152: Homrong, by the Musicians of the National Dance Company of Cambodia

Musicians of the National Dance Company of Cambodia (Cambodia)
Homrong (1991)
10 tracks, 50 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

It’s another one of those albums where I go ‘ahh just listen to how bluesy it is!’ because…well, just listen to it! The bluesiness! Ahh!

Okay, let me calm down. I talked about Cambodian music back in April with the album by Dengue Fever. That band take their cues from Khmer psychedelia and pop from the 1960s and 70s, but with today’s album, we’re taking several big steps back into the country’s musical traditions.

The National Dance Company of Cambodia were set up as part of the re-establishment of Khmer cultural life after its decimation under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. They perform the dances that were a staple of entertainment and worship in the royal courts for centuries, now repurposed for the country’s new era. The Company was founded in 1980, bringing together the few old masters of the dance and its music that had survived Pol Pot’s purges and hundreds of young pupils eager to learn, and in just ten years, the group had attained a level that was capable of wowing audiences around the world. That’s when this album was recorded, from a live performance at the Real World Studios during the Company’s UK tour. It’s a little disappointing that this album only captures the sound of the performance and missing out the doubtlessly stunning choreography, but the music it does contain is noteworthy enough on its own.

An interesting point is that this music – that of royal patronage, of sacred usage and analogous to what we would call classical or art music – is similar in many ways to the country’s folk music. It uses a lot of the same instruments, for example the chapei (a large-bodied, two-stringed lute) is very common in the bardic music tradition, and is also an important element of the sound here. Although this classical style is – like many classical traditions all around the world – derived from those folk traditions somewhere back along the line, the Khmer style retains much more of the same

Okay, I have to mention it – the bluesiness of it. So much of Cambodian music from folk to psychedelic rock, is imbibed with the blue notes and loping rhythms that signify the blues to our ears, and the classical music is no exception. The chapei is a perfect instrument for capturing this sound, but it’s also there in the tro spike fiddle as well as the vocal performance, all three harnessing the aching beauty of the melodic slides. I find Cambodian music to be bluesy in the same way as I do Albanian music; that is, the musical similarities are so clear while at the same time, it is equally clear that the two styles have evolved completely separately. Whether that is merely a function of there only being a finite number of discreet, recognisable musical scales, or whether there is a more overarching preference in the human brain for that particularly bluesy sound that can be heard in music around the world, I have no idea. It sounds like some fertile ground for an in-depth multi-sited study in the disciplines of psychomusicology, ethnomusicology and historical musicology. Maybe I’ll get to it next time I have a free weekend.

093: Venus on Earth, by Dengue Fever

Dengue Fever (USA/Cambodia)
Venus on Earth (2008)
12 tracks, 47 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes

I’m really into Cambodian music, especially classical and folk styles, and we’ll get onto those a little later in the year. This one is something different.

Dengue Fever are an American band that have their roots in Cambodian music, but it’s Cambodian music that has its roots in American music. The group formed to play covers of Khmer pop from the 60s and 70s, pumped up to be extra psychedelic for good measure, and before long they had found Chhom Nimol, a well-known singer in Cambodia who had just moved to LA – she brought a proper air of authenticity to the group’s sound.

I debated for quite a while whether to choose this album, or Escape from Dragon House, which the band released three years earlier, before falling on the side of Venus on Earth. That’s not because this one is necessarily better, and it’s not perfect either – there are a couple of weak points – but I think I prefer this one because there is a bit more of a variety in the styles.

By this point, Dengue Fever had really got that psychedelic Khmer sound down, and they were making musical connections to other styles – the twangy electric guitars, Farfisa organ and roaring saxophone lent themselves as much to surf rock as the Cambodian style, so that plays an important role here. There are also deep Ethiopian influences in the Mulatu Astatke mould, especially evident on tracks such as ‘Integratron,’ which provides an extra layer of interesting connection: the ‘golden age’ of Ethiopian jazz almost perfectly syncs up with that of Khmer rock, both reaching their heights between 1969-1975 before being crushed by brutal regimes. And all the way through the album, Nimol’s beautiful voice cuts through it all, razor sharp but crystal clear, twisting around above the grooves.

From a band that started just to play covers of decades-old music from half-way across the world, Dengue Fever completely transcended that. They manage to keep that time and place palpable within their music, but they turned it into something that is recognisably their own, and all the more exciting for that.