Last month, an intrepid crew of Coconuts videographers headed north to document the Yasothorn Rocket Festival.
A yearly celebration, the Festival carries vestiges of its pre-Buddhist roots, along with ample, latter-day enhancements (most notably the inclusion of deafening sound systems and oceans of Leo).
Originally a fertility festival, Yasothorn’s yearly fete borrows from millennia-old rituals, typically undertaken just prior to the spring monsoon season. By launching rockets into the sky, the festival’s participants symbolically seed the clouds with rain.
This “generative” mood spreads to other aspects of the festival as well, most notably the two nights of partying that precede the launch of the rockets. Thunderous mor lam, free-flowing Sang Som and ambitious costumes help turn these nights into two of Isaan’s finer parties.
The rockets themselves, referred to as bang fai, have remained remarkably unchanged throughout the Festival’s history. These days, rocketeers might call on PVC casing to form the basis of their missiles, but the essential craft of cramming gunpowder into a tube has been passed on through generations of rocket manufacturers. As you might expect from an event whose two essential components are liquor and explosives, accidents commonly befall the makers of bang fai and it’s not uncommon for errant rockets to result in injuries or death.
However, no such calamities occurred while Coconuts was on the scene. We instead contented ourselves with watching some enormous explosives and participating in the accompanying revelry.
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