Byline: Phoenix Jay

The artful use of scandal

The ‘crime’, were it committed today, would barely warrant a wolf whistle. Making her way off stage at a sixth-floor theatre on New York’s Houston Street, burlesque dancer Mae Dix absentmindedly began peeling off her costume before she’d reached the wings.

The year was 1917 and the spectre of Victorian England – where ‘proper’ women went to extraordinary lengths to hide their natural contours beneath bustles, hoops and frills – still loomed large. Young ladies stripping on stage? Unthinkable! Outrageous!

Not so to this downtown audience of impoverished immigrants, who whooped and cheered at the sight of such brazenly bared flesh. To wild applause, Dix strode back to centre stage and continued her spontaneous striptease. Thrilled, the owners ordered the ‘accident’ to be repeated every night.

The move triggered an endless power struggle: to keep their license, the Minsky brothers had to keep their shows clean, but to keep their customers – including Condé Montrose Nast, legendary publisher of Vogue – they had to dabble in the risqué. Whenever they overstepped the mark, Minsky’s Burlesque was raided by the authorities (by 1937, reform-minded New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had outlawed use of the words ‘Minsky’ and ‘burlesque’ in public advertising).

Roll. Twang. Whoosh! Millie DeLeon was by far the biggest burlesque star of the early 20th century. As responsible as the Minsky brothers for giving the form its raunchy reputation, this beautiful, buxom brunette famously tossed her garters into the audience during shows and occasionally neglected to wear tights – shenanigans that got her arrested on more than one occasion.

Such artful use of scandal is the very essence of burlesque, a term derived from the Latin word burrae, which translates as ‘nonsense’. Long before it became a synonym for ‘striptease’, it referred to the pantomime-style lampooning of serious literary, dramatic and musical works so beloved by the upper classes. These extravagant pastiches deployed comedy, music and dance to challenge the established values of the day, with enormous success.

By the end of the 19th century, just as the genre’s popularity was dwindling in England in favour of rather more staid Edwardian musical comedies, it found new fame in New York. It had been introduced to the city by visiting troupe Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes.  Switching the focus from comedy to female near-nudity, American burlesque began to flourish. It boomed further during Prohibition, bootleg liquor fanning the intoxicating air of inhibition.

As Robert G. Allen writes in Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture, published in 1991: “Without question… burlesque’s principal legacy as a cultural form was its establishment of patterns of gender representation that forever changed the role of the woman on the American stage and later influenced her role on the screen… The very sight of a female body not covered by the accepted costume of bourgeois respectability forcefully if playfully called attention to the entire question of the ‘place’ of woman in American society.”

The point was not to offend, but to spoof and – to a limited degree – titillate; the emphasis firmly on the tease, rather than the strip. It is this golden age of burlesque that Elyxir hopes to breathe life into during Cambodia’s first ever show this week. The event is a nod to neo-burlesque stars such as Dita Von Teese, who in her own words “puts the tease back into striptease” (this 5’5” corset-clad pin-up, dubbed ‘a Burlesque Superheroine’ by Vanity Fair magazine, once appeared at a fundraiser for the New York Academy of Art wearing nothing but $5 million worth of diamonds).

Elyxir’s owners believe there’s a need for the bold challenge that burlesque poses to the social, cultural and sexual status quo – just as a new generation is recognising the spirit of spoofery that made it such potent entertainment back in the mid-19th century (the 2010 film Burlesque, starring Christina Aguilara and Cher, wiggles its derrière in the old-school direction).

“When I saw the Glamazon hair show at Pontoon, I knew the country was ready for burlesque – just going that one step further,” says Nathalie Ferrero. “We want, for one night, to animate this place, make it a fantasy land. I want to offer Khmer people something they’ve never seen.

“In Europe, burlesque is a way of doing things without being vulgar. It’s all about the tease. That’s the goal: to change the mentality without shocking. We want to do something funny, unusual, and totally crazy. With burlesque, that’s easy, because everything is stupid and crazy. It’s over the top; it’s not reality – like Dita von Teese.”

The sprawling mansion on Street 466, once the site of Lebanese restaurant Le Liban, will play giddy host to roughly 20 performers on the night, from belly dancers to Miss Joy and the Femmes Fatales – a fan-dancing offshoot of Dance Workshop Cambodia. Expect bronzed Aphrodites in the pool; high-kicking hits from the musical Chicago, and a whole host of Sugar Babies channelling the very best of neo-burlesque. Bring your own pasties.

