In Cambodia, a rock 'n roll revival
By Andrew Nette
PHNOM PENH - Grainy black and white newsreel footage of B-52 bombing raids and
fierce fighting are the images most frequently associated with Cambodia in the
1960 and early 1970s - not rock and roll, hot pants and wild dancing.
But when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, emptying the cities and
systematically eradicating the so-called old culture as corrupt and decadent,
they almost completely destroyed what was probably, for its time, the most
unique and vibrant rock and roll scene in Southeast Asia.
"Cambodia definitely had one of the most advanced music scenes in Asia at the
time," agrees Greg Cahill, who is currently seeking
financing to turn his 30-minute film on the most famous of the era's female
singers, Ros Sereysothea, The Golden Voice, into a fully-fledged biopic.
"It is amazing that a lot of it survived at all," says Cahill, who was recently
in Phnom Penh to scout for locations. "The Khmer Rouge destroyed everything
related to the music scene they could get their hands on, including trashing
all the recording studios and destroying all the musical recordings they could
find."
All the major singers, many of them still household names today such as Sin
Sisamouth and Sereysothea, were killed.
Not only has the music survived. Its legacy of thousands of songs ranging over
musical styles as diverse as psychedelia and Latin, is garnering increasing
international attention.
The Golden Voice is one of two films on Cambodia's pre-war music scene
in the works. The other, Los Angeles-based cinematographer John Pirozzi's Don't
Think I've Forgotten, a history of the scene, is currently in
production.
Songs from the period featured on the soundtrack of the 2002 crime thriller
shot in Cambodia, City of Ghosts.
It has also been given significant exposure by the six-piece Los Angeles-based
band Dengue Fever, whose lead singer, Cambodian-born Chhom Nimol, covers many
of the classic hits from the period.
While the music's domestic popularity is mostly restricted to older Khmers, the
pre-war artists are being sampled and mixed in hip-hop and rap music tracks,
slowly exposing it to a new, younger audience.
"When I first heard this music, I did not think much of it," says Sok "Cream"
Visal. "I thought it was just the style back then."
"The more I listened, the more I realized just how different and edgy this
music was," says Visal, art director at a local advertising company who, for
the past few years, has been experimenting with remixing pre-war music with
more modern sounds. "Thailand, Vietnam and Laos did not have this scene. It was
unique to Cambodia."
Two factors are credited with kickstarting Cambodia's pre-war music industry.
The first was the patronage of then-king Norodom Sihanouk. As part of his
post-independence nation-building efforts, Sihanouk encouraged royal court
musicians to experiment with new styles.
This influenced people like Sisamouth, whose career started as a ballad singer
in the royal court and by the end of the 1960s had become the "King of
Cambodian rock and roll".
In the 1960s, Sihanouk began importing Western music into Cambodia. Local
record labels sprung up and by the 1970s, these were being supported by a
well-developed network of distributors and clubs.
The other major influence was the R&B, country and rock music that was
blared into Cambodia by the US Armed Forces radio in Vietnam.
"This exposed Cambodian musicians to Jimi Hendrix, Phil Spector, the Doors,"
says Visal. "Meanwhile, from Europe we got Latin styles such as cha cha, rumba
and flamenco."
These sounds, as well as influences as diverse as doo-wop, psychodelic and
Motown, can clearly be heard in the pre-war music, often mixed with traditional
Cambodian instruments.
From the royal court, Sisamouth became a popular radio singer in the late
1950s, before branching into film and TV. Although he did many rock and Latin
tunes, he is better known for his more silky crooner numbers and is often
compared to singers like Nat King Cole.
Although Sisamouth was the bigger star, it is Sereysothea who had the greatest
mystique and exercises the strongest contemporary interest.
Born into poverty in a small village in Battambang province, Sereysothea spent
her teens performing with her family in a traditional peasant band touring
Cambodia's rural backwaters of the northwest.
Her reputation slowly grew and she moved to Phnom Penh and started performing
at local clubs. By the late 1960s she was a major star, producing a number of
albums and starring in films. It was during this time that she started
performing with Sisamouth.
She was married for a time to another singer, Suos Mat, who was incredibly
jealous of her success and is said to have beaten her regularly. Sereysothea
was subsequently involved with a paratrooper in the Lon Nol army who was killed
fighting the Khmer Rouge.
When the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, Sereysothea
joined the rest of the city's residents in being marched at gunpoint to the
countryside.
Sereysothea and Sisamouth in particular were very creative, says Cahill, who
has extensively researched the era.
Over the seven to eight years leading to the Khmer Rouge takeover, they wrote,
sang and produced about 2,000 songs, often at a rate of one or two songs a day.
They also recorded a wide array of covers in English and Khmer.
Under the Khmer Rouge, even the slightest Western influence such as speaking a
second language, having long hair or wearing bell-bottoms was enough to invite
a death sentence.
Sisamouth was reportedly shot. Sereysothea successfully hid her identity for
some time until she was finally discovered and made to perform revolutionary
songs celebrating the regime.
According to Cahill's research, Sereysothea was in a camp in central Cambodia
when her real identity was discovered. She was forced to marry one of Pol Pot's
commanders who eventually had her murdered.
The music of the 1960s and early 1970s is currently available on CD and
cassette in markets throughout Phnom Penh. That it survived the destruction of
Cambodian culture wrought by the Khmer Rouge is due to Cambodians who took it
with them when they fled the country.
"In the Khmer community in Long Beach, California you cannot go down the street
without hearing this music," says Cahill.
Visal remembers his parents taking music with them when they fled Cambodia to
France. "Music was a part of their everyday lives," he recalls. "For them it
was about memories of Cambodia in the good times."
A compilation CD of Khmer pre-war music was released in the US in 1999. Called
"Cambodian Rocks", it was put together from cassettes bought by a US tourist
during a trip to Cambodia. The CD, which contained no information about the
singers or names of their songs, became a cult favorite among college students.
However, it was not until the music was released as part of the soundtrack for City
of Ghosts, written and directed by US actor Matt Dillon, that it
started to get serious international exposure.
Visal's own path back to Cambodia's pre-war music involved a long detour
through the rap and hip-hop that he listened to in the housing projects of
suburban Paris.
"I remember seeing the tapes of artists like Sisamouth and Sereysothea for sale
in the Phnom Penh in the 1990s," says Visal, who returned to Cambodia in 1993.
"I did not really pay any attention to the music until I bought a computer to
learn design. I stumbled on music editing software and started messing around
with sampling Khmer music."
"Soon, I was started going out and combing the markets, listening to every song
I could find from this period and I started to mix and sample them," Visal
continues. "The first reaction I had from people was shock. They thought it was
blasphemy and did not understand why I wanted to do it."
Visal recently started up his own label, Klapyahandz, promoting young Khmer
hip-hop and rap bands and is keen to release a CD of his mixed songs. "I
started remixing old music for fun but now it has become a real mission, trying
to remind people now just how creative people were back then."
"In the next five years we are going to see a real explosion of the arts in
Cambodia, particularly in music," predicts Visal. "I hope the pre-war songs
will be part of that."
(This story was written for the Imaging Our
Mekong program coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)
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