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Luang Prabang ຫຼວງພຣະບາງ Louangphrabang
—  City  —
Luang Prabang Location in Laos
Coordinates: 19°53′N 102°08′E / 19.883°N 102.133°E / 19.883; 102.133
Country	Laos
Admin. division	Louangphrabang Province
Government
• Mayor
Population
• Total	50,000

City of Luang Prabang *
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Country	Laos
Type	Cultural
Criteria	ii, iv, v
Reference	479
Region **	Asia
Inscription history
Inscription	1995 (19th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List ** Region as classified by UNESCO

Luang Prabang, or Louangphrabang (Lao: ຫຼວງພຣະບາງ, literally: "Royal Buddha Image (in the Dispelling Fear mudra)," pronounced [lǔaŋ pʰra.bàːŋ]), is a city located in north central Laos, at the confluence of the Nam Khan river and Mekong River about 425 km north of Vientiane. It is the capital of Luang Prabang Province. The population of the city is about 50,000^[1].

The city was formerly the capital of a kingdom of the same name. Until the communist takeover in 1975, it was the royal capital and seat of government of the Kingdom of Laos. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The main part of the city consists of four main roads located on a peninsula between the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers. The city is well known for its numerous Buddhist temples and monasteries. Every morning, hundreds of monks from the various monasteries walk through the streets collecting alms. One of the major landmarks in the city is a large steep hill on which sits Wat Chom Si.

History[link]

Muang Sua was the old name of Luang Prabang following its conquest in 698 A.D. by a Tai prince, Khun Lo. Khun Lo had been awarded the town by his father, Khun Borom, who is associated with the Lao legend of the creation of the world, which the Lao share with the Shan and other peoples of the region. Khun Lo established a dynasty whose fifteen rulers reigned over an independent Muang Sua for nearly a century.^{[citation needed]}

In the second half of the 8th century, Nan-chao intervened frequently in the affairs of the principalities of the middle Mekong Valley, resulting in the occupation of Muang Sua in 709. Nan-chao princes or administrators replaced the aristocracy of Tai overlords. Dates of the occupation are not known, but it probably ended well before the northward expansion of the Khmer empire under Indravarman I (r. 877-89) and extended as far as the territories of Sipsong Panna on the upper Mekong.^{[citation needed]}

Monks collecting alms at dawn in Luang Prabang

In the meantime, the Khmers founded an outpost at Xay Fong near Vientiane, and Champa expanded again in southern Laos, maintaining its presence on the banks of the Mekong until 1070. Chanthaphanit, the local ruler of Xay Fong, moved north to Muang Sua and was accepted peacefully as ruler after the departure of the Nan-chao administrators. Chanthaphanit and his son had long reigns, during which the town became known by the Tai name Xieng Dong Xieng Thong. The dynasty eventually became involved in the squabbles of a number of principalities. Khun Chuang, a warlike ruler who may have been a Kammu (alternate spellings include Khamu and Khmu) tribesman, extended his territory as a result of the warring of these principalities and ruled from 1128 to 1170. Khun Chuang, a single family ruled over a far-flung territory and reinstituted the Siamese administrative system of the 7th century. At some point, Theravada Buddhism was subsumed by Mahayana Buddhism.

Xieng Dong Xieng Thong experienced a brief period of Khmer suzerainty under Jayavarman VII from 1185 to 1191. By 1180 the Sipsong Panna had regained their independence from the Khmers, however, and in 1238 an internal uprising in the Khmer outpost of Sukhothai expelled the Khmer overlords. Xieng Dong Xieng Thong in 1353 became the capital of Lan Xang. The capital was moved in 1560 by King Setthathirath I to Vientiane, which remains the capital today.

In 1707, Lan Xang fell apart and Luang Prabang became the capital of the independent Luang Prabang kingdom. When France annexed Laos, the French recognised Luang Prabang as the royal residence of Laos. Eventually, the ruler of Luang Prabang became synonymous with the figurehead of the French Protectorate of Laos. When Laos achieved independence, the king of Luang Prabang, Sisavang Vong, became the head of state for the Kingdom of Laos.

