Live Music & Jazz Bars in Bangkok
A visual guide from the Bangkok travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
Beyond the mega-clubs, Bangkok keeps a deep bench of rooms where the music is the point. The Bamboo Bar at the Mandarin Oriental has poured jazz with its cocktails since the 1950s; Saxophone Pub has anchored Victory Monument with nightly jazz, blues and funk since 1987; and a younger generation of molam dens and Chinatown listening bars keeps the scene honest. Most nights, somewhere in this city, a band is cooking.
The Institutions
The Bamboo Bar is the dress-up option — a lamplit hotel lounge by the river with international vocalists in residence; book a table and make an evening of it (BTS Saphan Taksin, then the riverside walk). Saxophone Pub, tucked beside the Victory Monument roundabout steps from the BTS, is its opposite: two tiers wrapped around the stage, a balcony looking straight down on the horn section, rotating bands nightly and rarely a cover charge. Between them they bracket the whole scene.
Small Rooms, Big Nights
For something more local, hunt the small rooms: Adhere the 13th, a shoebox blues bar on Samsen Road near Khao San; Studio Lam off Sukhumvit 51, where molam and Isan grooves run late over a custom sound system; and Tep Bar in Chinatown's Soi Nana, pairing Thai classical trios with rice-spirit cocktails near MRT Wat Mangkon. Sets mostly start between 8 and 10pm, line-ups rotate nightly, and rooms this size fill fast — check each venue's socials the day you go.