WHO: Dita Von Teese devotees
WHAT: A night of neo-burlesque
WHERE: Elyxir Urban Wine Spot, #3 St. 466
WHEN: 8pm June 22
WHY: Burlesque is alive and giggling

 

Ensemble of emperors

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556, was something of an over-achiever. The heir of Europe’s most powerful and long-lasting dynasties, his empire spanned almost four million square kilometres at its zenith. And despite being perpetually at war, Charles somehow found the time to become an accomplished musician.

“The Emperor understood music, felt and tasted its charms: the friars often discovered him behind the door, as he sat in his own apartment, near the high altar, beating time, and singing in part with the performers,” 16th century Spanish biographer Prudencio de Sandoval wrote. “A composer from Seville, whose name was Guerrero, presented him with a book of Motets and Masses; and when one of these Masses had been sung as a specimen, the Emperor called his confessor and said, ‘See what a thief, what a plagiarist, is this son of a —–! Why here,’ says he, ‘this passage is taken from one composer, and this from another,’ naming them as he went on. All this while the singers stood astonished, as none of them had discovered these thefts, till they were pointed out by the Emperor.”

By the time Charles inherited the Habsburg dynasty from his father, the splendidly named Philip the Handsome, the imperial family’s obsession with music was already the stuff of legend. From the 13th century to the beginning of the 20th, successive rulers lured some of the most eminent singers, musicians and composers – including Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven – into the service of the Habsburg courts, shaping the music of Europe’s most influential cultural centres.

The corpus of music written for court functions includes vast numbers of sacred works, operas, oratorios and chamber works, several of which are to be resurrected live by the Ensemble TRIOthlon this month. Three soloists – Markus Gundermann on violin; Steven Retallick on violoncello, and Anton Isselhardt on flute – will channel a chamber ensemble to present stirring works by Haydn, Bach, Beethoven and Mysliweček.

Beethoven, whose Serenade in D Major is a core part of the concert, was just 13 years old when he petitioned for – and was duly granted – an official salary and position at the electoral court of Cologne. He was so gifted a teacher in piano, theory and composition that, within a few years, three nobles pooled their resources to grant the young composer a pension for life. This despite his dictatorial tendencies: Beethoven once bragged to a friend that he had rapped Archduke Rudolf of Austria over the knuckles for keeping him waiting in an ante-room.

WHO: Ensemble TRIOthlon
WHAT: Music from the Habsburgian Courts
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 8pm June 12
WHY: If it’s good enough for an emperor…

 

Life after Castro’s Cuba: a tale of Latin fusion

When the Soviet Union imploded during the 1990s, Fidel Castro’s socialist Cuba was plunged into a deep depression. The country had previously ranked among the leading developing nations in terms of high literacy rates and low infant mortality, thanks to the $6 billion it received each year in Soviet subsidies, but those achievements had come at great cost: namely, human rights and democracy.

It was at about this time that a small band of teenagers raised in the rural countryside upped sticks and moved wholesale to the capital city, Havana. These seemingly disparate students of economics, law, language, and cybernetics at the Central University of Las Villas in Santa Clara shared but one thing: a destiny to claw their way out of poverty and become one of Cuba’s most celebrated bands.

“We were born in the Fidel Castro era, we didn’t know any other, and it did influence us, especially our social lives,” says Alex Gonzalez, one of the founding members of Warapo, which in 1998 was voted Best Amateur Band at the 14th Festival of College Artists of Cuba against a backdrop of extreme hardship and, on more than one occasion, homelessness.

“Every political system influences the life of its people: musicians, doctors, lawyers, everybody. For us, it was more difficult than it would have been in another country: the lack of resources; the lack of communication with the outside world. We were students from the countryside and we went to the capital, Havana, with no money, no home, no work, nothing. At the beginning it was difficult, very difficult indeed, but after sacrifices we got our dreams.”

Among those dreams was the 2004 release of Warapo’s first album, Mala Vida (‘Bad Life’), with the help of acclaimed Cuban producer Emilio Vega – a rousing blend of cha-cha-cha, pop, guaracha, son, and rock ‘to which the rhythmic wealth of the Caribbean adds itself’. Four years later, their second album, Tengo Nada (‘I Have Nothing’) was nominated for Cubadisco, the most notable awards in the Cuban music industry.