During World War II the Japanese occupied the city although it remained under nominal Vichy French control. On March 9, 1945, independence was declared for Laos, and Luang Prabang was the capital. After the Japanese surrender, Colonel Hans Imfeld, commissioner of the French Republic, entered Luang Prabang on 25 August 1945 with a party of Franco-Laotian guerrillas and received assurances from the King that the protectorate was still in force.^[2]

Monarchs of Luang Prabang[link]

Buddhist Temple at Haw Kham (Royal Palace) complex

• Khun Lo, warlord who founded the city
• Fa Ngum, prince of Luang Prabang who founded Lan Xang
• Oun Kham, king who ruled under the French
• Kham Souk (Zakarine), king who ruled under the French and who pushed for independence
• Sisavang Vong, king under the French, and who, when France granted Laos independence, became king of the whole country

Tourism[link]

Kuang Si waterfalls, nearby Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang has both natural and historical sites. Among the natural tourism sites are the Kuang Si Falls and Pak Ou Caves. Tourists may also ride elephants. At the end of the main street of Luang Prabang is a night market where stalls sell shirts, bracelets and other souvenirs. The Haw Kham Royal Palace Museum and the Wat Xieng Thong temple are among the most well known historical sites. Along with the wats a significant part of the old town's appeal are the many French provincial style houses.

Transportation[link]

Luang Prabang is served by Luang Prabang International Airport with non-stop flights to

• Laos: Phongsaly, Vientiane, Xieng Khuang (Phonsavan)
• Thailand: Bangkok, Chiang Mai,
• Cambodia: Siem Reap
• Vietnam: Ha Noi

Luang Prabang is linked by Route 13 with Vang Vieng and Vientiane, and by Route 1 with Muang Xay. Route 13 also connects the city to Cambodia.

The road from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang is poorly maintained, remote, unlit, unmarked and extremely dangerous for the unfamiliar, particularly in the wet season. Buses regularly travel the route in 14–16 hours.^[3]

Route 13 from Vientiane, passing Vang Vieng, to Luang Prabang is paved, though the pavement is in poor condition at places. It is also relatively narrow, with sharp curves. There are no markings or lighting on the road. Several daily buses run from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, taking 9–11 hours.^[3]

The Mekong River itself is also an important transportation link. At Chiang Khong it is possible to hire a barge to cross the river. A trip from Huay Xai, just across the river from the Thai border, costs 20 baht on a boat. Luang Prabang can be reached by slow boat in two days, typically with a stop at Pakbeng.

Climate[link]

Luang Prabang features a tropical wet and dry climate under the Koppen climate classification. While the city is generally very warm throughout the year, it is noticeably cooler during December and January. Luang Prabang also experiences wet and dry seasons, with the wet season from March until September, and the dry season during the remaining five months. The city receives approximately 1250 mm of precipitation annually.

Sister cities[link]

• Bagan, Myanmar (2009)[1]

See also[link]

• Luang Prabang Range
• Big Brother Mouse
• Phra Bang
• Xieng Keo
• Pak Ou Caves
• Emerald Buddha
• Phou si

Gallery[link]

View from Phou si

• 

  thumb|200px|Buddhist Temple - Vat Sen

• 

  The royal palace at Luang Prabang

• 

  Primary school in Luang Prabang

• 

  A young monk in Luang Prabang

• 

  Luang Prabang Morning Market

• 

  Buddhas Statues in Vat Wisunarat

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Luang Prabang

• Luang Prabang travel guide from Wikitravel
• Cartes postales du Laos (french website)
• LuangprabangCity.com, Guide of Luang Prabang (English & French)
• Luang Prabang Travel Guide(Laos Travel Guide.com)

References[link]

