For proof of the universality of rock ’n’ roll, look no further than Cambodia in the 1960s and 70s. Even there, young people picked up electric guitars and studied Mick Jagger’s moves, melding Eastern melody with Western groove in ways that are still strikingly fresh.
Yet in one of the 20th century’s most extreme examples of the effects of politics on popular culture, Cambodia’s pop scene along with virtually every other manifestation of modern society there was brutally stamped out with the 1975 arrival of the Khmer Rouge, whose nearly four-year reign led to the deaths of 1.7 million people. Since then, pre-Khmer Rouge pop has survived in fragments, but the history behind it has remained frustratingly incomplete. Now, after a decade of research by a U.S. film-maker, John Pirozzi, that history has been told thoroughly in Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll .
Through grainy clips of bell-bottomed rockers and tearful contemporary interviews, the film traces the original music and its unlikely resilience. “I wanted to show that this music would endure beyond everything it had been put through,” Mr. Pirozzi said. “The music is the one thing that has allowed the Cambodian people to access a time when their life wasn’t about war and genocide.”
The development of Cambodia’s pop mirrored its post-war political situation. After almost a century under French control, the country became independent in 1953, and its music took shape with French, American and Latin influences; Sinn Sisamouth, Cambodia’s most revered star, emerged in this era as a cosmopolitan crooner in the Khmer language. The 1960s brought a pop golden age, as performers like Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea, the most famous female singer, embraced rock ’n’ roll. Later, with an increased U.S. presence from the Vietnam War in 1969 the United States began bombing Cambodia, then a neutral country, and a harder-edged rock ’n’ soul flourished. The progress ended in April 1975, when the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh, the capital, and essentially turned the nation into a vast prison camp.
In Mr. Pirozzi’s documentary that troubled history is the backdrop for a rich musical cast, most of which perished in the Khmer Rouge period. It includes Yol Aularong, a charismatic proto-punk who mocked conformist society, and women such as Ros Serey Sothea, the nation’s sweetheart; Pen Ran, her worldly, wisecracking foil; and Pou Vannary.
Treasured
The music they made remains treasured not only by Cambodians but also by rock connoisseurs around the world, for a spunky inventiveness that now, in retrospect, makes Cambodia seem a sparkling outpost of world pop. “The Khmer Rouge understood the value of the artists and their connection to the larger public,” Mr. Pirozzi said. “They’re the voice of the people. You can’t control them, so you eliminate them.”
For Cambodians, of course, the music is no mere curiosity, and Mr. Pirozzi said that at early screenings of Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten , he has been confronted by numerous young people who said, tearfully, that they now finally understood their parents’ generation. Youk Chhang, of the Documentation Center, is an executive producer of the film, and he called the project a way to understand the culture that preceded and survived the country’s genocide. — ©New York Times News Service