“We were all in the same school, and with different tastes in music we were able to produce what we call a good fusion. For us, culture and music go together. At that time we were influenced by bachata, cumbia, merengue, Cuban son, salsa, pop, rock, swing. The band now is quite different, but the essence is the same.

“Moving to Vietnam has been very interesting. It was a very difficult decision, because we were going to live in a place where we could not speak the language, didn’t really understand the culture, and everything was a risk.

“We are very happy with the band we have right now and what we have been able to create here. We have many followers and, in a way, we can say that we were the pioneers of Latin music in Vietnam.”

By the time Warapo decided to move to Vietnam in 2008, they had fame firmly by the scruff of the neck. “We were one of the most popular young bands in Cuba,” says Alex, who plays the keyboard and keytar and is responsible for musical arrangements. “If you go to Cuba and ask about Warapo, people know about us.

“At our last concerts, having people sing your songs and recognise you on the streets, that’s what we miss the most. We want to do in Vietnam and Asia what we did in Cuba: get to be popular, perform at big places and when people hear Warapo, they know who we are.”

WHO: Warapo
WHAT: Cuban fusion
WHERE: Latin Quarter, cnr St. 19 & 178
WHEN: 9pm June 9
WHY: There’s more to Cuba than just damn fine cigars

 

DJ Vajra: Reigning DMC world champ

The wings of the world’s fastest hummingbird beat at an astonishing 90 strokes per second, propelling this tiny creature through the air like a torpedo at speeds of up to 71 miles an hour. To the naked human eye, its wings oscillate so quickly they appear almost motionless in midair. Thousands of minuscule feathers blur together as one – an optical illusion that calls to mind the fingers of a world-class DJ.

Few, if any, turntablists boast wing muscles that make up 30% of their body weight, but the sheer manual dexterity required to join the rank of superstar DJ is not to be underestimated. Take Vajra (real name: Chris Karns), for example: the Denver-born lad once described by a Colorado newspaper as ‘an unassuming record clerk from Boulder’ is today the reigning DMC World DJ Champion – and is flying in to play in Phnom Penh later this month.

Launched by the Disco Mix Club in London in 1985, the DMC contest swiftly proved a breeding ground for turntable tricks and tricksters alike. Props, body tricks and scratching techniques burst forth from the decks as DJs used bicycles, billiard cues, American footballs and even a kitchen sink to coax never-before-heard sounds out of vinyl records. Run DMC, Public Enemy, Janet Jackson and James Brown queued around the block to join the finalists on the podium.

Locked in their studios for months at a time, these are the DJs for whom the turntable is a musical instrument, in much the same way a guitar is to Carlos Santana.Each competitor spends up to one whole year perfecting what will ultimately boil down to 360 seconds of flawless creativity.

“To be a DMC champ, you need to be dedicated and practice endlessly until you’ve perfected a six-minute set,” says DJ Illest, one of the owners of Pontoon night club in Phnom Penh. “I’ve always been amazed at how dedicated DMC DJs are and I have much respect for the DMC, which has helped DJs evolve technically. The DJs are judged on various criteria, such as technique; creativity; energy; crowd interaction, and body tricks. They perform basically an entire musical composition using just two decks and a mixer.

“The difference between a regular DJ and a DMC DJ – or one from any of those competitions – is that the guys who compete might be great technically, but they might not always make a great club DJ. You can be technically really good and do an amazing six-minute thing, but if you don’t feel the crowd, it’s just for show. That’s why it’s great to have Vajra here: he has the skills to be a party rocker as well.

“Vajra is one of those DJs who can combine showcasing his skills with a party-rocker set, meaning he’s going to rock the crowd all night. At some point he will do tricks, very briefly so people won’t even realise he’s doing it, or he’ll purposely make a break to get people’s attention, almost like a DMC thing. They do really amazing stuff.”

As he speaks, Illest’s hands are moving across the decks in his Tuol Kork home studio at what appears to be the speed of sound. Lithe fingers stop and start spinning vinyl, bending beats and surgically splicing compatible vocals. The cross-fader slams back and forth in a blur, blinking lights monitoring the music’s vital signs. Baby scratches, flares and chirps burst out of a wall of speakers, a mattress propped against one wall, presumably by way of soundproofing. Neatly grouped on top of an ageing PC is a small pile of discarded record needles – casualties on this sonic battlefield.

