Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Prayoon Yomyiam, a singer affectionately known in Thailand as Mae Prayoon or “Mother Prayoon.” Born on this day in 1933, she began singing at the age of 15 in a style of traditional Thai folk music known as Lam Tad. Originating in central Thailand, this popular form of antiphonal singing involves groups of men and women who take turns playfully poking fun at each other with improvised humorous lyrics, accompanied by a drum called a Klong Ramana. Prayoon helped to preserve and popularize the Lam Tad style of music,which once faced extinction before being introduced into nationwide popular culture via television. Aside from helping the music make a comeback domestically, she introduced Lam Tad to other countries as part of Thailand’s state-sponsored tourism campaign. Using her talents to spread laughter and cheer, Yomyiam helped keep Thailand’s folk culture alive for generations to come.
Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky (Russian: Серге́й Миха́йлович Проку́дин-Го́рский, About this sound listen (help·info); August 30 [O.S. August 18] 1863 – September 27, 1944) was a Russian chemist and photographer. He is best known for his pioneering work in color photography and his effort to document early 20th-century Russia. Using a railroad-car darkroom provided by Tsar Nicholas II, Prokudin-Gorsky traveled the Russian Empire from around 1909 through 1915 using his three-image color photography to record its many aspects. While some of his negatives were lost, the majority ended up in the U.S. Library of Congress after his death. Starting in 2000, the negatives were digitized and the color triples for each subject digitally combined to produce hundreds of high-quality color images of century-ago Russia. On 30 August 2018, on what would have been Produkin-Gorsky's 155th birthday, Google unveiled an animated Google Doodle celebrating his work.
