Cambodian Psychedelic Music of the 1960s and !970s and Its modern revival

With some notes on Asian language structure

Dec 29, 2024

Greetings!!

Thanks for coming back here for your weeky Asian studies fix.

For updates on the future of this publication, and my other writing projects, I have moved them to the end, the bottom of this page. In my search for ways to improve this publication, I have recognized that the content should take prominence over the content creator. You may read updates at THE END of this page, if you’d like.

Psychedelic Cambodian Pop Music of the 1960s and 1970s and Its Modern Revival

The American wr in Vietnam War was widespread and had far reaching often unexpected consequences. One of these was in the area of music. The musical shifts in Cambodia, Vietnam’s southwestern neighbor, were particularly interesting.

It’s a fascinating subject, one little told, and today I only plan to offer a brief introduction, along with leads for further exploration.

An excellent place to begin is with the documentary “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll.” Released in October of 2014 and produced by John Pirozzi and Andrew Pope, the film tells the history of how each political and social change in the region or nation arrived, it was reflected in a change in the pop music of Cambodia.

When independence from France came, the local pop music scene was largely a blend of traditional Cambodian traditions mixed with the the French pop music of the time. As American influence in the region grew, the music of Cambodia became increasingly influenced by the American and British music that the American armed forces personnel enjoyed listening to. This was in no small part because the US military’s AFVN radio broadcasts easily reach Cambodia.

The result was an interesting, psychedelic clear blending of East and West in popular music of that nation.

As political crises hit, the government of Cambodia responded by mandating alterations in the form, style, and lyrical and thematic content of the local music for political purposes. For instance, at one time there was a concerted push for patriotic anti-Communist lyrics in the pop music of that nation.

Of course, the worst thing that happened to both the music and the people of Cambodia as a whole was when the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975. The Khmer Rouge were a brutal, bloodthirsty regime that believed that nation would be improved by the removal through mass slaughter of large portions of the population. 1 Among those reportedly targetted as undesirable or unpatriotic by the Khmer Rouge and therefore unworthy of living, were people who spoke French, people who wore glasses, and artists and musicians as well as other intellectuals. Ultimately, during its four years in power, the Khmer Rouge reportedly killed around 25% of the people of their own nation, resulting in a new word, “autogenocide.”

This too, and its effects on the national pop music and the musicians who made it, is covered in this documentary.

The Khmer Rouge was removed from power following a war with Vietnam, its neighbor to the east. Life was not easy there afterwards, but it was definitely moving in the correct direction.

While the documentary tells this story, it is not the only source for information. For instance one can start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Rocks

But for more information on “Don’t Think I Have Forgotten,” please visit either the documentary's official website or the documentary's wikipedia page. (Aaargh!! I am tired of citing Wikipedia, but it is so quick and easy and useful.) Check out the trailer.

To view the documentary in the legal fashion that reimburses its creators, you can find it online in several places where you can view it for a fee. One of these is through a link to buy or rent a download of the film on YouTube below.

It is available on DVD from Amazon elsewhere for the reasonable price of around $20.00 (US).

I will say that the documentary is available online in several places, often including YouTube, where it appears to be shared without the copyright owner’s permission, and where it is unlikely that the creators and workers are being reimbursed for their efforts. If you choose to watch it without reimbursing the creators, you should be able to find it if you search the internet, but I don’t plan to post links here.

The Music Itself

While a great deal of this sort of music was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge who found it objectionable and a sign of cultural contamination from the West, some recordings did survive either in Cambodia or abroad.

These are now being shared online in several forums including both YouTube and Pandora. They are available as CDs and in other recording formats.

This is a collection that was available for sale in Cambodia on cassette tape and made its way to the west, carried by enthusiastic travelers.

Here’s a collection that was put together by members of the Californian band Dengue Fever. More on them later.

Modern Revival of this Form of Music

Cambodian psychedelic rock of the 1960s and 1970s has had a small scale revival in the past twenty years or so.

Dengue Fever, the band

In California, there is a band called “Dengue Fever,” that was created by a group of American musicians in Southern California who became fans of this music after travelling in Cambodia. Having developed a desire to play these classic Cambodian pop songs at a local performance where a succession of local bands were invited to play whatever they wished (mostly indy rock), they found Chhom Nimol, an accomplished singer who came to the USA as a refugee, and the band was formed. Their first album, Dengue Fever, was released in 2003, with their most recent, Ting Mong, being released in 2023.

If you wonder, my favorites among their albums were Cannibal Courtship from 2011 and The Deepest Lake from 2015. There was a period where I used to drive around listening to them in the car a lot.

( See Dengue Fever music website , Dengue Fever YouTube Channel ,

Dengue Fever Wikipedia page , Chhom Nimol , Zac Holtzman )

Cambodian Space Project

In Australia, a similiar project has also been created called The Cambodian Space Project.

Although the group suffered a major setback when their lead singer, Kak Channthy, died in a car accident in Phnom Penh while visting home, the project has recruited new talent and is making music again.