“I’m not a DMC champ, but I do what I can,” he hollers above the now thunderous hip-hop. “It was a DMC competition that first got me started about 15 years ago. It was very inspiring. I grew up in Paris, in the French hip-hop environment, so we had a lot of influence from the States, like Grandmaster Flash. It was thanks to DJ D Nasty’s radio show that I first heard scratching and thought, ‘This is different.’

“Scratching isn’t just making the record go back and forth and using a fader or cross-fader to make sounds, you can actually make a melody out of scratch, or it can be used as a percussion instrument. There are too many effects and scratches to name them all here, but basically scratching is like talking: the more scratches you know, the more vocabulary you have.

“First, world-class scratch DJs all have really quick hands. There are several training techniques. You can put a weight on your wrist, so you have something heavy on your hand while you practice. Then when you take it off to perform, your hand feels like it does after you’ve been lifting heavy weights at the gym and then pick up something light – it just floats. You can also use the same thing guitarists use to practice flexing their fingers faster and faster.

“Pontoon has brought DMC champs in the past – DJ Cash Money, the world champ in 1988; DJ ND, Belgian DMC champ in 2009, and DJ Asian Hawk, UK DMC champ – but we’ve never had the current champ before. DJ Vajra is known for his amazing DJ skills: scratching; beat juggling; recreating beats with two copies of the same record; doing scratching tricks. We expect his performance to showcase his technical skills and at the same time rock the crowd.

“As for the local scene, I hope to one day see a DMC competition here in Cambodia and I hope that DJ Gang, who I taught, and DJ Blue of the CP5 DJ crew will represent this country. Talent is everywhere: Gang and Blue are still very young and have the right DJ attitude. They’ve found their own identity.”

WHO: DJ Vajra
WHAT: Reigning DMC World DJ Champion
WHERE: Pontoon, St. 172
WHEN: 11pm June 15
WHY: See under ‘What’

 

Speed Merchants

When the man dubbed rugby’s ‘most dangerous winger in the world’ expresses an interest in coming to Cambodia, it’s safe to assume  the country’s love for funny shaped balls is finally coming of age.

Not before time: first introduced by expats in the 19th century, when Cambodia was part of French Indochina, this ‘sport for thugs, played by gentlemen’ is, for the first time since independence, reclaiming its place in the national consciousness.

And this time, the boisterous melee of rucks, scrums and mauls is no longer the sole preserve of visiting foreigners. Of the 340-something rugby players registered with the Cambodian Federation of Rugby (CFR) today, almost 300 are native Cambodians – and, by all accounts, they’re putting their international mentors to shame.

Little wonder, then, that Rory Underwood MBE – one of the sport’s all-time greats, with a total of 91 internationals and not a single second spent on the bench – will be touching down in Phnom Penh later this month. Half Malay, England’s record try scorer and one of the highest profile names in world rugby (he chalked up 85 caps and 49 tries for England during his two-decade career) has long harboured a love of Asian rugby. And it is the inexorable rise of the sport here in Cambodia that prompted his overture to its governing body.

“This guy called Tim who runs a rugby club in Dubai is a friend of the CFR and he knows all the ex-England players,” says CFR Tournament Director James Sterling, a fellow Englishman and former prop. “I got this random email from him saying: ‘Rory fancies a gig in Cambodia. How about it?’ It was that easy. I now have a list of other players who also want to come over, including Will Greenwood and Gavin Hastings.”

With Rory’s brother Tony on the opposite flank, the Underwoods became the first siblings since 1938 to represent England in the same team during its surge to the top of world rugby in the early 1990s. Rory, a one-time Royal Air Force pilot (much of his career came during rugby’s amateur era and when not scoring tries, he could be found at the controls of winged behemoths such as the Hawk TMk1A and Tornado GR1) was part of England’s famed midfield four, alongside Rob Andrew, Will Carling and Jerry Guscott.

