Profile | How a Thai ‘poor kid with a dream’ became an international jazz musician and author; and opened a free music club in Chiang Mai
- Pharadon Phonamnuai picked up the saxophone in Chiang Mai, Thailand, as a teenager, then worked and studied jazz in New York, before busking his way around Asia
- He opened a jazz club in his home city, and hitchhiked half the way to France for a festival, a trip that spawned a book. Entry to the club is free for a reason
I was born in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, in February 1981, but my parents were from Bangkok. They divorced and I was raised by my mother, Sawalak Somsong, while my dad took care of my older brother.
As a single-parent family, we were poor. My mum rented a house right behind the market and opened a laundry shop. Chiang Mai was quite different from the city of today. There weren’t many hotels and seeing a foreigner was as alien as seeing (the Na’vi in) Avatar.
Everything was much slower, nature felt closer, the city was greener and winter lasted forever. We used to make a fire in the kitchen.
My mum was really cool. She used to say to me, “Anything could happen, we could die tomorrow, so follow your dreams.” She taught me that it’s important that whatever makes you happy, as long as it wasn’t illegal, you had to go for it.
Outsider influence
I was quite a short kid and really quiet in kindergarten and primary school because I didn’t feel a sense of belonging. My parents had come here from the centre of Thailand so I couldn’t speak the local Kam Mueang (northern) dialect that the other children spoke.
