Byline: Guillermo Wheremount

When Typhoon Haiyan tore through the Philippines, battering the archipelago with wind speeds nearing 200 miles per hour, the devastating storm surge left an apocalyptic wasteland in its wake. At least 3,974 people were killed and a further 1,186 remain missing, with about 500,000 now homeless, according to the latest official figures. On November 28, in a citywide show of solidarity, one of the capital’s most loved Filipino musicians – touched personally by the tragedy – will host a benefit concert to raise much-needed funds for survivors.

Jerby Santo, lead singer with Jaworski 7, says Filipinos based here in Phnom Penh have been quick to react to the disaster and there are a large number of similar initiatives underway. “We were all worried and deeply wounded,” he says. Efforts are being coordinated under the JUAN HELP banner and all activities with this logo are being supported by the Philippines Embassy. “It helps when you have lots of NGO experts and ad agency people,” Jerby notes.

There are around 3,000 Filipino expats in Phnom Penh at present. Like other expats, they’re here working as teachers, engineers, with corporates and NGOs and in business. But like all Australians are surfers, and all Americans are lawyers, is it true that all Filipinos are musicians?

“I am not sure about that, but yeah, the arts are very much ingrained in the daily lives of people,” says Jerby. “Doctors, engineers, politicians, teachers: almost everyone has a performance group affiliation, a choir, a band, a hip hop dance crew, a folk dance group, a community theatre, a festival street dancing group. I guess this is the result when you stay 300 years in a Spanish convent and suddenly party for 40 years in American Hollywood and are then compelled to follow the rigid Japanese bushido for four years.”

The typhoon has had a particularly personal impact on Jerby. “The most devastated city, Tacloban, was where I went to college and established my career just before coming here to Phnom Penh. I left a really interesting city and was looking forward to seeing it again then the storm hit it. I spent sleepless nights thinking about my family and friends because I could not contact them and the images on the news networks and social media compounded my situation. Thankfully they survived the storm, but some of my friends did not make it. Two musicians from our scene both got engulfed in the storm surge, promising young musicians… snapped out in a flick, just like that.”

The full extent of the damage is still to be calculated. “There are close to 5,000 people dead, others are still missing. Thousands do not have shelter, and livelihoods are gone. It will be a long and arduous journey for the province and Tacloban to get back to where it was, but I am sure that the city will get back to its feet sooner than expected. I will go home soon; I need to rebuild our house, as well as my community.”

Entry for the concert will be $5, says Jerby, “but we encourage people to give more because $5 won’t buy a single corrugated iron sheet. The goal is to be able to buy corrugated sheets and other building materials for my town, Dulag, where 98% of homes were destroyed. December till February will be rainy and people don’t have homes right now.”

And what do you get for your donation? A good sampling of the many expat bands that feature Filipino musicians, including Vibratone, Moi Tiet, Adobo Conspiracy, and Jerby’s original music project, Dancing with the Indios.

WHO: The expat music community
WHAT: Typhoon Haiyan benefit concert
WHERE: Equinox, #3a Street 278
WHEN: 9pm November 28
WHY: Show some love for our Filipino friends and help rebuild a shattered nation

It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane. And on that plane is TJ Brown, beloved and much-missed leader of bluegrass band Grass Snake Union, who returned home to Colorado earlier this year. TJ is now making a brief visit to Phnom Penh for a wedding and will use the occasion to play a one-night stand with Grass Snake Union at Equinox on November 21. For those who need to come up to speed here, and may be wondering how on earth a bluegrass band could survive in Cambodia, GSU was a fixture on the live music scene in Phnom Penh for a couple of years. They were most famous for long, sweaty performances with ecstatic dancing crowds; the most unexpected covers given bluegrass treatment; ripping banjo and fiddle solos; occasional trips to rock Kampot, and a whole-of-band vocal sharing of the rock standard The Weight. All the while, the never-suppressed enthusiasm of TJ bubbled and strummed at the helm. The Advisor coaxed him into staying his guitar strings for a few bars and here’s what he had to say:

What do you miss more in Colorado: the heat or the music?
The music! Phnom Penh has such a ridiculously fun music scene, from the amazing local and international musicians covering most genres, to the live music supporters who are always up for dancing their faces off. The musical and creative energy in Phnom Penh is off the charts.