A member of the England squad during the inaugural Rugby World Cup of 1987, Rory made his third and final World Cup appearance in South Africa in 1995. It was a tournament of mixed emotions: Rory scored two tries in the semi-final against New Zealand; the only problem was that the All Blacks had on their side a certain Jonah Lomu, who Carling famously referred to as ‘a freak’. Standing almost two metres tall and weighing in at 125kg, this Aucklander of Tongan descent – generally regarded as rugby union’s first global superstar – ran in a devastating four tries to dump England out.

Rory retired from international rugby the following year, but many of his statistics still outshine those of the best 15 years after his bowing out: the 49 tries he scored for England is still 18 ahead of joint second-placed Will Greenwood and Ben Cohen, with Jeremy Guscott next in the list on 30. Today, his focus is more on rugby development, hence his planned tour of the country’s most notable teams and guest speaking at the CFR’s annual fundraising gala dinner on May 26. And perhaps nowhere is rugby developing faster than right here on Cambodian soil.

“Our biggest hope is to boost rugby’s presence in the country,” says James. “The number of people coming to watch matches has increased massively. If it’s Garuda, which is a very Khmer team, you’ll get maybe 100 Khmers coming to watch. If it’s the Sisowath Knights, you’ll probably get about 200 expats coming to watch and at least 100 Khmers. It’s bizarre, but it’s getting there.”

The fan base may be a little lop-sided (at one final, 300 spectators turned up but they were all Cambodian and all rooting for the same team), but the CFR claims several coups. “We’ve had one huge coup: the undersecretary of state for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports is a rugby fan and he’s signing off on rugby joining the state curriculum, on a voluntary basis. School kids have never been allowed to play before without permission. Most of our kids come from disadvantaged backgrounds. In the Russei Keo team, most of the kids are from the slums, but they play at the local high school and the students wanted to join in. Now, that’s no problem.”

Slightly less lop-sided is the teams’ gender make-up. “In Cambodia, there are three women’s teams and they beat the French every time. Last year at the Angkor 10s, on the main day, to give the guys a break, we put in two women’s teams – and the best match performance, as voted for by the 300 guys who were playing, was the women.

“Our head referee is a woman and we have eight or nine trainees, six of whom are women – they’ll all be going to referee school. All the women Khmer players came from the NGO Pour un Sourir d’Enfant. They’re all ex-rubbish dump kids – break your arms as soon as look at you – but they’re really good girls. At the Angkor 10s, they were all rough and ready, beating the crap out of each other on the pitch, then they turned up to the dinner afterwards in ball gowns. Lovely.

“What I find amazing is that we’re starting to get more and more into the social side of rugby, which is huge. Our national team is great fun – and they’re mostly Khmer. They used to be really introverted, but the social side is just kicking in. The men are really getting into it; the girls are slowly catching on. I can’t explain why; it just happened. They’re real party animals. Trust me, I saw them in Laos…”

What exactly transpired in Laos may be a closely guarded secret, but the now 12-year-old CFR is less reticent about its biggest milestone yet. “Nearly ready for release is the architectural tender for the Cambodian National Rugby Stadium, which we’d like to have completed by the Angkor 10s 2014. It’s completely donor-funded, with a national pitch made big enough so that we can rent it to people like cricket clubs and the AFL; two training pitches; a 3,000-people stand; gym; medical centres and everything.” Half the required funding has already been secured, thanks to Japan’s World Cup Legacy Fund (Japan will become the first Asian nation to host rugby union’s ultimate contest in 2019), and the rights to televise matches are currently being discussed with two Cambodian networks.

In the meantime, Cambodia is readying itself for a grudge match against Laos on June 30; national team The Koupreys are preparing to compete in the South East Asian Games in 2013 and the Asian Games in 2014; and the return of rugby to a place of prominence is a matter of national pride. “Pre-war, there were some French rugby teams here,” says James. “There’s a little old Khmer lady in Tuol Kork, the neighbour of one of my staff; we were talking about rugby and she said: ‘I remember rugby. I remember back in the 1960s and 1970s, kids playing rugby here. It’s great, I love it!’

“The Cambodian teams, particularly our young deaf team, The Tigers, are so excited that someone from England is coming especially to see them – and he’s famous.”

Tickets for the gala dinner ($85 in advance; $95 on the door) can be bought online via events@nullcambodiarugby.net, or at Score Bar, The Green Vespa, or Aussie XL.

