ZudRangMa and the Global Rise of Thai Funk, Molam, and Luk Thung
by Daniel Finn
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They called it taxi driver music. Europe called it a hit.
When I first walked into ZudRangMa, it clicked, this place was something special. Around 2007, Nat launched ZudRangMa as a label after coming back from London, broke and digging through dusty records in Chinatown. By 2010, he had opened the first shop on Sukhumvit 51, named after a truck decal meaning ‘maximum horsepower.’
His mission was simple, bring back Thai funk, molam, and luk thung, music seen as second-rate, and put it back into circulation.
His first compilation, Thai Funk Vol. 1, dropped in 2009 with a hand-stitched sleeve and 18 forgotten tracks from the 60s to 70s. It didn’t land at home, people joked he had the taste of a taxi driver. But he sent it abroad. In Europe, it clicked. DJs, collectors, crate-diggers couldn’t get enough of these wild, funky grooves.
Back in Bangkok, he and Chris Menist started the Paradise Bangkok parties around 2009, a mix of molam, luk thung, Afrobeat, reggae, and soul. At first, the crowd was mostly expats. Slowly, Thai kids started showing up too. For them, it was like hearing their parents’ music in a whole new way, not on old cassettes, but on sweaty, late-night dance floors. Songs once dismissed as uncle music suddenly felt exciting, alive.
And soon, the music would leave the DJ booth and go back to the stage.