Coordinates: 19°53′N 102°08′E / 19.883°N 102.133°E / 19.883; 102.133

v t e World Heritage Sites in Laos Town of Luang Prabang · Vat Phou and Associated Ancient Settlements within the Champasak Cultural Landscape

Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk at 1963 Newport Folk Festival
Background information
Born	(1936-06-30)June 30, 1936 Brooklyn, New York
Died	February 10, 2002(2002-02-10) (aged 65)
Genres	Folk, ragtime
Occupations	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	Guitar
Years active	1960s-2002
Labels	Folkways

Dave Van Ronk (June 30, 1936 – February 10, 2002) was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" .

He was an important figure in the acoustic folk revival of the 1960s. His work ranged from old English ballads to Bertolt Brecht, blues, gospel, rock, New Orleans jazz, and swing. He was also known for performing instrumental ragtime guitar music, especially his transcription of St. Louis Tickle and Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag.

Dave Van Ronk was regarded as the friendly uncle of Greenwich Village, presiding over the coffeehouse folk culture and acting as a friend to many up and coming artists, inspiring, aiding and promoting them. Folk performers whom he befriended included Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Patrick Sky, Phil Ochs, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Guthrie Thomas, and Joni Mitchell.

Van Ronk received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), in December 1997.

Van Ronk died of cardio-pulmonary failure while undergoing post-operative treatment for colon cancer in a New York hospital.^[1]

Career[link]

Van Ronk moved from Brooklyn to Queens in 1951 and began attending Holy Child Catholic High School (Queens, New York). He had been performing in a barbershop quartet since 1949, but left before finishing high school, and spent the next few years bumming around lower Manhattan, except for shipping out twice with the Merchant Marine.

His first professional gigs were with various traditional jazz bands around the New York area, of which he later observed: "We wanted to play traditional jazz in the worst way...and we did!" The jazz revival did not take off though, and Van Ronk turned to performing blues music he had stumbled across and enjoyed years earlier, by artists like Furry Lewis and Mississippi John Hurt. Van Ronk was not the first white musician to perform African-American blues, but became noted for his interpretation of it in its original context. By about 1958, he was firmly committed to the folk-blues style, accompanying himself with his own acoustic guitar. He performed blues, jazz and folk music, occasionally writing his own songs but generally arranging the work of earlier artists and his folk revival peers.

He became noted both for his large physical stature and his expansive charisma, which bespoke an intellectual, cultured gentleman of many talents. Among his many interests: cooking, science fiction (he was active for some time in science fiction fandom, referring to it as "mind rot",^[2] and contributed to fanzines), world history, and politics. During the 1960s he supported radical left-wing political causes and was a member of the Libertarian League and the Trotskyist American Committee for the Fourth International (ACFI, later renamed the Workers League,^[3] predecessor to the Socialist Equality Party).^[4] Attracted to the commotion from a neighboring bar, and no stranger to police violence, he was at the famous Stonewall Riots during which he was grabbed by police, arrested, briefly jailed and charged with felony assault on a police officer.^[5] In 1974, he appeared at "An Evening For Salvador Allende", a concert organized by Phil Ochs, alongside other performers such as his old friend Bob Dylan, to protest the overthrow of the democratic socialist government of Chile and to aid refugees from the U.S.-backed military junta led by Augusto Pinochet. After Ochs' suicide in 1976, Van Ronk joined the many performers who played at Phil's memorial concert in the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden, playing his bluesy version of the traditional folk ballad "He Was A Friend Of Mine".^[6]

In 2000, he performed at Blind Willie's in Atlanta, clothed in garish Hawaiian garb, speaking fondly of his impending return to Greenwich Village. He reminisced over tunes like Good Ol Wagon, a song teasing a worn-out lover, which he ruefully remarked had seemed humorous to him back in 1962. He was married to Terri Thal in the 1960s, lived for many years with Joanne Grace, then married Andrea Vuocolo, with whom he spent the rest of his life. He continued to perform for four decades and gave his last concert just a few months before his death. He found it amusing to be called "a legend in his own time".

