Political Installation in Nationalism Music after Coup d'état on 22nd May 2014

Abstract

This article “Political Installation in Nationalism Music after Coup d'état on 22nd May 2014” is part of the thesis “Nationalism Music after Coup d'état on 22nd May 2014.” This article aims to study the understandings of the Thai people and society on the music as a sort of literary works that has a great influence on society’s meanings. After the enforced coup d'état, a new government was formed under Gen. Prayut Chan-o-cha, who acted as both the Prime Minister and the Head of National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO). The new government set a new policy for moving Thailand forward. The main mission under the policy was to recover happiness for the Thai people and to strengthen the unity of the nation in order to form the national strategy, namely stability, prosperity and sustainability. The anthems of that government played an important role in political communication. They were linked to the social context in each period of time in order to correspond to the implementation of the government policy. For this reason, the objective of this article is to identify the relationship between people’s memory and social phenomena toward music. Several concepts and theories, especially Semiology and Signification and the Social Construction of Reality, are discussed. Songs and music are employed to construct such reality systematically in order to catch the memory of the society.