We remember: Khmer musics

... It was un-proud Australian journalist, John Pilger, who initially alerted international citizens to the horrors of the Cambodian killing fields. Pilger defines his professional mission as a "guardian of the public memory", invoking these words of Milan Kundera: "The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

The Maoist political program of Pol Pot had a very different intention; it sought to erase the past - to declare a revolutionary 'tabula rasa': Year Zero. To that end, books and ancient texts were burned, buildings were levelled, and vast human populations were murdered.

3 decades later, and history has liquidated Pol Pot - if not his memory, or that of the atrocities he visited on his fellow citizens. Now the task of recovering the history of Khmer culture has enlisted humans from about the globe; 1 of my favourite is DJ bUMp, of Defective Records. He's been kind enough to send me a copy of the Cambodian Psych-Out complication... My colleague, Sokha Suy, is going to do a little translation for him.

Mr bUMp relates that several luminaries of the Khmer pop scene were involved in the Royal Orchestra, so for yr delectations I'm posting this LP: UNESCO Collection Musical Sources/Art Music from South-East Asia IX-3 Royal Music of Cambodia...

"This record is dedicated to those magnificent artists, the royal dancers and musicians of Cambodia" - Jacques Brunot, January 1970. Download it here.

The music bears analogy to Javanese and Balinese Gamelan, but is closer in style to the traditions of Malaysia and Thailand. Wonderfully melifluous, and supported by a female choir who sing in a language which is essentially devoid of the harsh guttural consonants of Anglo-Saxon dialects. Recorded on the eve of the coup which would depose Norodom Sihanouk, the palace orchestra employs antique instruments tuned to a traditional scale, and the choir has been augmented to reflect its size at the beginning of the 20th century. A little over 5 years later, and all those instruments and most of the musicians, singers and dancers were 'liquidated' by Pol Pot & his crew.

There is something of an irony that these recordings were made by UNESCO: Cambodia is the only nation to have suffered an embargo on UN aid & assistance. Instead, food & medicine were directed to the Khmer Rouge militia of Citizen #1, in accordance with the strategic interests of the Western democracies.

Cambodian musicians were recording extraordinary pop and psychedelic music in the late '60s and early '70s - music which reflected their indigenous traditions, but made ample accomodations to the alien influence of Western culture. Those unique stylings are enjoying a revival through several documentaries and a succession of CD compilations...