Say "Hello Hi" to Bochan

You know who else is raising funds on Kickstarter? Bochan Huy, the singer and songwriter whose music opened the Khmerican podcast I used to put together.

She's raising funds to finish her next album, "Hello Hi." If you need anymore convincing, here are some clips from her performance several months ago for Season of Cambodia in New York City:





And I love this song:

Breakfast at Psar Kap Koh

I love this music video, not least because I used to live a few blocks from the housing projects featured in the video. I also regularly ate at the Psar Kap Koh Restaurant (about 1:55), which apparently is a favorite of songwriter and guitarist Christopher Minko.

Psar Kap Koh more or less translates to Market of the Butchered Cow. It was tasty.

You can find Krom's album, "Songs from the Noir," on Amazon.

Gangnam style, Khmer style

South Korean rapper PSY's Gangnam Style video has taken the world by storm, a fact you are no doubt aware of even if you've been sleeping in a hammock in the Cardamom Mountains for the past three months. (Something I don't recommend.)

Despite the silly veneer and infectious beat, it's an exploration of economic inequality, skyrocketing property values, the behavior of the nouveau riche, and gentrification in a country that has become wealthy, fought a brutal civil war and achieved independence in the last 70 years. It's something Cambodians, who were once briefly occupied by the same colonial power, can identify with.

Also, there's a horsey dance.

Amid the infinite parodies frolicking on the Internet, Cambodians and Cambodian-Americans have added their remixes. These include highly polished filmmakers who are both well-armed and well-choreographed:



Cambodian tourists in Bokor who are nothing if not enthusiastic:



The rudely culinary:



Even the kids are doing it:



And then a shot-for-shot remake in Phnom Penh by the kind of wealthy people who are being parodied in the original video:



It's meta. How deep can this rabbit hole go?

Hella Chluy rocks on

Memo Jackson, aka Kosal Jivit from the former comedy duo Hella Chluy, has released Plz Confirm, 15 tracks of Khmericanized hip-hop. It's definitely worth a listen.

He's an entertainer, as I discovered when I interviewed him for Khmerican:



You can drape yourself in Chluy Wear, too.

Must love karaoke

Mao pei na? Funkytown.   Photo by Will Koenig.

Roth Meas, of the Phnom Penh Post, interviews Frédéric Amat, a journalist who is offended by the cultural elitism on display in Cambodia. Apparently, foreigners aren't experiencing the real Cambodia.

“They don’t really open the window to Cambodia. They don’t try to speak the language. They are not interested in the culture. When they finish their job, they just go to the foreign bars, have beers with friends. They live in Cambodia, but they don’t really live with Cambodians.”

This is quite shocking, until one remembers that this kind of self-segregation happens everywhere. While partly the result of racist zoning policies, "ghettoes" like New York City's Chinatown and the banlieues of Paris are attractive to immigrants. You might know some people there, you can communicate easily, you can find comfort food and there's probably an appropriate house of worship. (Of course, bad things happen when discrimination and poverty are pervasive.)

While proponents of assimilation are aghast at this kind of purposeful separation, in time it becomes a local selling point. No one says "Hey, let's go over to that neighborhood that's exactly like every other neighborhood in town and eat at that diner that's like every other diner." Instead, people say "let's eat a whole lamb in Soi Arab" or "let's take the train to Leavenworth and buy some strudel." Because people enjoy experiencing new and exciting things in carefully measured doses.

Lederhosen cleanup on Aisle Sieben! Ja wohl!  Photo by David Morgan-Mar.

Faine Greenwood offers a bevy of useful suggestions about how to befriend Cambodia, but I'm going to unfairly condense one of her main points as love it or leave it (emphasis hers):

And by the way – I’m just plain offended if your excuse is “Khmer is a small language, and this is a really small country, and I’m probably not going to be here long anyway so why bother?”

This is just a duplicitous way to say “This country and its language are crap. Why am I even here?”

Which begs the question, do Khmer people want to be friends with you?

Most of the educated Westerners in Cambodia do not plan to settle down along the Mekong. They're climbing the ladder of an organization, or trying to finish a thesis, or spending a year working for (relatively) little so they can feel better about themselves when they go back home and work for a firm that builds coal-fired power plants on sacred burial sites that once provided habitat to a now-extinct species of cute, fluffy mammal.

Most Cambodians who emigrate to the United States are certainly intent on staying. Long Beach's Cambodia Town is the sparkling heart of Khmerness in North America. It doesn't mean that every Cambodian-American learns much English or that Khmer karaoke parties in the U.S. have many white faces.

The only real advice I have is this: If you want to have Khmer friends, you must love karaoke. Because that's what Khmer people truly love. (And durian.)

16 again!

Savang over at Cambodgeforum.com lamented my oversight of The Cambodian Space Project's cover of Chnam Oun 16.



Yet another great band doing great things in Cambodia. Merci for the tip.

(It's a recording of an outdoor performance, so the quality is not great. Check out their studio recordings.)

Evolution of a song

"Chnam Oun Dap Pram Muy (I'm 16 Years Old)" is a revered piece of culture in Cambodia. It's an iconic song of Ros Sereysothea, a beloved Cambodian rock star of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The audio quality of the recording is not great, but it is all that's left as she died under the Khmer Rouge.

However, despite the abrupt end to her life and career (and the fledgling Khmer cultural renaissance after independence), the song is alive and thriving.

Newer karaoke covers are popular among Cambodians and members of the Khmer diaspora. But what I find fascinating are some of the more modern deconstructions of this class rock song.



It's a shaky phone video, but it illustrates the energy of a Dengue Fever performance. Chhom Nimol was a singer in Cambodia and now fronts the otherwise American band. (You can buy their music at the band's website or at Amazon.)



Laura Mam's acoustic version is excellent (skip ahead to 2:26 past the chatty bit).



My favorite may be Bochan's cover — not least because it's also the theme song for the Khmerican podcast. (You can buy her music on Facebook or on Amazon.)

And to go even farther down the Judge Rabbit hole, the album Chnam Oun 16 includes seven remixes of Bochan's version.