Van Ronk died before completing work on his memoirs, which were finished by his collaborator, Elijah Wald, and published in 2005 as The Mayor Of MacDougal Street.

In 2004, a section of Sheridan Square, where Barrow Street meets Washington Place, was renamed Dave Van Ronk Street in his memory.^[7]

Cultural impact[link]

Van Ronk has been described^{[by whom?]} as an irreverent and incomparable guitar artist and interpreter of black blues and folk, with an uncannily precise ability at improvisation. Joni Mitchell often said that his rendition of her song "Both Sides Now" (which he called Clouds) was the finest ever.

He is perhaps underestimated as a musician and blues guitarist. His guitar work is noteworthy for both syncopation and precision. In its simplest form, it shows similarities to Mississippi John Hurt's, but Van Ronk's main influence was the Reverend Gary Davis, who conceived the guitar as "a piano around his neck". Van Ronk took this pianistic approach, and added a harmonic sophistication adapted from the band voicings of Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington. He ranks high in bringing blues style to Greenwich Village during the 1960s, as well as introducing the folk world to the complex harmonies of Kurt Weill in his many Brecht-Weill interpretations, and being one of the very few hardcore traditional revivalists to move with the times, bringing old blues and ballads together with the new sounds of Dylan, Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. During this crucial period, he performed with the likes of Bob Dylan and spent many years teaching guitar in Greenwich Village, including to Christine Lavin, David Massengill, Terre Roche and Suzzy Roche. He influenced his protégé Danny Kalb and The Blues Project. The Japanese singer Masato Tomobe, American pop-folk singer Geoff Thais and the musician and writer Elijah Wald learned from him as well. Known for making interesting and memorable observations he once said, "Painting is all about space, and music is all about time."

Thanks to what he had learned from Davis, Van Ronk was among the first to adapt traditional jazz and ragtime to the solo acoustic guitar. His guitar arrangements of such ragtime hits as "St. Louis Tickle", "The Entertainer", "The Pearls" and "Maple Leaf Rag" continue to frustrate and challenge aspiring guitar players. He also did fine compositions of his own in the classic styles, such as "Antelope Rag".

His song "Last Call" is the source of the title of Lawrence Block's book When the Sacred Ginmill Closes.

The Coen brothers are writing a screenplay for a film based on Van Ronk's life called Inside Llewyn Davis.^[8]

Personal characteristics[link]

Van Ronk refused for many years to fly and never learned to drive (he would use trains or buses or, when possible, recruit a girlfriend or young musician as his driver), and he declined to ever move from Greenwich Village for any extended period of time (having stayed in California for a short time in the 1960s).^[9] Van Ronk's trademark stoneware jug of Tullamore Dew was frequently seen on stage next to him in his early days.

Robert Shelton described Van Ronk as, "the musical mayor of MacDougal Street, a tall, garrulous hairy man of three quarters, or, more accurately, three fifths Irish descent. Topped by light brownish hair and a leonine beard, which he smoothed down several times a minute, he resembled an unmade bed strewn with books, record jackets, pipes, empty whiskey bottles, lines from obscure poets, finger picks, and broken guitar strings. He was Bob [Dylan]'s first New York guru. Van Ronk was a walking museum of the blues. Through an early interest in jazz, he had gravitated toward black music - its jazz pole, its jug-band and ragtime center, its blues bedrock... his manner was rough and testy, disguising a warm, sensitive core. Van Ronk retold the blues intimately... for a time, his most dedicated follower was Dylan."