So, this is a ‘for one night only’ thing, huh?
One night only for me. You’ll have to lean on the lads to keep playing together.

In the beginning, there was no bluegrass here. What catapulted Grass Snake Union to the forefront of the live music scene?
We just wanted to have fun and play music. Bluegrass/Americana music is about community and it’s meant to be shared with the community in a live setting. The music is fun to play and a hoot to enjoy live. The genre was also new to many in Phnom Penh, including several of the band members! We had a blast on stage playing together and when the band has fun the crowd usually follows, thus fuelling the band even more… a symbiotic relationship.

What plans are there for swimming in the Kampot River this time around?
No Kampot River cruises. No boats. If there are no boats, there will be no capsized boats and ruined instruments. Not happening.

The lads have been dabbling with Hank Williams and consorting with other singers. Will you be putting them in their place, or what?
I’m just so pumped to be playing together again. They are amazing musicians and we always have a great time on stage; I doubt this show will be any different. In fact it will be even more celebratory on the eve of the wedding weekend! I also look forward to having several guests join us throughout the evening. Can’t wait to play those foot-stompin’ tunes in Phnom Penh again!

WHO: Grass Snake Union
WHAT: Bluegrass returns to Phnom Penh
WHERE: Equinox Bar, #3a Street 278
WHEN: 9pm November 21
WHY: They’ll make you dance your face off, honest!

It sounds a bit like an old blues song: I went from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh to Vientiane/I went from Phnom Penh to New Hope, PA. Keith Kenny is taking a break from his Big Red Suitcase tour, which crosses the US from his home base in Asbury Park, NJ to California, for a very special event: headlining a UXO (unexploded ordinance) benefit concert in Vientiane, Laos. Then he swoops through Phnom Penh to bring his high-energy acoustic sounds to Equinox. Here’s what he had to tell The Advisor.

Would ‘mindblowing’ accurately describe your invitation to play at the We Are Kind concert? Did it come completely out of the blue? 

Absolutely! I was floored to hear that event organiser Phongsavath Souliyalat (Pong) was a fan of my music and was completely blown away when he invited me to headline the concert. I know that it will really hit me when the trip begins in November.

Your live show seems deceptively simple: acoustic guitar and kicked percussion yet the range of sounds is astonishing, as is the energy. Did you jump out of the bedroom at 16 like this?  

[Laughs] I wish that I just jumped out of the bedroom ready to go, but it has been a slow evolution into the live show today. I started doing the solo show in Asbury Park around 2005 and spent years playing locally, performing new material and making tweaks to the songs. Also, obsession with guitar pedals has changed a lot of the tones and sounds that I can get from the acoustic guitar. I am still tweaking and making adjustments at every show trying to get the sound BIGGER!

Do you road test new material, or record it first and let it find its stride? 

I’ve actually done both, but most material is tested out in front of an audience before it’s recorded. Sometimes I feel like I can approach the songs better in the studio if I’ve played them on the road for a few months. I can usually get a better feel for the dynamics of the songs that way, but then again there’s always that studio magic that happens when you just record something off the cuff and it turns out to be a fan favourite.

The choice of cover versions often uncovers influences and when I checked a cover of the Led Zeppelin song Bron-Y-Aur Stomp on YouTube it put the folky/bluesy feel of your material in perspective, where you veer away from the country/Americana style. 

That tune just seemed to have all the elements for a perfect one-man-band performance and I have loved their whole catalogue since I heard it back in high school. My influences have been all over the map, from heavy metal to finger-style acoustic guitarists to singer/songwriters and old blues artists. That might be one of the reasons I’ve had a hard time finding that defining category for the sound that I’m after.

