Year: 2021–2024 | Role: Co-founder
Arts Ecosystem · Community Building · Cultural Programming
The Challenge
When Covid shut down live events, musicians had nowhere to go and no safety net. I was one of them. I had been a vocalist in a band since university, and performing was how I made a living. When everything closed, I kept asking the same question: who was actually thinking about what musicians in Chiang Mai needed?
Almost no one. There was barely any data, no policy support, no infrastructure for creative workers as a class of people with legitimate professional needs. The city had a creative reputation and no system behind it.
What I Did
VibeMai started when my friend Earng from tempo.wav brought a group of us together: musicians, visual artists, people working in technology, all of us caring about the same city and frustrated by the same gaps. We ran think tanks, built foresight plans for the local music ecosystem, and pushed into government channels, with all the friction that comes with that.
But the real work lived in what we made. VibeMai was found.
Our first project was a live-session concert commemorating the 20th anniversary of Jaran Manopetch, the legendary northern folk musician. I grew up hearing his songs in the car every morning before school. Coming back to his work as an adult, learning the real story behind the song “รางวัลแด่คนช่างฝัน,” I cried. Because I understood, finally, who that song was written for. And I recognized myself in it.
We had one month to prepare, zero budget, and a stack of paperwork to file with the municipality and the disease control department just to be allowed to film. It almost didn’t happen several times. The second time I cried was when the cameras were rolling and the artists were playing his songs, freshly arranged, and it was actually breathtaking moment.
In 2022 we went further. Dharma Trip was an immersive performance at Wat Pan Ping temple in the center of Chiang Mai: real-time projection mapping transforming the walls, contemporary Lanna instruments, psychedelic visual art, and a live reinterpretation of the Four Noble Truths. The idea was to create an altered state of consciousness through art, music, and space, using the temple as the container. Two nights, free admission, in collaboration with CMSAA, Psychedelic Thailand, tomorrow.Lab, Sound Mandala, and others, with support from Epson and Ashram Scent.
Outcomes
Over three years, VibeMai built a genuine audience and became a platform that artists in Chiang Mai actually trusted. The Jaran Manopetch live session connected generations of listeners who rarely find themselves in the same room. Dharma Trip demonstrated that a music event in a religion space could mean something beyond entertainment.
What the whole project kept arguing, quietly and then louder: music is not a luxury industry. It is civic infrastructure. Creative workers deserve the same seriousness of support as anyone else. We didn’t solve that problem. But we named it, organized around it, and made work that proved the scene was worth fighting for.