I’m an old basketball junkie and although my playing days are well behind me, I continue to see the beauty in it. In basketball you have five starters. On the court, they need to get along, be unselfish, cooperate and acknowledge they are part of something bigger than themselves. When the game is over, they can get along or not; it doesn’t matter. These are referred to as one-taxi teams or five-taxi teams. My question to you is does the same principle apply to bands? Is it necessary to get along with each other after you finish playing or can you play well on stage then go your separate ways?
I’ve been a professional musician a number of times in this rather twisted life of mine: the early ’80s were spent playing with cult Australian band The Bachelors from Prague, which was without doubt five different cabs combined with the folly of egotistical youth. Great band, but we split when one half wanted to go Tijuana Brass while I was along the lines of that gentleman deviant Chet Baker (I played trumpet and guitar). The split could be slightly compared to the current state of Thai politics insofar that friendships were certainly shattered (not all), however a violent breakup it wasn’t.
Now Krom, that’s a very different story. Nearing 60 years of age, I’m now working in the most professional band I have ever worked with. In one way very much a one-taxi band: tight, well rehearsed, disciplined, cohesive and very professional. However, there are some very interesting points that create our signature sound. It’s also important to note that both Sophea Chamroeun (co-founder /songwriter and lead vocals) and Sopheak Chamroeun (lead vocals) have studied Cambodian traditional dance and music under the best of masters since they were 12 through the Cambodian Living Arts programme, plus are recent graduates of the Royal University of Fine Arts and have a very professional approach to their work with Krom. Can’t forget my good friend and musical colleague: multi-instrumentalist Jimmy B, who’s the fourth member of Krom and understands my music better than most.
And how would you characterise Krom, on and off stage?
I have a deep love and respect for Khmer music; therefore, out of respect, I would never dare tamper with this remarkable music created by Cambodians. That said, Krom is and always will be a Phnom Penh-based bilingual band (Khmer and English) playing original compositions. The key to the original music of Krom is the following formula, which isn’t easy to do as a composer because you have to have your ego under control to allow this to happen with your compositions.
What I do is record the guitar foundations of a Krom song, put it on a memory stick and then hand it to Sophea without saying a word or even humming a suggested melody riff (this is where one puts the ego in a box and closes the lid). Sophea goes away and totally on her own creates the Khmer lyrics and vocal melody without any influence whatsoever from me. She has never ever let Krom down in this regard and I am always so surprised at what sounds she builds around the delta blues picking of my guitar work and compositions. I use the same principle of respect with our Khmer producer, Sarin Chhuon, who then adds his own unique Khmer interpretation of the master tapes. At the end you have the rather unique signature sound that is Krom.
I should also mention the social issues that Krom touches on within many of the lyrics with a focus on the ongoing tragedy of sexual slavery which is prolific in Southeast Asia, nurtured and developed as a major industry by the very corrupt ruling elites of the Southeast Asian nations who are willing, as I sing in Tango Traffic Tango, ‘to sell their daughters’. That’s the harsh, brutal and mostly denied truth about these societies and it needs to be sung about.
Sophea and Sopheak, in their own way, are very courageous individuals and represent the first wave of, dare I say, protest singers or singers of songs of social justice to come out of Cambodia – an interesting development indeed. Something also of great
relevance is the ongoing Noir-related themes (our debut 2012 album is suitably titled Songs From The Noir). Having led a rather Noir life – there are dark sides to the Minko story that should remain unspoken (Ah ain’t no saint) – all Krom lyrics are very personal and there is a true and often very dark story or seven within our songs. I should also acknowledge Bangkok-based Noir author Christopher G Moore and our friendship, which has resulted in me using words from his novels in The Ying and other songs.
My wife, who came from Thailand and was the mother of my now 20-year-old daughter, passed away three years ago. As a result of her death and the associated personal grief, I returned to my musical roots. Out of something so sad, the passing of a remarkable woman from Bangkok, came Krom – a unique legacy. For many personal, historical and other reasons, I would love to see Krom perform in Bangkok. Many of our songs emanate from this truly remarkable city and we are honoured that Moore has already agreed to MC our debut when we get there.
Your songs are the antithesis of pop because what you write about – the horrors of child sexual exploitation and human and social injustices – are not popular subjects, but they need to be. Why is it important for you to sing about these social injustices?