Discography[link]

Van Ronk releases[link]

Studio recordings[link]

• 1959: Van Ronk Sings Ballads, Blues, and a Spiritual (also released as Gambler's Blues and Black Mountain Blues) (Folkways Records)
• 1961: Dave Van Ronk Sings (also released as Dave Van Ronk Sings the Blues and Dave Van Ronk Sings Earthy Ballads and Blues) (Folkways Records)
• 1963: Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger
• 1963: Inside Dave Van Ronk
• 1964: Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers
• 1964: In the Tradition
• 1964: Just Dave Van Ronk
• 1966: No Dirty Names
• 1967: Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters
• 1971: Van Ronk
• 1973: Songs For Ageing Children
• 1976: Sunday Street
• 1980: Somebody Else, Not Me
• 1985: Going Back To Brooklyn
• 1990: Hummin' to Myself
• 1990: Peter and the Wolf
• 1992: Let No One Deceive You: Songs of Bertolt Brecht (Frankie Armstrong & Dave Van Ronk)
• 1994: To All My Friends in Far-Flung Places
• 1995: From... Another Time & Place
• 2001: Sweet & Lowdown
• 2005: The Mayor of MacDougal Street

Live recordings[link]

• 1982: Your Basic Dave Van Ronk
• 1983: St. James Infirmary (released in 1996 as Statesboro Blues)
• 1983: Dave Van Ronk in Rome
• 1997: Live at Sir George Williams University (recorded in 1967)
• 2004: Dave Van Ronk: ...and the tin pan bended and the story ended... (Smithsonian Folkways)
• 2008: On Air (live 1993)

Compilations of previously released material[link]

• 1972: Van Ronk (includes Folksinger and Inside Dave Van Ronk in their entirety. Later released on CD as Inside Dave Van Ronk)
• 1988: Hesitation Blues (compilation)
• 1989: Inside Dave Van Ronk (compilation - includes Folksinger and Inside Dave Van Ronk )
• 1991: The Folkways Years, 1959 - 1961 (Smithsonian Folkways)
• 1992: A Chrestomathy
• 2002: Two Sides of Dave Van Ronk (includes all of In the Tradition and most of Your Basic Dave Van Ronk)

Van Ronk on compilations/other people's albums[link]

• 1958: Skiffle in Stereo (The Orange Blossom Jug Five)
• 1959: Fo'csle Songs and Shanties (by Paul Clayton)^[10] - Van Ronk sings on all songs.

Van Ronk on various artist compilations[link]

• 1959: The Unfortunate Rake^[11]
• 1963: Newport Folk Festival 1963 The Evening Concerts Vol. 2(Various Artists- Van Ronk performs two songs: Candy Man and Hold On)
• 1964: Blues from Newport (Various Artists- Van Ronk performs two songs: That Will Never Happen No More and Gambler's Blues)
• 1964: The Blues Project (Various Artists – Van Ronk performs two songs: Bad Dream Blues and Don't You Leave Me Here)
• 1999: The Man from God Knows Where (Tom Russell- Van Ronk featured performing two songs: The Outcast and The Outcast (revisited))

References[link]

External links[link]

• Dave Van Ronk – The Mayor of MacDougal Street, About the book. ElijahWald.com.
• Dave Walsh (May 7, 1998). "A Conversation with Dave Van Ronk". World Socialist Web Site. Archived from the original on October 19, 1999. http://web.archive.org/web/19991019002848/http://wsws.org/arts/1998/may1998/dvr-m7.shtml. 
• Steven Wirz. Illustrated Dave Van Ronk discography
• Otto Bost (June 30, 2004). Dave Van Ronk Street Renaming Ceremony Photo essay. OttoFocus.net
• Charles Freudenthal (August 2005). Walking Down Dave Van Ronk Street. Anecdotes. e*I*21. (Vol. 4 No. 4)
• Lee Hoffman (2010). Lee Hoffman, My Folknik Days. Anecdotes. Gary Ross Hofmann.
• Dave Van Ronk Discography. Smithsonian Folkways.
• John Pareles (February 12, 2002). Dave Van Ronk, Folk Singer And Iconoclast, Dies at 65. New York Times.