WHO: Former England rugby player Rory Underwood
WHAT: Cambodian Federation of Rugby’s Annual Gala Dinner
WHERE: NagaWorld Grand Ballroom
WHEN: 6:30pm May 26
WHY: To help fund Cambodia’s growing love of funny shaped balls

 

Facing a new future

French archaeologist Maurice Glaize, conservator of the ancient temples of Angkor between 1937 and 1945, once wrote of the gigantic grinning visages at Bayon: “Wherever one wanders, the faces of Lokesvara follow and dominate with their multiple presence.”

The enigmatic smile etched onto endless facades across the crumbling complex has the same bewitching quality as that of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Much has been written about who may have served as the model for the carved faces, some of which bear more than a hint of resemblance to 12th century Khmer king Jayavarman VII in the guise of Avalokitesvara, the great bodhisattva (enlightened being) in Buddhist lore who embodies the compassion inherent to all Buddhas.

To this day, it is a face many Cambodians turn to when confronted with the quest for national identity. And it’s a face 40 artists are about to brand with their own interpretation of precisely what that identity should be.

The Cambodia Mask Project, the end results of which will be given their public unveiling later this month, is a collaborative endeavour uniting Cambodian artists, old and new, with colleagues from across the globe, each tasked to interpret the same 60cm x 60cm papier mache face in their own way. Billed as an ‘exploration of the concepts of identity, role and history – past, present and future – in Cambodian society’, it’s a contest without limitations: the artists have been given complete freedom to chisel, spray, or otherwise decorate as they see fit.

“Masks have a distinct connection with Cambodia,” says project coordinator Steinunn Jakobsdóttir. “You see these faces everywhere, often on religious masks. The idea was to try to capture Cambodia’s identity through the use of masks, without making it religious. It’s a fun format for the artists to work with, because there are so many little details in the mask. They can build on it, they can add to it – absolutely 100% freedom of expression.

“We have 40 artists – a very good mix, both local and international, but mostly Cambodians. I started contacting artists in January, and with each artist I spoke to, I got introduced to another one and another one. It was a kind of snowball effect. There was so much interest and excitement. We have sculptors, street artists such as Peap Tarr and Lisa Mam, and painter Bo Rithy, a very exciting artist from Battambang. Among the internationals we have French street artist Julien ‘Seth’ Malland, an illustrator from Australia, and a photographer from the US.”

As with so many things, there’s more to the project than what appears at face value. During the exhibition, on June 3, a silent auction will be held to raise funds to support artists in a country where very few are able to make a living through art alone.

WHO: 40 local and international artists
WHAT: The Cambodian Mask Project
WHERE: The Plantation Hotel, #28 St. 184
WHEN: May 24 – June 23 (auction May 24 – June 3)
WHY: Witness the new Cambodia being unmasked

Price & Prejedice

Eight years ago, after watching televised footage of gay weddings being conducted in San Francisco, Cambodia’s ageing constitutional monarch did what for many conservative Buddhists would be the unthinkable.

The frail 81-year-old Norodom Sihanouk seated himself at his desk and, with pen in hand, proceeded to map out on paper his personal musings on same-sex marriage. The handwritten note, later posted on the king’s personal website, proved that advancing years are no barrier to an open mind.

As a “liberal democracy”, wrote the now retired king, Cambodia has a duty to allow “marriage between man and man… or between woman and woman”. He acknowledged his respect for the gay community, noting that they were the way they were because God loved “a wide range of tastes”. Transvestites too, Sihanouk urged, “should be accepted and well-treated in our national community”.

Sihanouk’s message stands in stark contrast to a public declaration made by Prime Minister Hun Sen just three years later. During a graduation ceremony in October 2007, the premier – hardly known for his liberal attitude – told students he was “disappointed” that his 19-year-old daughter, who he had adopted in 1988, was a lesbian.

“I have my own problem – my adopted daughter has a wife,” he said in front of more than 3,000 people. “Now I will ask the court to disown her from my family… We sent her to study in the US, but she did a bad job. She returned home and took a wife.” In the same breath, apparently unaware of his own hypocrisy, Hun Sen called on Cambodians to adopt a more tolerant attitude: “I urge parents of gays not to discriminate against them, and do not call them transvestites.”

