Cambodian Americans can't stop the music

Dengue Fever and lead singer Chhom Nimol, center, will headline the inaugural Cambodian Music Festival on Sunday in Los Angeles. COURTESY OF CAMBODIAN MUSIC FESTIVAL

Cambodian Americans can't stop the music

Los Angeles Register | 31 July 2014

Throughout its history, Cambodia has been ruled by royalty and rogues. It has seen unparalleled heights, like those symbolized by the majestic Angkor Wat temple complex, and unspeakable lows, such as when the genocidal Khmer Rouge was in power.

Throughout it all, sometimes against all odds, art and music have endured. The Khmer Rouge, in the course of killing anywhere from 1.4 million to 2 million people, sought out artists and the educated and killed most. But it still couldn’t stop the music.

In the United States, the children of the survivors and the refugees in the Cambodian diaspora are forging their own musical and artistic destinies. Those will be on display at the inaugural Cambodian Music Festival, taking the stage Sunday at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre.

Music and art have been always been essential threads in the Cambodian tapestry, said event organizer Seak Smith. Now, Cambodian Americans in the so-called 1.5 generation, born Cambodian but raised American, are taking the musical traditions of their fathers and mothers and advancing them in disparate ways.

“We are right at this point where (Cambodian arts are) going to explode,” said Bochan Huy, 34, a Cambodian American singer from Oakland who goes by her stage name Bochan.

She recently traveled to her homeland – her family escaped when she was an infant – and was amazed at the artistic transformation underway as the nation emerges from the shadows of its 1970s civil war and subsequent genocide. In a large part, she said, the arts were spurred by returning U.S. citizens.

“There was this influx of artists who came back, and an explosion of creativity across the board,” said the singer with an Indie rock/reggae flavor.

Jay Chan, 32, a Cambodian American R&B singer from Stockton, said the festival is a way to take the music forward.

“The message I want to put across is for the next generation to carry on Cambodian music, to embrace it and remember where it all started from,” he said.

“I think it’s an incredible lineup,” said Long Beach rapper Prach Ly. “It’s history in the making.”

Sunday’s event will showcase some of the breadth of modern Cambodian music, from the reggae sound of Bochan to the psychedelic sounds of Dengue Fever and ballads of Chan that harken to the ’60s rock movement in Cambodia, to the hip-hop messages with an edgy urban-American cultural sound.

Laced through it all you may also hear the strains of classical pin peat and ancient Cambodian folk music.

“We’re creating a melting pot of sounds,” Bochan said.

Visit a Cambodian dining and music club along Anaheim Street in Long Beach and you are likely to hear a live cover of a 1960s Cambodian ballad followed by a version of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” in English.

Bochan does a cover of sorts of Ros Serey Sothea’s bubblegum “Chnam Oun 16” or “I’m 16,” but with a message in English of survival that hints at the war and genocide, and a dub reggae beat. In other words, it’s not your mother’s “Chnam Oun 16.”