From Endorphine to Da & beyond….

Da Endorphine (almon photo / Shutterstock.com)

I like female singers with balls on their bodies. To immediately be ahead of the - predictable - reply from lame jokers and for the sake of clarity: yes in a figurative sense, although I realize that in a literal sense there is also a decent choice in the Land of Smiles.

No, give me female singers with a voice that you will not soon forget and songs that touch or stay with you for one reason or another. About fifteen years ago when I really started to frequent and explore Thailand, I quickly came to the conclusion that Morlam or Luk Thung were not really my thing and I started looking for alternatives.

Who did manage to fascinate me was Au Haruthai. Vocally she still charms me despite her striking physical transformation, but I have long since stopped liking her extremely reactionary political ideas. Not to mention her more recent odd behaviors in the media spotlight like it fakenews about the supposed painting by Vincent Van Gogh that she is said to have in her possession. Crazy if you ask me. That is actually a pity, because with her somewhat raw and especially very strong singing voice, she was an exception in the fairly sugary by Hua Jai-songs inspired Thai music and pop scene.

However, who intrigued me from the very beginning and continues to do so to this day is Da Endorphine, the 'nom d'artiste' by Thanida Thamwimon. I really have a soft spot for her and have been able to follow her career pretty much from the start.

Da Endorphine (warmer / Shutterstock.com)

Born in Uthai Thani, she moved to Bangkok at the age of four with her father, a non-commissioned police officer, and her mother, a teacher. The family lived in a modest police-owned home and, due to her parents' busy work schedule, she was largely raised by her grandmother. Her father wanted his daughter to study hard and be admitted to the Royal Thai Navy Band School. A story like thousands of other stories were it not for the fact that daughter had very different ambitions. She had started a girl band in high school, but it soon collided with the resistance of her parents. Especially her father tried in every possible way to work against her because clearly other plans for the future. And that happened rigorously from withholding her pocket money to dragging her - in uniform - out of a pub where she was just about to perform. It led to some hard conflict situations, but it only reinforced Thanida's stubbornness.

When the girl group fell apart, her parents probably thought and secretly hoped that she would hang up her guitar, but that was without reckoning with a few guys who had just started the school band Endorphine in the fall of 2004; the brothers Thanat Amornmanus (bass), drummer Thapaphol Amornmanus and Anucha Boethongkhamkul (guitar) who were desperate for a nice looking singer. She called herself Da and apparently hit it off right away. Their performances did not go unnoticed. Before they knew it, they had their first real record deal in their hands and Da's parents were suddenly able – miraculously – to reconcile themselves with her musical plans for the future.

Da Endorphine (almon photo / Shutterstock.com)

After the first studio hits and two LPs, the group split. Don't worry because Thanida immediately went her own way as Da Endorphine. And the rest is (music) history and occasionally fodder for all kinds of gossip magazines. The Great Breakthrough was not long in coming with songs like the catchy (555) 'DaYin Mai' and one hit followed another. Meanwhile, over the last decade, her management has allowed her to slowly but surely spread her wings far beyond the borders and triumph all over the world. By the way…in an interview she gave in August 2011 in 'BK Magazine' to Nat Tantisukrit she stated “that Holland was her favorite holiday country and that she had long dreamed of traveling there for a month".

De clever sophisticated 'Da Endorphine strategy' that consists of a well-dosed mix of small, almost mini-performances to spectacular mega-concerts and the deliberate choice not to pin oneself down to one genre and to collaborate with the best of Thai pop culture from Blackhead over Calories blah blah and Bankk Cash to Thaitanium has certainly done her no harm. Almost every year she is voted most popular female artist and her songs are indispensable in the charts. She is also currently enjoying a peak in her steep career, because her über-sensitive rendition of the title song in the hugely popular TV series 'Wonthong', a tearjerker of the September 1 Channel, her popularity has once again risen to unprecedented heights.

Well done, they would say with us in the Kempen...