WHO:Keith Kenny
WHAT: Singer/songwriter and acoustic guitar hero
WHERE: Equinox, #3a Street 278
WHEN: 9pm November 15
WHY:Witness a road-dusted, multi-influenced talent tweaking and searching for a category

What’s in a name? ‘Cambo’ provides a location. Examine for a moment the noun/verb ‘jam’: to wedge in tight; a sticky spot; sweet and spreadable, and gathering together to make music. Are these some or all of the reasons Cambojam is one of the longest-running international-style music outfits in Cambodia, particularly in their home base of Siem Reap?

In the middle of 2012, two key members returned to their homelands – a singer to the Philippines, bass player to France – allowing the French/Belgian/Japanese core to take a rest. Not much of a rest: before long a new wave of Siem Reap musicians appeared to fill the gaps and the caravan is now rolling again.

The reformed 2013 line-up for this year’s high season boasts eight players: drums and percussion; bass and guitar; keyboards, a trombone and a suitcase full of singers, plus an engineer and stage technician, carrying Asian passports from Cambodia to Japan, and across Europe from Russia to the Netherlands.

Fabien (boss; lead guitar; wine expert; made in France) explains the development of the band: “When we formed in 2007 with two guitarists and a singer, all acoustic, there were no bands to be found playing in Siem Reap. Now we play acoustic/electric/eclectic, covering jazz; folk; pop; reggae; funk, rock and hard rock.”

Along the way they’ve gigged in bars, restaurants, hotels and even a Pub Street residency where the bar’s stage was the front of a travel agency after it was closed for the day. “We started with fun as the main concept and that is still the main guideline. It’s a small town and almost everyone wanted us for a night, so we play more, we play better and then we play and play.”

Philippe (drummer/percussionist; hypnotiser; made in Belgium) remembers the earlier days of the band, when the small population in Siem Reap meant that musicians who wanted to play with others had to have an open mind: “It was the only way to play with other people! And it means everyone has brought along their own songbook. We now have a very, very large and adaptable repertoire and we can play for garden parties to hotels to Pub Street.” Fabien adds: “We have changed the song list so often that we are able to adapt ourselves, at a snap, to whatever the audience is after.”

And what of the transience of the audience? There are pros and cons, says Philippe. “Of course the high turnover means there is no pressure or need to constantly re-invent. We play night after night and every night the audience is different.”

A dramatic difference this time around is the presence one of the new singers, Thea (living apsara; made in Cambodia). “We’ve always wanted to include Cambodian musicians, but they were hard to find. We are excited to welcome Thea. She sings in English, but we now have the exciting opportunity to add Khmer songs to the set list.”

WHO: Cambojam
WHAT: Acoustic/electric/eclectic jazz; folk; pop; reggae; funk, rock and hard rock
WHERE: Shintamani Made In Cambodia market, Siem Reap
WHEN: 4pm – 9pm (exact time TBC) on the first Saturday of every month
WHY: “We started with fun as the main concept and that is still the main guideline” – Fabien

Have sax, will travel. Will play jazz and conduct saxophone clinics and workshops across France, Italy, Portugal, China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia… Vietnam and Cambodia. And that’s just this year. Danish-born, Paris-based saxophonist Martin Jacobsen collects passport stamps and luggage stickers in the way the rest of us collect coffee shop loyalty card points. To Phnom Penh, Ho Chi Minh City and Danang this November he brings with him two Parisians of Vietnamese heritage, Duylinh Nguyen on bass and Vinh Lê on piano. He was kind enough to answer some questions.

Is this your first visit to Indochina?
Yes, it is. Apart from Singapore and Indonesia I’ve never performed in this part of Asia and I’m looking very much forward to it.

What first brought you to Asia? Travel or music or both?
I only travel as a musician, but each time I go abroad to perform I say to myself that I should come back one day and spend some time on my own, without performing. It just never happens! On the other hand, as soon as I have a day off during tours I’ll always go and visit something. A few weeks ago on a day off, I visited the beautiful Nagoya Castle in Japan.

