Cambodian youth today is turning to modern culture, the traditional Cambodian arts are declining through lack of interest from the young people, and there is very little support for the ancient art forms from the government.
However, some of the teachers in the traditional arts continue to interest and train young Cambodians in an effort to keep their culture alive.






Kohsantepheapdaily

Cambodian youth today is turning to modern culture, the traditional Cambodian arts are declining through lack of interest from the young people, and there is very little support for the ancient art forms from the government.
However, some of the teachers in the traditional arts continue to interest and train young Cambodians in an effort to keep their culture alive.

To lose traditional culture. I would hope the government would recognise this. If no this is a genuine "Go fund me".

Nice story here about some young people who rallied around to save a dying traditional shadow puppet theatre in Phnom Penh. It is open everyday and there are shows on the weekends.

Cambodia’s traditional Sbek Thom shadow puppetry is a dying art. But not if these sisters can help it.
Determined not to let Sovanna Phum close, Rithy and the team behind Bonn Phum launched a Kickstarter campaign, organised puppet-carving workshops and garnered support from Cambodian franchise Brown Coffee. Pop star Tena was even inspired to use Sbek Thom in a music video.

“It was first time we saw the culture of sharing money in Cambodia for art,” she says. “Usually that only happens around religion. We are a country with a lot of culture and art history, but we don’t really value it.”

Sovanna Phum Theatre in Phnom Penh has shows every Friday and Saturday at 7pm. The gallery is open 9am-5pm, Monday to Saturday. Workshops and other activities are also available upon request. Contact them through Facebook, or by calling +855 10 33 75 52 to book.
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asi ... 40251.html

Nice.

Cambodia Faces ‘Dark Episode’ With Revival of Traditional Arts, Culture
April 14, 2018 9:00 PM
WASHINGTON — When she was 11, Bonna Neang woke daily at first light to a Khmer Rouge tune broadcast over a public speaker in a hamlet in Cambodia’s rural Banteay Meanchey province.
“The bright, fresh red blood was spilled all over the towns and over the plains of Cambodia, our motherland. … ”

The child of a Phnom Penh family well-versed in classical Khmer music and appreciative of youngsters’ at-home dance performances, Bonna Neang Weinstein, now 53, still recalls the lyrics to “Build a Revolution.”

Today, the mother of three sons and stepmother of three daughters, owns a Philadelphia gallery, Khmer Art, which is dedicated to the revival of Cambodian work. She describes it as a portal to a culture the Khmer Rouge, who captured Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, attempted to eradicate over the next four years.

Among the 1.7 million people who died in a population of 6 million were 90 percent of the nation’s artists, felled by revolutionaries with the motto “To keep you is no gain; to lose you is no loss.”

“The Khmer Rouge is a dark episode” in Cambodia’s history, Weinstein said. The regime also wiped out the educated, the skilled, the city dwellers and the intellectuals. She said she believes the revival of the arts allows Cambodians to reclaim their heritage because “the Khmer Rouge is not us … that’s not who we are.”

Ethnomusicologist Sam Sam-Ang, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” said “[Khmer] arts do not only belong to Cambodia, they belong to all human beings in the world.”

Today, there is evidence such as Prumsodun Ok’s Ted Talk on Khmer classical dance that Cambodia’s traditional cultural life is undergoing a robust renaissance after the Khmer Rouge suppression.

“Beauty is the most resistant thing,” Ok said in the October talk, which also discusses the intergenerational transfer of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, among Cambodians from Khmer Rouge survivors to their offspring. “Beauty is what connects people to time and place.” As those connections strengthen, Khmer artists are taking the traditional into new areas.

That Cambodia’s cosmopolitan heritage could not be eradicated by the Khmer Rouge dream of creating an agrarian utopia speaks not only to Cambodians’ resilience but to something that makes us all human.

“There is no culture without artistic expression,” said anthropologist Ledgerwood, who has been conducting research on Khmer culture since 1989.
https://www.voanews.com/a/cambodia-revi ... 43623.html

sure hope they can revive the spectacular triple twill double ikat silk weaving

https://books.google.com/books?id=3Jwj6 ... ve&f=false

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikat#Cambodia

Love the music they play with those instruments, very bluesy

Bringing Khmer dance down to earth
How a new incubator program is helping classical
dancers with the practical side of their craft
by Quinn Libson | Friday, April 13, 2018

Voan Savay, the legendary former prima ballerina of the Cambodian Royal Ballet, keeps her eyes glued to the young dancer rehearsing on the stage. After two months of preparation, this is one of the final dress rehearsals for a brand new production from Cambodian Living Arts, and the show is finally coming together.

From the front row of the theatre at the National Museum, Savay shouts instructions to the young woman and claps along with the beat of the music, illustrating which rhythms to emphasise. One can’t help but wonder if the dancer on stage knows what big shoes she’s been tasked with filling.

In a brief pause in the rehearsal while the technicians adjust the lighting Savay turns around in her seat and pulls up a photograph of herself from 1969, a golden era for ballet in the country. The image shows an 18-year-old ballerina in her prime, performing the Moni Mekhala, the very same dance being readied in front of her.
Voan Savay in 1969. Photo supplied
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-life ... down-earth

Cambodia News, (Phnom Penh): On 25 November, 2021, the High Representative of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Dr. Pheung Sakona, visited a large-scale shadow puppet show on the occasion of the 16th anniversary of the inclusion of large-scale shadow puppetry in the Intangible Cultural Heritage List of UNESCO.


The performance of the show "Shadow of the Big Skin" was held on the evening of Thursday, November 25, performed by the Sovanna Phum Arts Association at the Fine Arts High School, to commemorate the inscription on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list on November 25, 2005 in Paris, France.

^^^Wow, cool, I'm happy to read this follow-up to my post about Sovanna Phum Theatre back in 2017 ! Good to see that they are still alive and well.

Anchor Moy wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2017 11:18 am Nice story here about some young people who rallied around to save a dying traditional shadow puppet theatre in Phnom Penh. It is open everyday and there are shows on the weekends.

Cambodia’s traditional Sbek Thom shadow puppetry is a dying art. But not if these sisters can help it.
Determined not to let Sovanna Phum close, Rithy and the team behind Bonn Phum launched a Kickstarter campaign, organised puppet-carving workshops and garnered support from Cambodian franchise Brown Coffee. Pop star Tena was even inspired to use Sbek Thom in a music video.

“It was first time we saw the culture of sharing money in Cambodia for art,” she says. “Usually that only happens around religion. We are a country with a lot of culture and art history, but we don’t really value it.”

Sovanna Phum Theatre in Phnom Penh has shows every Friday and Saturday at 7pm. The gallery is open 9am-5pm, Monday to Saturday. Workshops and other activities are also available upon request. Contact them through Facebook, or by calling +855 10 33 75 52 to book.
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asi ... 40251.html