷争的嘻哈圈子独走龙潭,闯出了自己的一番天地。对于说唱,她有不一样的见解。

第一次观看 Tsunari 的音乐 MV《Mula》,便会令人耳目一新。视频的主角是黑肤色女性,她们与跑车穿梭在灰色的楼宇之间,这样的场景很难让人与泰国联想起来。直到带有泰语歌词的 auto-tune 出现,这才恍然大悟。她笑着说道:“我称之为‘英式泰语’,比平时的泰式英语要更燃一些。”

Listen to select tracks from Tsunari below:


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Tsunari’s music and videos all speak to her unusual background. As the child of a Trinidadian dad and a Thai mom, she moved around a lot as a kid. “My dad went to Thailand on vacation where my mom was a tour guide, and they fell in love,” she says. She spent her school days moving between England, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand. “I grew up in Thailand for about 60 percent of my childhood. In Saudi Arabia, I went to an American international school so the curriculum was American, and there were students from all over. In Thailand, I went to a bilingual private school in Korat that was mostly attended by middle-class kids. The city center there was cool but then twenty minutes out it was very rural, lots of rice fields. The difference between my schools was huge.”


Tsunari 的音乐和 MV 都透露出她不同寻常的背景。父亲来自特立尼达,妈妈是泰国人,小时候他们经常搬家。她说:“老爸最早在泰国旅行,我妈那会儿是他的导游,然后俩人就在一起了。”Tsunari 的妈妈曾在英格兰、沙特阿拉伯和泰国都念过书,她随妈妈在这些地方居住。“我童年一半以上的时间都在泰国度过。在沙特阿拉伯的时候,我在一所美国国际学校读书,老师教的是美国课本,班里的同学来自世界各地。在泰国的时候,我读的是一所在呵叻的双语私立学校,同学大多数都来自中产阶级家庭。距离市中心还行,但是二十分钟路程之外就已经是很乡村的地区,有很多稻田。现在回想起来,这两所学校之间真是千差万别。”

 

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She says school in Thailand as a mixed-race kid was difficult, and she dealt with a lot of bullying: “They saw me as an alien,” she says. “They’d never seen a Black child before. I wouldn’t say they were racist but it was more of a colorist thing. They didn’t understand what they’d never seen before. It was childish bullying, nothing very harmful, just teasing, but it definitely affected my self-confidence.”

Despite feeling like an outsider, Thai music made its mark on Tsunari around this time, and the local music filled her ears everyday on the way to school. “I’m from the suburbs, so we grew up listening to luk thung. My dad loved it too, so I couldn’t avoid it. He even named me after Sunaree Rachasima, a famous Thai country singer,” Tsunari laughs. “I’ve made tracks incorporating these Thai sounds, samples, and instruments and, I hope to do more.”


她提起在泰国上学的经历其实并不容易,自己也曾遭遇霸凌:“他们笑我是外星人,可能因为以前从未见过黑人小孩。我觉得其实他们也不算种族主义者,只是对他们来说,我的肤色很特别。他们不了解自己从未见过的事物。那是小孩子间的欺凌,也没有造成多大的伤害,只是开玩笑,但对我打击也不小。”

尽管在泰国感觉自己像是局外人,但当地音乐依然对 Tsunari 影响很深。每当上学路上,她的耳边总会想起五花八门的当地音乐。“学生时代的我生活在乡下,所以经常会听到 Luk Thung 风格的音乐(Luk Thung 是泰国民谣,通常节奏舒缓,旋律优美,发源于第二次世界大战后)。我爸也超迷这种音乐,我们经常一起听。甚至连我的名字都是由泰国著名的的乡村歌手 Sunaree Rachasima 命名。”Tsunari笑着说,“所以我在创作时会加入了很多泰国元素,例如采样和乐器等等,希望之后可以继续做更多这样的融合。”

After high school, Tsunari moved to London, but while living there, she built a name for herself in Thailand by way of the internet. “London feels like its own country compared to the rest of England, it’s full of people from everywhere,” she says. “There’s also a big Caribbean community here, it’s like a mini-Caribbean. I’ve never been there, so I’m finally learning about this side of my history.”


