About the song (ผู้ใหญ่ลี Village Chief Lee)

This is one of the most famous Thai “country” songs that everybody seems to know by heart. The song was written by พิพัฒน์ บริบูรณ์ Pipat Boriboon , and first performed by Saksri Sriaksorn ศักดิ์ศรี ศรีอักษร around 1960. The song takes a humorous look at the implementation of the First National Economic Development Plan which was implemented in 1961 (B.E. 2504) during the beginning of the economic development era of Thailand with aids and loans from the World Bank. The way it was done then was the “top down” approach from the government, where all policies, plans and decisions were made by “the authority” and passed down to the villagers to carry out.

In the song, Lee, the headman of the village, has just received orders from “the authority” for the villagers to carry out. Hilarious misunderstanding arises from the government’s use of “high”(Pali-Sanskrit loan) vocabulary in the order.

The “full version” of the lyrics has 3 parts. Here, we only present the first of the three parts, which is the part that is most widely known.

Culture Notes
1. There are a lot of loanwords from various sources in the Thai language, with Pali and Sanskrit being the main source for words relating to education, religion. Formal vocabulary used in government document are predominantly loanwords from Pali-Sanskrit. In the song, you’ll see the use of Pali-Sanskrit based animal names:

2. In addition to kinship terms, certain occupation terms can also function as term of address or pronouns (first person and second person) and can be followed by the person’s names such as:

In this song, the name of the village headman is ลี Lee, so he is referred to as ผู้ใหญ่ลี

Grammar Notes

Certain occupation term in Thai is a compound consisting of ชาว+N

Verse by Verse Translation

Vocabulary