Dengue Fever Compiles Electric Cambodia

Revisiting a genuinely lost era - and place - for music via a new benefit album, due on Jan. 10.

By Blurt Staff

Cambodia's rock music of the '60s and '70s - unearthly, haunting, startling - receives an exciting retrospective in the new compilation Dengue Fever Presents Electric Cambodia, available Jan. 10 from Minky Records.

            Proceeds from the album benefit Cambodian Living Arts (http://www.cambodianlivingarts.org/) , a project of the non-profit Massachusetts-based Marion Institute devoted to supporting the revival of traditional Khmer performing arts and inspiring contemporary artistic expression.

            The 14-track collection, selected with care by the members of the internationally renowned Los Angeles rock band Dengue Fever, takes a deep look at the intoxicating rock produced by such noted Southeast Asian musicians of the era as singer-songwriter Sinn Sisamouth, one of the kingpins of the Cambodian music scene, and the brilliant female vocalists Pan Ron and Ros Sereysothea.

            A couple of the album's choicest numbers - Sereysothea's "Flowers in the Pond" and "Shave Your Beard" - have appeared in cover versions on Dengue Fever's widely praised albums.

            The music on Electric Cambodia is the product of a golden age literally lost in time. It disappeared after the Pol Pot regime took power in 1975; following the establishment of an agrarian dictatorship, the Khmer Rouge exterminated as many as 2 million on the country's bloody "killing fields."

            "Before the Khmer Rouge, it was a crazy, booming society, socially and economically - it was very progressive," says Dengue Fever bassist Senon Williams.

            The Cambodian music of the '60s and early '70s was a mating of Western and Eastern sounds. "In my opinion, they were trying to play Western rock songs," says Williams. "They incorporated their own folk music into psychedelic rock."He notes that while many of the songs used the kind of electric instrumentation heard on U.S. hits, the productions also employed traditional Cambodian instruments.

            Vestiges of the Cambodians' American inspirations can be heard on tracks like Pan Ron's "Snaeha," a Khmer adaptation of Cher's 1966 hit "Bang Bang," and Ros Sereysothea's "I Want to Shout," which takes some inspiration from the Isley Brothers' 1959 single "Shout."

            This exhilarating style was wiped off the face of the earth when Cambodia's best-known performers - including Sisamouth, Ron, and Sereysothea - became victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide. "They killed off the entire creative and forward-thinking gene pool," says Williams.

            While the artists vanished forever, their music somehow survived. Cambodia's electric music has been circulated hand-to-hand on cassette editions, duplicated cheaply at high speed and bearing little or no information about the songs or those who performed them.

            "The music on this compilation was anonymous," Williams says. "It was all off crazy mix tapes. We didn't know who was who."

            Fortunately, the older sister of Dengue Fever's Cambodia-born lead vocalist Chhom Nimol was able to identify the material - "She put names to the songs," Williams says.

            The songs and styles heard on Electric Cambodia have survived in their native land, though not exactly as they were originally performed. "Everybody knows them and loves them, but now it sounds like Chinese synth-pop," says Williams. "It doesn't seem like they're interested in playing it in its authentic fashion."

            The members of Dengue Fever show their respect for the music by performing their rocking renditions of '60s Cambodian music in their live shows - and by committing proceeds from Electric Cambodia to the nurturing of Khmer culture today.

            "We thought it'd be nice to give something back," Williams says.

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Dengue Fever on the web: http://www.myspace.com/denguefevermusic

Tour Dates:

12/31 @ The Mint, Los Angeles, CA.
01/07 @ SoHo, Santa Barbara, CA.
01/08 @ The Independent, San Francisco, CA.
01/09 @ Berbatti's Pan, Portland, OR.
01/10 @ Neumo's, Seattle, WA.