So what’s the state of jazz like in Ulaanbaatar?
Mongolia has been independent for only 20 years and jazz is still very new. I’ve in fact been the first ever jazz educator to come to Mongolia on a regular basis for now a year. Ulaanbaatar’s first jazz club opened a few months ago, the small yearly jazz festival is getting bigger and the Minister of Culture, a woman, loves jazz and helps the scene. Mongolians are an incredibly musical people and their own traditional music scene is very strong. They respond very well to jazz – rhythm, melodies, harmonies – and it’s really exciting to see how the scene is unfolding there.

Despite the former King, Norodom Sihanouk, having been a prolific jazz composer and songwriter in the ’50s and ’60s, in Cambodia jazz today is pretty much exclusively an expatriate scene, both for players and audience. Do you find that in, say, Mongolia or Korea?

Because of big social differences in Mongolia, the jazz audience is often made up of more well-off Mongolians or foreigners living there, but with the new jazz club (run by Mongolia’s only jazz pianist) it’s now possible for everyone to come and listen to jazz. It’s great to have some of your young students sitting in the audience. Before, when we played at some of Ulaanbaatar’s upscale venues, they couldn’t afford to come. That’s wrong: jazz should be for everyone. The jazz audience in South Korea is almost exclusively Korean – and even mainly young people. There are numerous jazz clubs in Seoul – the oldest is from 1976 – and the jazz scene there is very rich and exiting and the best in Asia after Japan.

The reviews I’ve seen all talk about your Coltrane influence, but playing jazz tenor that would be hard to avoid. Do you feel you have Trane on your shoulder?
That’s a good question. It’s true that I’ve been very much influenced by the early (mid-1950s) John Coltrane. I’m a self-taught musician and mostly studied saxophone from listening to my records. I also listened a lot to Dexter Gordon, who lived 12 years in Copenhagen and his spirit was sort of hovering over the jazz scene there, even in the late 1980s when I started playing the saxophone: Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Hank Mobley to name but a few. It’s important to be aware of your influences and find new inspirations. These last few years, I’ve been listening a lot to contemporary saxophonists like Jerry Bergonzi, Michael Brecker, Chris Potter. Miles Davis once said that you have to try to imitate other players, hoping that you can’t do it. He tried to imitate Terry Clark, but couldn’t – and instead ended up becoming Miles Davis.

WHO: Martin Jacobsen Trio
WHAT: Jazz, man
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47 (Nov 7) and Sofitel, Sothearos Blvd (Nov 12)
WHEN: November 7 (Doors) & 12 (Sofitel)
WHY: There ain’t nothin’ like a Dane

It finally happened. I walked into a bar where the audience was more mixed than the band: a bunch of young Cambodians playing tight, punchy, energetic rock ‘n’ roll to a lively dance floor full of Khmers and expats. The band was The Underdogs, who all met at Music Arts School, a non-profit grassroots institution on Street 370.

“We started about a year ago, trying a mix of different styles: some Khmer songs, some English songs,” explains leader and singer Sammie. “Then we decided we should specialise in bringing back the old songs from the 1960s. Everyone knows Chnam Aun Dop Pram Moi (‘I’m 16’) and Svar Rom (‘Monkey Dance’), but there are many more songs that we play that are less well known. We want to introduce the young people to more obscure songs that are just as good.”

And youth is key here: the oldest in the band are 25; the keyboard player just turned 18. One of the singers is still in high school. So how do they know the old music of the sixties? “We search in YouTube, listen to old cassettes, and we talk to the old people who remember the times.”

Sammie grows animated trying to expres his excitement about The Underdogs’ recent success, playing at Equinox, Doors, Sharky, The Village and Slur. “I never thought I would see a Khmer band playing Khmer music in Western bars.”

The band members describe their mission as reconnecting their peers with the music of their heritage. “The new songs copy too much; they sound just like K-Pop. We want to make a real Cambodian sound.” What about Dengue Fever and the Cambodian Space Project, mainly foreigners playing the old music with Khmer singers? “Oh, we really like them,” says Sammie, blushing. “They are my heroes. They play with more of a Western style.”

