I adore Khmer Music

Khmer music has been one of the greatest discoveries in my musical life. The songs are joyful, melodic, dancyful...

Of course I am talking about Cambodian music from the early 60s to 1975, a period in which rock flourished in this country in a very original way, combining the influences of US, Europe and Latin American sounds with local folklore.

Several reasons led to the creation of the so original and prolific khmer rock. It may have started in 1953 under the aegis of the first head of state of post-colonial Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, who was a singer himself and an important promoter of music.

A quick schema of the turbulent recent history of Cambodia:

• 1867 - 1953: French Protectorate of Cambodia (Colonial period)
• 1953 - 1970: Kingdom of Cambodia (non-alignment policy period and birth of khmer communism)
• 1970 - 1975: The Khmer Republic (resulting from a coup supported by Nixon in order to use the country as basecamp to attack North Vietnam during the last years of the Vietnam War)
• 1975 - 1979: Democratic Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge's Genocidal Regime and war with the recently unified Vietnam)
• 1979 - 1993: People's Republic of Kampuchea (pro-Soviet government backed by URSS and Vietnam)
• 1993 - Today: Kingdom of Cambodia (one party-dominated State)

Khmer rock probably emerged from the Western influences with the independence from France, when rich children were sent to Paris to study. Some influences could have been French and British pop; Latin Jazz and Cha cha cha from Latin America and American early rock-and-roll. 

These influences crystalised in the figure of the male singer Sinn Sisamouth, who became a national star under the support of the head of state Norodom Sihanouk. The country received further influence and updates of Western rock from the US Army Radio that was broadcasting for US soldiers in Vietnam. Check the marvellous "New Year's Eve". You will find many interesting songs among his more than one thousand songs, like the surprising "Española", en Khmer and French.

In this way, Sinn Sisamouth introduced psychedelic rock in the Cambodian music scene, and in 1967 he launched the career of Ros Serey Sothea, who evolved from a mere singer at weddings to Cambodian's Edith Piaf, or the "Queen with the Golden Voice", as crowned by King Sihanouk. She became a major cultural figure of her time, daring to criticize Sihanouk with her song "The Traitor", and participating in the military as a paratrooper. Her song "I will starve myself to death" is pure magic. And even more surprising: this version of the 1969 hit "Venus" by the Dutch band "Shocking Blue" (later popularised by Bananarama in 1986), sang by Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea: the Khmer Venus.

From Sothea's same school in the Battambang region, appeared another Khmer feminine rock star, Pen Ran (romanised as Pan Ron). Like Sothea, Pen Ran made use of the traditional singing technique of "ghost voice" that makes Khmer rock unique: a wide register able to jump from very low to very high tones. Pen Ran personified the concept of liberated (Western-style) woman, subverting traditional Cambodian gender roles regarding romance and sexuality with songs such as "I'm unsatisfied", "I want to be your lover", "It's too late old man" and "I'm 31", a rejet on the traditional idea that a woman should get married young, as an reply to Sothea's song "I'm 16". Check out her Khmer version of Nancy Sinatras' "Bang Bang".

Unhappily, in 1975, Khmer Rouge's genocidal government imprisoned and executed Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Serey Sothea, Pen Ran and all the other singers of the generation. So this marvellous jewels remained hidden in the old vinyls of Sunday flea markets for around 20 years, until some American tourists with good taste bought some of these vinyls when visiting the ruins of Angkor Wat in Siem Reap. They published some of those hits under the name "Cambodian Rocks" in 1996, amazed to hear the resemblances of this music with Western authors like Santana, Fletwood Mac and The Animals.

Khmer music begins shyly to be widespread in the West. In the late 90s, in LA, two musician bothers, Zac and Ethan Holtzman discover this music: Ethan buys some tapes of the 60s in Cambodia while Ethan gets "Cambodian Rocks" in a LA shop. Together, they decide to form a band to return this songs to life. In 2001, just after 9/11, they hire a Cambodian karaoke singer who had just emigrated to the US and spoke no English, Chhom Nimol, and they create, with other 3 members, the band Dengue Fever. The group's first 2 albums (Dengue Fever and Venus on Earth) display some of Sisamouth's, Sothea's and Pen Ran's classics, and evolve in their following albums with the creation of their own songs in a mixed style of Khmer psychedelic rock and American sounds. Ethan materialises this creole style with his own instrument, a guitar combining a stratocaster and a electric sitar.

More recently, aware of the growing international projection of Khmer psychedelic rock, Phnom Penh's singer Kak Channthy, with her Australian husband created the group "Cambodian Space Project", with the idea of creating original songs in a modern Cambodian psychedelic style, more humoristic and caricatural than Dengue Fever, as it can be seen in their clip and song "Have visa no have rice". Unfortunately, Kak Channthy died in 2018 in an auto rickshaw accident. Another attempt to revive the huge legacy of post-colonial pre-Khmer Rouge music is the documentary "Don't think I've forgiven".

If you have heard to some of these songs, I am sure by now you also love Khmer psychedelic rock. 

In any case, enjoy the youtube playlist of my favourite Khmer songs here.