Off the Beaten Track: Cambodia’s lost rock ‘n’ roll
Posted: Sun May 09, 2021 1:33 am
Off the Beaten Track: Cambodia’s lost rock ‘n’ roll
3 hours ago
Tom Taylor
In the sweltering heat of Phnom Penh, the world is reduced to a kaleidoscopic melee akin to being trapped inside a beehive. The swarming buzz of motorbikes and half-conked-out minibuses fill the air with a deafening rattle. The dizzying mix of flickering neon from yesteryear and incongruous rising monolithic pagodas from an even older yesteryear are shrouded in the decay and sedated dilapidation of a post-war city healing its wounds and, for better or for worse, relinquishing to the fading memory of the past.
For 20 years, from the late 1950s onwards, Cambodia assimilated music from all over the world into a mixed-up milieu that represented a cultural zenith in world music. Everything from everywhere seemed to be happening all at once. Until suddenly, it wasn’t. After years where Cambodia had packed out dancefloors with a menagerie of distilled scenes from all over the world, it was seemingly snuffed out overnight by the brutalist Khmer Rouge regime.
Now, thanks to the work of documentaries like Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, and the efforts of organisations like The Documentation Centre of Cambodia, the countries musical past is being pieced together and beginning to ring out a tune once more.
When exploring the lost rock ‘n’ roll of Cambodia, it is befitting to start at the end and work back to the start. The coda to the unspooling story of Cambodian music is a bittersweet one. Music has returned and reclaimed its rightful ever-present place in the droning hum of Cambodia’s ceaseless zeitgeist. However, like a pasture that was destroyed beyond repair, it has had to be replanted by hand— thus, it bears the mark of cultivation. The music now filling the streets is often a westernised appropriation, whereas, in the past, it seemed to be a natural celebration and fevered concoction of a musical balm to life.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/cambodia-l ... rld-music/
3 hours ago
Tom Taylor
In the sweltering heat of Phnom Penh, the world is reduced to a kaleidoscopic melee akin to being trapped inside a beehive. The swarming buzz of motorbikes and half-conked-out minibuses fill the air with a deafening rattle. The dizzying mix of flickering neon from yesteryear and incongruous rising monolithic pagodas from an even older yesteryear are shrouded in the decay and sedated dilapidation of a post-war city healing its wounds and, for better or for worse, relinquishing to the fading memory of the past.
For 20 years, from the late 1950s onwards, Cambodia assimilated music from all over the world into a mixed-up milieu that represented a cultural zenith in world music. Everything from everywhere seemed to be happening all at once. Until suddenly, it wasn’t. After years where Cambodia had packed out dancefloors with a menagerie of distilled scenes from all over the world, it was seemingly snuffed out overnight by the brutalist Khmer Rouge regime.
Now, thanks to the work of documentaries like Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, and the efforts of organisations like The Documentation Centre of Cambodia, the countries musical past is being pieced together and beginning to ring out a tune once more.
When exploring the lost rock ‘n’ roll of Cambodia, it is befitting to start at the end and work back to the start. The coda to the unspooling story of Cambodian music is a bittersweet one. Music has returned and reclaimed its rightful ever-present place in the droning hum of Cambodia’s ceaseless zeitgeist. However, like a pasture that was destroyed beyond repair, it has had to be replanted by hand— thus, it bears the mark of cultivation. The music now filling the streets is often a westernised appropriation, whereas, in the past, it seemed to be a natural celebration and fevered concoction of a musical balm to life.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/cambodia-l ... rld-music/
