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Laos Essential Artistry Posting Page
Saturday, August 8, 2009
If anyone follows our blog and has browsed through our website it has to be clear our interests in Laos are wide-ranging from gallery-quality silk textiles to Lao coffee to Hmong storycloths. We've been surprised at the number of orders for our Hmong story cloths and wrote a post about the meaning of all the traditional activities taking place in one of the Hmong storycloths we sold for a customer and in a follow-up post included photos we've taken in Laos that illustrate some of the same traditional activities found in the Hmong storycloths we sell.
We've collected some masterpiece Hmong storycloths that feature different ethnic groups that are quite large that we think would be great for schools or businesses to purchase to show their commitment to all the Lao refugees we often find in our communities in schools, Hmong, Mien, Lao, Khmu, but realize for individuals these storycloths would be too large for most homes. And so what we did last December was take a design idea we had to the Vientiane Hmong Women's Cooperative and ordered 12 storycloths in our most popular size, 34 x 46 inches, vertical. They're in a wide assortment of colors and there is no where else you can purchase storycloths like these, period. A photo of one of the clothes is below and we will put them up for sale on our website in the next month. Just keep looking under our Hmong Storycloth section. If you want to jump the gun, give us a call at 916-996-4553 or email us at peterlaos@hotmail.com and we'll create a Flickr photo gallery for you to check out. The storycloths will cost $70, a bargain... We love these storycloths! There is so much depicted in these storycloths, from Lao plowing their rice paddies with water buffalo and the transplanting of rice seedlings, to Hmong harvesting rice on the mountainsides, to Khmu pounding rice, and Mien engaged in various traditional activities. And one certainly can't miss That Luang, the national symbol of Laos with people giving alms to the monks, and the growing importance of education in Laos is shown with students going to school. A microcosm of life in Laos, they are true works of art...  ____________________________________________________ And for fun we're including a video we took of three young Hmong girls in a remote village in Xieng Khuang singing Kwv Txhiaj, traditional Hmong sung poetry. Kwv Txhiaj (sung poetry) has been a way for the young Hmong to learn the knowledge passed down from the parents and grandparents, and some songs (especially the ritual songs) help identify which lineage group one belongs to. These songs are also a way for young people to "talk sweet" to each other without being too direct. Young girls can demonstrate their mental abilities with their courtship songs, and there are songs that are teaching songs—that tell the listener about the proper customs and ways of behaving. We've had this video posted on YouTube for over two years and it's been viewed over 40,000 times and seems to be a big hit. We shot this video about six years ago in early December in a remote Hmong village in Xieng Khuang. These three girls were/are amazing and we videoed an interview with them we will post in the future so people can see what life in a rural Hmong village is like. It's not easy, as it's not easy in any rural Lao village, whatever ethnicity the people will be. At least 70% of the Lao are subsistence farmers, just getting by. Change is coming, but slowly, step by step... Some of the comments we've received on YouTube are: • Wow. They are good! Round of applause for them! • amazing little girls... I wished I could sing like them to make my mother proud! • amazing.. very talented.. only gifted people are gifted the power to sing these anti-phonetic songs.. i find it very difficult to sing. • wow....i know im so useless when its comes to this...its so Nice they are so Talented! i give them lots of KUDOS! great Jobs my sister! • darn these girls at such a young age good at Kwv Txhiaj!!! i wish i could say what their saying!! very good, very good. wish they keep going. i like to listen to this stuff. Now that we're using Vimeo the quality is much better and those of you who have followed us on YouTube will now want to bookmark our Vimeo site. We also use Vimeo so we can embed videos into our blogs, so you won't miss out on much if you just follow our blog... Enjoy! Hmong Girls Singing Kwv Txhiaj from Laos Essential Artistry on Vimeo. by: Laos Essential Artistry 
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