The Underdogs have a more traditional wedding-band form, with rotation singers: two girls and a boy. “This way we can give the singers a rest; each time they can come on fresh,” says Sammie. Also, it means a wider range of songs. The songs of Ros Sereysothea and Pen Ron are now widely known, but the band can also play tunes by the Elvis/Dylan/Sinatra of Cambodia, Sinn Sisamouth, as well as the wilder singers such as Yol Auralong, famous for Jih Cyclo and also responsible for the drunken raving blues of Syrah Syrah and the funky soul of Voa Saroun.

So where do The Underdogs see themselves heading? “We are writing some songs; they are in a modern rock style, but we want to try to make them into a more old style. And also we would like to have some costumes, so that we look more like a band from the sixties.” Local tailors, take note.

They go on for another set, before closing with a series of encores: a dead-ringer for a Blondie album track; Knyom Mon Sok Jet Te (‘I’m Unsatisfied’), the Khmer version of Woolly Bully and the epic closer Chol Chnam Thmei (‘Happy New Year’).

Long may the dogs run free!

WHO: The Underdogs
WHAT: Energetic Golden Era rock ‘n’ roll
WHERE: Equinox, Street 278
WHEN: 9pm October 18
WHY: Look to the youth to drive the future

Imagine a legendary missing bootleg of Blondie, or perhaps The Cars, being brought into the studio on a whim by David Bowie in his Scary Monsters period, with Donna Summer’s main man Giorgio Moroder producing, that is then passed to Daft Punk to remix. From time to time the Human League put in their two cents’ worth, and Nick Cave whispered some pointers. It’s like grunge never happened. Your imagination might get you close to Poni Hoax, a Parisian band fronted by a Franco-Cambodian singer, visiting Phnom Penh this week.

Eschewing a bass player in the presence of dual keyboards, they pump out a dark energetic sound hooky enough to remind you of the best early ’80s pop, augmented by the charismatic English language vocals of Nicolas Ker; a line-up reminiscent of The Doors, coincidentally one of the few acts that the whole band listens to.

“All the guys listen to different music styles, [the Doors are] the only band on which we all agree,” explains guitarist Nicolas Villebrin. “Laurent Bardainne, the composer, comes from Coltrane and Albert Ayler and also loves a lot of very commercial French music; the guitar player listens to minimal techno; the drummer loves hip hop and baroque. I come from the Velvet Underground, Bowie and the Stooges, so we sound like a twisted kind of Talking Heads… right there at the cross-over.”

Keyboard players Bardainne and Arnaud Roulin, guitarist Villebrin and drummer Vincent Taeger all met while studying at the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique in Paris. Differing sources recount the standard myths of meeting singer and lyricist Nicolas either in a bar or via a classified ad. The band and their sound sit naturally in the internet age, where underground and mainstream are no longer useful terms.

The lyrical content is suggested by taglines such as ‘This band was found in a trailer park, wandering aimlessly in a zombie-like trance, wearing its mother’s dress’; by song titles like Antibodies, Budapest, Hypercommunication, Down on Serpent Street and Images of Sigrid. The new album, their third, is titled A State Of War.

Nicolas was born in Phnom Penh in 1970 to a Cambodian woman and a Frenchman, and they were evacuated from the French Embassy compound after the fall of the city in 1975. The trauma continues: asked if he has heard anything of the Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll revival, he says: “Laurent Bardainne is really interested in these records. As for myself, I can’t get myself to listen to the Khmer language, which I forgot in one night in 1975.” Laurent discovered the music while exploring Nicolas’ background and has become enchanted by Cambodian culture.

It’s just a show business trip, a one-night visit to the country, without photo opportunities at Angkor Thom or on the Mekong, and Nicolas shadow boxes with the drama of his first return in 38 years. But then there’s a twinkle: “I think that it won’t be our last gig in Cambodia.” Tickets are on sale now (adults $8, students and under-18s $4) at the media library of the Institut français, #218 Street 184.

WHO:Poni Hoax
WHAT: Dark hooky French pop in English
WHERE: NRG89fm, #131B Street 271 (next to Total)
WHEN: 7pm October 10
WHY: This band was found in a trailer-park, wandering aimlessly in a zombie-like trance, wearing its mother’s dress