An important mandate of Cultural Crossroads Asia is to document oral traditions in as many media as possible so as to keep ancestral knowledge alive and to inspire people with its wonder.  Knowing that the older generation of Master Musicians, Storytellers, and Artisans, in many cases the last wisdom-keepers of their heritage, will soon pass away, it is incumbent on us to record as much as we can as soon as we can.

Thus, Resonance Press, a publishing house based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, was founded to complement the Cultural Crossroads Asia Heritage Center and the Living Legacy Project.  It’s charge: to champion those who are steeped in age-old traditions or who have devoted themselves to chronicling the ancient knowledge and lore of the ethnic groups of Southeast Asia so their voices and visions can endure in Resonance Press Books, Photographs, Recordings, and Films.

With a number of books and media already to its name, Resonance Press aims in coming years to publish several exciting new works that reveal age-old tales, proverbs, life lessons, and music before they slip from collective memory.

• Traditional Music of the Golden Triangle:
  Karen, Hmong, Iu Mien, Lahu, Akha, and Lisu
• Essays, Photographs, Recordings
• by Victoria Vorreiter

• Resonance Press, May 2022. 248 pages, over 800 photographs
• 10.75” x 9” / 27.6 x 23.3 cm
• Flash Drive: Resonance Press, April 2009. Recordings, 78 minutes
• 978–0–99812391–1–2

Songs of Memory (Book and Flash Drive) offers readers and listeners an absorbing multi-sensory experience to explore the ancestral music, ceremonies, and culture of the mountain peoples of Southeast Asia—the Karen, Hmong, Iu Mien, Lahu, Akha, and Lisu. Vivid accounts of musicians, spirit intermediaries, ritual specialists, headmen, wise elders, craftsmen, and villagers are brought to life by over 800 color photographs and dynamic recordings of sacred and secular music (78 minutes).

Price: $55.95 / 2000 baht

• Traditional Secular and Sacred Hmong Music
• Essays, Photographs, Film
• by Victoria Vorreiter

• Book – Resonance Press, September 2016. 281 pages, over 350 color photographs
• Song Lyrics in Hmong and English
• 10.75” x 9” / 27.6 x 23.3 cm
• ISBN (Book): 978-0-9981239-0-5

• Film: Resonance Press, September 2016. 75 minute DVD
• Subtitles in Hmong and English
• ISBN (Ethnographic Film): 978-0-9981239-1-2

Hmong Songs of Memory (Book and DVD) reveals the age-old Hmong musical heritage through the prism of text, images, and film, informing and inspiring readers with a rare glimpse of life in their remote mountain villages of northern Laos and Thailand.  An agrarian people keenly attuned to the cycles of seasons and the wheel of life, the Hmong have created a complex, all-encompassing belief system rooted in animism, where everything in nature possesses a soul. Consequently, frequent rituals, ceremonies, and festivals, propelled by music, are performed to maintain harmony between the mortal and supernatural worlds. With a narrative that explores these vanishing Hmong traditions, over 350 vivid photographs, and an accompanying 78-minute ethnographic film (in Hmong and English), this work will fill your eyes and ears with the wonder.

Price: $65 / 2200 baht