The Golden Age of Cambodian Rock

The story of rock music in Cambodia is like the story of a prodigy of indulgent parents that dies in a tragic accident.  This is a country which had recently escaped colonialism, under the new rule of a king from an artistic family, was encouraged to explore music and the arts and embrace the West.  But then forces from both inside and outside Cambodia literally destroyed all of that in their attempt to return Cambodia to its agrarian and non-Western pre-history.  We have seen this tale played out many times- indeed the shadow of it exists in America today, but perhaps never in such extreme measure as we saw in Cambodia after 1970.

At the center of this artistic explosion was the person of multi-instrumentalist and composer Sinn Sisamouth.  And this is a man who was as fruitful and productive as any artist you could name.  By some estimates, he wrote one song per day over his 20 year career.  We know of at least 1200 published works, enough for a year of A Box Of Toys.  But it is one thing to write and perform as obsessively as he did.  It is another to have such mastery of style.  Of the dozen or so artists in this show, he either sung with them or had them sing with him- and let’s be clear- Cambodian music (like most popular music of the time) was very vocal/lyric centered.