How did the band start?
Shin-No: Three years ago, I was just travelling in Thailand, and was so fascinated by many aspects of the country, language obviously being one of them. So a year later, I stared taking Thai classes and listening to Thai music. Thai tunes are so different from the J-rock I’d been playing and they sounded great to me. Then I came up with the idea of covering these songs. Originally, not everyone was in the band. Tetsu, Keita and Ryo played together in another band called Kido Kyomei. But then we invited them to join us and got together to play Thai music.
Why the name Hanuman?
There is a Japanese expression, “saru mane”, which means “a monkey trying to act like a human.” We’re kind of like that monkey, as we are trying to imitate Thai people. We looked up several Thai words for monkey, and we picked up Hanuman, one of the brave and amazing characters in Thai literature.
Who is your favorite Thai artist?
Toh Nattapol Putti-Pawana, ex-vocalist of Sillyfools, who’s now doing vocals for Hangman. I love Sillyfools’ songs, but the first song we actually covered was “Chocolate” by Hangman.
What inspired you to write your song, “I Mai Muan?”
In Thai class, I learned that the sound “I” as in “mai muan” is spelled differently from the “I” sound in “I-mai-ma-lai.” I asked my teacher how I could remember when to use which, and he said that there is a mneumonic song that students use to remember, but because we’re not Thai, maybe we should write our own song. He was just joking, but we wrote it anyway, and now it’s used for Japanese students learning Thai as well.
Can we expect to see an album? Would it be in Thai or Japanese?
Yes, we are now working on our full album. We have six singles on YouTube, and they’re both in Thai and a mix of Thai and Japanese. The full album will hopefully be released and on sale at the Fat Festival at the end of this year. We’ll be playing there, too.
What was your first time on a Thai stage like?
After we started getting hits on YouTube, we created a Facebook page to communicate with our fans. I’d been writing on there about how much we wanted to play on Fat Radio, and I guess some of our fans were able to recommend us to people at Fat. We were contacted to join their music festival. Even then, we thought we’d be performing on the S stage, the smallest one. But we will get to be on the M stage, along with some famous Thai bands like Hangman. When performing, the most exciting moment is always when the audience knows your song and can sing along. It’s so much fun.
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