When Sok Visal touched down
in Phnom Penh in 1993, he came face to face with a city down on its luck. Torn by 20 years of internecine strife, the streets still echoed with the sounds of war: staccato trills of gunfire, the roar of UNTAC’s armoured cars. Visal, fresh from the housing projects of Paris, was also down on his luck: drinking beer, smoking weed, running with the wrong crowd. “My life wasn’t going anywhere. I had to make a choice. I came here looking for something.”
Fast forward nearly two decades. Sitting in his sleek new recording studio, discussing his record label while the trailer for his first co-directed feature film plays in the background, Visal seems to be a man who has found what he was looking for. His story of a Cambodian boy made good is, in one way, the story of Cambodia itself. As Visal comes into his creative prime as music producer, festival organiser, film director and all round urban mogul, Phnom Penh is experiencing a cultural renaissance similar to that of the swinging ‘60s, Cambodia’s ‘golden age.’
By the mid ‘70s of course, the Golden Age was over. In 1975 Visal’s parents fled the encroaching KR cadres, first to a Thai refugee camp then on to France. Moving from housing project to housing project, Visal struggled in school and became increasingly drawn to urban sub-culture. “At night I was sneaking out onto the streets to do graffiti. At one point my mother got scared I was turning bad, I got into trouble for vandalism and stuff. She got scared of losing me, so she sent me to the States.”
Like so many Khmer refugees, he discovered the States wasn’t all apple pie. “I thought I’d find the American dream like on the TV, but it wasn’t like that. I left the housing project in France only to land in a Khmer community where everyone was on welfare, gambling, kind of a mess.” He credits graffiti and hip hop with helping him survive.
When he returned to France he carried on rapping and tagging round the banlieues. “I didn’t have a job; I was hanging around smoking weed. But I felt I wasn’t born for that, I felt I was more of an artist. So I came back to Cambodia.”
Restarting life wasn’t easy, but once again hip hop saved him: “While I was working I was hanging around with a bunch of Khmer American returnees, ex-gangsters from Long Beach, and we listened to rap every night.” One of the guys, DJ Sop, became the first person to produce a Khmer hip hop album, combining industry beats with Khmer rappers. I wished I coulda been part of it. But I had a lot of personal problems in those days…”
So Visal kept his head down, quietly remixed Sop’s tracks and got his life back on track. Finally, he was ready. “In 2004 I produced my first album. I don’t know if it went well, but… it went! I just made a few copies of the album and gave it away, it wasn’t a business. The whole thing was just to help us get down with the edgy kids, the kids who loved hip hop. It started to get big. And that was the start of Klap Ya Handz.”
Less of a record label, more of a creative collective of hip hop crazy kids, KYH has a sound all its own. Reworking Khmer pop from the 1960s and ’70s, KYH is determinedly local: “If you listen to most of my mixes I try to keep a very traditional sound. I don’t use a bit of Khmer sample and turn it into gangsta hip hop. My music has the sound of the Khmer beat, the sarawan beat, the sound of Cambodia.” Listening to tracks by Klap Ya Handz alumni like Kdep, Khmer Rap Boyz and Pu Khlaing is a schizophonic experience, oscillating between Khmer Wall of Sound samples and brownstone beats, quickfire rap weaving through the rhythm like a rush-hour moto. And although he’s now diversifying the sound, “mixing Khmer music with bossa and reggae and jazz,” Visal is adamant about one thing: “It has to remain edgy, and that means staying urban. We don’t want to go pop and flowers and bubblegum. We don’t want to go… K-pop.” He seems disgusted at the thought.
True to these urban roots, Visal is organising Rise Up II in October, an all day mash-up of live hip hop from the likes of Dollah and Prolyfik, as well as dance-offs, rap-offs and art events. “The first Rise Up (2010) was about showing people we were here. Now it’s about showing people there is an alternative. You have another choice, an original sound home-grown in Cambodia. You don’t have to listen to… K-pop.” More disgust.
Possibly to provide a further alternative to the spectre of Korean ditties, Visal set up his film production company, 391 Films, in 2009. Three years later, Comfortably Lost, a feature film on which he was first assistant director, is piquing the interest of distributors in Cannes. The story of a disenchanted American photographer who comes to Cambodia and sees life through Cambodian eyes, Comfortably Lost obviously fills Visal with pride. “For me it’s a road movie – in fact it’s probably the first Cambodian road movie! The hero finds inspiration in Cambodia. But he’s not the main guy, really. The main characters are the Khmer people and the scenery, the country itself. It’s a very positive film, it moves away from the clichés of the killing fields and the Khmer Rouge.”
For Visal, these tired and tiring clichés misrepresent today’s Cambodia: “People shouldn’t forget about those things but it’s time to move forward. I believe Khmer people have art in their blood. I don’t think they were made to go to war; they’re artists before everything else. They are musicians, architects, painters and dancers: I don’t think they were born to do anything but that.”
Visal leans back in his chair and winds up the interview. “There’s something going on right now… and this is only the beginning.” Welcome to the Golden Age.
WHO: Sok Visal
WHAT: Urban media mogulWHERE: Phnom Penh
WHEN: The Second Golden Age (or, more specifically, Rise Up 2 in October)
WHY: Home-grown hip hop