高中毕业后,Tsunari 搬到伦敦,在那里生活期间,她通过互联网发布自己大量的创作,音乐人生涯就此展开。她说道:“与英格兰其他地区相比,伦敦感觉更像是一个独立的国家。这里文化的包容程度非常高,住着来自世界各地的人,甚至还有一个很大的加勒比海社区坐落在城市的南边,像一个迷你国度。我从未回过非洲,但在伦敦我第一次了解到属于自己根源的文化。”

 

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“Mula” was Tunari’s first solo hit, dropping last year and reaching a million views within a few short months. But she’d been active in the Thai rap scene a couple of years prior to that. She first caught the ear of Daboyway, an OG of the Thai rap scene, who heard one of her cover songs and decided to reach out for a collaboration. They filmed a music video together in 2018 called “Fire,” a pop-infused dancehall track, building on her Caribbean roots. After that initial splash, she uploaded a music video for her remix of “Doo White,” a popular song by Youngohm, one of Thailand’s most famous rappers. He liked her style enough to cosign it and repost it on his feeds for his fanbase. “That song was kind of a test of whether I wanted to release music in Thailand,” she says. “It happened to blow up, so I was like OK, let’s go, let me do this thing!”

Although most artists who find fame in the Thai rap world rely on television competition shows to reach that level, Tsunari prefers avoiding that route. “I wanted to be a singer-songwriter as a kid and went to so many competitions that I always lost,” she grins. “I’m not interested in doing that anymore.”


《Mula》是 Tunari 的首张个人专辑,自去年发行以来,短短几个月内就获得了 100 万次观看人数。但其实早在前几年,她便是泰国说唱圈子的狠角色。起初,她在互联网上的发行引起了当地说唱界大佬 Daboyway 的注意,二人随后展开一系列合作。在 2018 年两人共同拍摄的音乐 MV《Fire》中,流行舞曲元素搅拌着加勒比海风情和盘托出。紧接着,Tunari 又发行了《Doo White》MV,这次由她自己担任混音和制作,并邀请到了泰国著名说唱歌手 Youngohm 共同演绎。后者也同样非常中意她的风格,甚至一度将她的作品发布在自己的页面上,分享给跟多的乐迷。她说:“那是一次试水,决定我是否要留在泰国做音乐。结果真的火了,随后便决定义无反顾地把创作坚持下去。”

和亚洲大部分地区相似,泰国说唱歌手想要混得像样,则需要借助电视选秀节目,但 Tsunari 不想这样做。“我从小就想成为创作歌手,参加过很多比赛,但每次都会输,我已经对这样的比赛不感兴趣了。”她笑着自嘲道。

 

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Tsunari hasn’t been able to visit Thailand since the pandemic broke out and has only been able to connect with her fans online. “Thai commenters tend to be very encouraging,” she says. “But of course I get tons of comparisons, probably because I’m Black and I rap. They’re like, ‘You’re the Nicki Minaj of Thailand!’ It helps them to have a reference to understand who I am.”

She plans on returning to Thailand once travel restrictions loosen up, and her main goal is to give back to the Thai community—especially the girls. Although many Thai pop singers do a rap verse now and then, and some female rappers like Milli have found success recently, women are still not very visible in the Thai rap world. “I feel like there’s a lot more talent out there and I want to help wake people up. Not just in music, but in self-confidence, too. You can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it.”


由于新冠疫情爆发,Tsunari 一直未能回到泰国,只能和粉丝通过网络交流。她说:“泰国粉丝的留言通常是鼓励的话。可能因为我是黑人说唱歌手,也有很多人喜欢拿我去和欧美说唱做比较,他们有人会称我是‘泰国的麻辣鸡(Nicki Minaj)!’,不过这倒是蛮好的也,有助于他们记住我是谁。”

Tsunari 计划在放宽旅行限制后重返泰国,主要是想和泰国的乐迷们来个零距离接触,尤其是当中的女孩子们。现在,虽然嘻哈在泰国越滚越大,而且像 Milli 等泰国女性说唱歌手也备受瞩目,但在泰国说唱圈,女性说唱歌手的存在感仍然不高。她接着说道:“我觉得其实还有很多才华横溢的歌手。我想通过自己的努力让人们意识到,只要专心致志,你可以做自己想做的一切!”

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Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li


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供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li

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