( See Cambodian Space Project Website , Cambodian Space Project YouTube Channel , Cambodian Space Project albums , Kak Channthy )

A Cambodian Space Project album

Here’s an obscure piece that enjoyed where the late Kak Channthy joined an Australian group called “Astronomy Class” to produce an interesting piecce of music that among other things samples Anthony Bourdain, the late American author, documentarian, and chef who did so much to share global culture in a knowledgable and responsible way. There’s an interesting remake of this available on YouTube that features Cambodian hip hop performers, RuthKo & Vin Vitou. Simply for reasons of space, I have shared a link instead of the entire video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41rJXh9VCps

“Barang” is a Cambodian word for “foreign person.” (notice it sounds like the more common “farang” for a foreign person in some languages) and a “tuk tuk” is a common Southeast Asian vehicle that looks like a little cart in the back half built on to the front end of a motorcycle and passengers and cargo can be carried in the cart. So it’s a song by a group of young Australians about a night spent in Cambodia. For more information on the meaning of this song, please go to Sonichits -Four Barang in a Tuk Tuk

Ros Serey Sothea, and “Chnam Oun Dop-Pram Muy” ( or “I’m 16.”)

Ros Serey Sothea was one of the top female vocalists in the realm of Cambodian pop music during this era, and this was one of her top songs. You can hear it on the trailer to “Don’t Think I Have Forgotten.” ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ros_Serey_Sothea ) She disappeared during the Khmer Rouge period and is presumed to have been among the millions of people slaughtered by them.

Here is the original version.

Here is a remake by the Cambodia Space Project featuring Kak Channthy.

And here’s another remake by Bochan, a Cambodian American refugee living in Southern California. It caused some controversy and was the subject of an NPR story.

See The Death And Uneasy Rebirth Of Cambodia's Psychedelic Rock August 17, 2014

A Quick Note on the Cambodian Language (sometimes called “Khmer.”)

First a quick disclaimer of sorts. Generally speaking academic scholars try to focus their topics on things they are deeply knowledgeable about and avoid writing publicly about subjects in their field that they have only a cursory knowledge of. By contrast, newspaper reporters are taught that if they know or hear something the readers probably don’t, well, that could make a great story even if it is the only thing they know about the subject. Just make sure you cite your source carefully if it is something that you know nothing about.

Here in Mostly Asian History, I tend to go back and forth between the two styles of writing and information sharing.

So, while I know very little about the Cambodian language, there is a good chance I know more than you, my reader, and although even that is not guaranteed, I am going to share what I do know.

Most of the languages of Southeast Asia and China are what are known as tonal, isolationist languages. “Tonal” means that pronouncing a word with the proper pitch pattern is an integral part of communicating the proper meaning. “Isolationist” means the words do not change form or structure. By contrast in English words change structure and form. For instance, “big,” “bigger,” and “biggest” are all different forms of the same word. Spanish has “hablo, hablas, hablamos,” etc. Therefore Spanish and English are not Isolationist languages although the Chinese dialects, Burmese, and Vietnamese are isolationist languages and if you want to modify the meaning of a word in these languages yu must put another word next to it. So in Mandarin Chinese “big,” “bigger” and “biggest” are pronounced “da,” “bijao da,” and “zui da” with the word unchanged but accompanied by a second word to modify it.

Therefore, in my personal, completely, admittedly ethnocentric opinion, it is kind of funny to hear people sometimes sing or rap in these languages. (Rapping especially sometimes. Years ago, I gave a ride to a friend of mine, a then 20 year old Karen refugee from SE Asia and he began fooling around and rapping in Burmese, some kind of love song, he said —he’s a funny guy and one of the toughest little people you will ever meet, I think— and I swear, he sounded to me like a popcorn popper machine when he did. Just this crazy sounding monosyllabic, rapid fire thing going on in the seat next to me in my car.

Anyway, interestingly enough Cambodian is distinctly different from most of its neighboring languages. It is not isolationist, it is not tonal, and the form of the words do change and some syllables have more stress than others. (Interestingly enough, the Burmese minority language “Mon” is related to Cambodian and also shares these characteristics. The guy mentioned above spoke several languages fluently Mon among them.)

And in my ignorant, barely informed at best opinion, that is probably one reason why Cambodia language pop music often resonates and feels different from a lot of Asian pop music.

Random K-Pop song

If you wonder, that global pop-music juggernaut K-pop is sung in Korean, another non-isolationist, non-tonal Asian language although from a very different language family than Cambodian which just may be a factor in why it became popular with speakers of Western languages. Maybe. Perhaps. Just a thought.

2NE1 — "I Am the Best" (Korean: 내가 제일 잘 나가; RR: Naega jeil jal naga

from 2011 ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_the_Best )

Good bye!! See you all next week if things go to plan!!

Should you wonder, I find myself studying harder for the AEMT test than I had originally expected, but I do remain committed to the plan of getting a few long essays written ahead of time and sharing excerpts as the bulk of my weekly offerings. Please be patient and stay tuned. In the meantime, leaving a comment, clicking the like button, encouraging a friend to read of subscribe to this, or sharing it will go a long way to make me happy. Don’t you want to make me happy?

Thanks for reading Mostly Asian History! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Mostly Asian History