Firstly, fact: human slavery (labour, sex and other) is at its highest point ever in the history of humanity. That’s a fucking tragedy. Some of this I attribute to the horror of unbridled capitalism, particularly since the collapse of communism, whereby we now have a world dominated by greed and selfishness, an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor (which allows even greater exploitation) and power elites addicted to the worst traits of ego-driven madness found in humanity
The sex industry: nearly everyone sidesteps the issue. They smile about it, joke about it, participate in it and waltz around it, but the blunt truth is this is an industry built on the sale of human flesh as an object of sexuality, with exceptionally high profit margins and a high turnover of deaths as the women spiral into dependency on drugs and alcohol to numb the sale of their bodies over and over to ageing men. Let me give you an example: CNN’s well-meant but naïve Anti Human Slavery campaign in Thailand focuses on sensationalism, usually through a filmed ‘brothel bust’ which involves a celebrity. Despite good intentions, CNN fails to point the finger where it needs to be pointed: at the ruling elites of the Southeast Asian nations that have allowed the sex industry to flourish for cold, hard profit.
Why doesn’t CNN point the finger as it should? Easy: in the case of Thailand, the national airline spends millions on advertising so CNN doesn’t want to upset them or the ruling elite who own Thai International. It’s all interconnected, this worldwide billion-dollar industry: airlines, hotel chains, tourism, all complicit in human trafficking. Huge profits are reaped by an elite few, despite the misery imposed on women who are nothing more than sex slaves and usually subservient to a nasty pimp controlling them through a volatile mixture of drugs, alcohol and violence. I’m not saying here that hotel chains, etc, are directly implicated in the sex trade, but they are indirect beneficiaries (and those hotels in the ‘right locations’ know exactly what their clients are up to).
However, the real tragedy is how mainstream and integrated into society prostitution has become in many Southeast Asian nations over the past five decades (I have watched the many changes in Bangkok since I first arrived there in 1972). It’s an industry that flourished during the Vietnam war and was recognised by the ruling masters as a viable and very profitable commercial enterprise. The commercial benefits of a foreign clientele needing to purchase sex were recognised and a subsequent hospitality industry purposefully built around catering for the ‘sex tourist’ was supported at the highest levels. It’s publicly recognised that this now provides a significant percentage of Cambodian and Thai GDP.
No matter how mainstream or accepted this trade has become, behind the scenes it remains a brutal world of young women and girls entrapped, enslaved or even kidnapped into a criminal machine that needs to be fed with young stock to satisfy the appetite for commercial sexual services. This is why I changed the final words of the lyrics in Down Sukumvit Road from ‘I’m walking down Sukumvit Road’ (singular) to ‘We are all walking down Sukumvit Road’ (plural): truth is we are all walking down these roads as we allow sexual enslavement to exist. As I sing in Tango Traffic Tango, these nations willingly sell their daughters into the sex industry; nations not yet mature enough to confront the tragedy they impose on their own people.
So many observe the Noir, but how many live the Noir? How many can truly acknowledge the brutal reality that 98% of these women do not want to participate in this trade but have no other choice due to poverty and very often family pressure? Look at the numerous deluded old white boys in their 60s on a Viagra overdose, drinking morning beer with a scraggy 16-year-old girl hanging on their wrinkled arm. It says it all in its obvious brutality and I want these deluded old fools to hear Krom’s songs in order to make them feel as uncomfortable as they should feel. I can’t deny a morbid philosophical fascination with this exercise in nihilism, involving that most sacred of human entities we call ‘love’. Here we find lonely, pathetic, ancient men looking to purchase romantic love in much younger Asian women yet this love is an unattainable objective: the very women they court are no longer capable of love because the brutality of endlessly selling one’s body destroys the ability to genuinely love – a bitter irony, yet thousands of misguided fools each year embark on this fruitless and tragic journey. The blunt truth is that Krom’s songs need to be sung and heard. The more we speak out about these injustices, the better – in a world that’s gone stark raving mad.
What good has come from your work and what more needs to be done?
I have devoted a lifetime to the cause of social justice and will continue to do so. I just try to do my best with my music and hopefully achieve some good things in a rather complex world; acknowledging life’s horrors and beauties are so intermingled as to be beyond all understanding.
In finishing I give you an example that negates many of the bullshit arguments supporting prostitution and the sex trade. Look at Sophea and Sopheak, Krom’s vocalists, who are a brilliant example of what can happen when a 12-year-old girl is given educational opportunity rather than being steered towards commercial sexual exploitation. Both grew up in one of Phnom Penh’s most notorious drug and prostitution quarters, the legendary White Building, yet they managed to avoid the horrors that surrounded them by becoming pupils of Cambodian Living Arts. Now, at the ages of 22 and 23, they are fast becoming internationally recognised music stars. What I’m saying here is that every girl deserves an education and chances are they will go on to lead productive lives as contributing members of their respective communities.
Songs From The Noir and Neon Dark, by Krom, are available now on iTunes, CD Baby, Amazon and Spotify.