The prime minister’s most stinging remarks were edited out of official versions of the speech that later aired on state media, but their memory still raises the hackles of more progressive audiences today. Among them is Hem Sokly, a project coordinator with the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights’ (CCHR) sexual orientation and gender identity project, launched in 2010.

Softly spoken and impeccably dressed, this bespectacled, slight-of-build young man (heterosexual himself, although one of his sisters is gay) is one of many squaring up against the prejudices of the past. Via training workshops, outreach programmes, and the novel marketing of a rainbow-coloured krama crafted by a lesbian cooperative in Kompong Som now available at most gay bars in town (“Everyone knows that the rainbow represents diversity. The young generation doesn’t call themselves ‘gay’, they call themselves ‘rainbow’”), Sokly and his colleagues are bent on dragging public and political perception out of the dark ages.

“The first problem many people encounter is discrimination by their own family,” he says, perched on the edge of a plush cream-coloured sofa at 2 Colours, the capital’s newest gay bar, on Street 13. “When a family has a gay son or daughter, other community members may talk badly about them. Once gay people come out, their families often disown them and they become homeless, with no way of supporting themselves. Prime Minister Hun Sen disowned his adopted daughter when she came out as being gay, which sends a very bad message to the general population. Then he called on Cambodian people not to discriminate against the LGBT community, so he’s sending very confusing messages.”

Perhaps nowhere is the message more confused than within Cambodia’s staunchly conservative corridors of power. “Government officials say that now is not the time for Cambodia to think about sexual minorities,” says Sokly. “They say that economic development is the priority for the government, and political stability. They think that we can integrate the study of sexuality into the gender concept because gender works for the equality of everyone, but the word ‘gender’ in Cambodian just means equality between man and woman, so we are not included.”

Fear of exclusion remains all-pervasive, particularly in parliament. According to a CCHR source who has “a strong network in the National Assembly”, at least ten of Cambodia’s 123 members of parliament – including members of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and the opposition Sam Rainsy Party – are closeted members of the LGBT community. “But because they want to maintain their title, they cannot be open about their sexuality.”

Little wonder, then, that those at the opposite end of the power spectrum are still subject to arbitrary persecution. A case in point is that of 20-year-old former factory worker Phlong Srey Rann, currently serving a five-year sentence in Prey Sar prison for having sex with her girlfriend. Although there are no laws expressly banning homosexuality in Cambodia, the authorities use other legislation – such as anti-human trafficking laws – to discriminate.

It’s for precisely this reason that CCHR, in a new report about to be made public, is lobbying to be heard during drafting of the Asean Declaration on Human Rights. “References to sexual orientation and gender identity were put in the draft by Thailand,” says British-born CCHR volunteer Philip Barron, “but they have since been removed, according to leaked documents, by Malaysia and Singapore. The draft is due to be signed into law later this year, so it’s an extremely pressing issue.”

In the meantime, a little light relief is en route courtesy of Cambodia’s first Asean Pride Week. Between May 12 and 20, art galleries, cinemas, cultural centres, nightspots and temples will play host to upwards of 40 events celebrating sexual diversity. Find the full schedule at www.facebook.com/cambodiapride.

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Cambodia Asean Pride Week
WHERE: Art galleries, cinemas, night spots and temples
WHEN: May 12 to 20
WHY: You’re proud, not prejudiced

 

Storm on a G String

Notoriously self-critical 19th century German Romantic Johannes Brahms composed his Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25, during a particularly rocky time in his life. Not only had he relinquished posts in Detmold as a court piano teacher and choir conductor in favour of moving to Hamburg to conduct a women’s choir, he had also – despite being briefly engaged to Agathe von Siebold – fallen in love with his mentor’s wife and muse, noted pianist Clara Schumann (five months after Brahms blazed into their life, Robert Schumann tried to drown himself in the Rhine; he died two years later in an asylum). Being turned down for the position of Hamburg’s Philharmonic concert conductor at the same time did very little to improve his mood.

Brahms’ conflicting emotions found a fittingly cathartic outlet in his four-movement quartet, which despite taking him six years to finish moves swiftly from the spirited to the explosive. The Intermezzo during the second movement was written, so Brahms told Clara, while he was thinking ‘only of her’. The former child prodigy replied: “It lulled me into such gentle dreams, as if my soul was floating on the notes.” The finale, ‘alla Zingarese’, is of such extraordinary force that it prompted Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim to declare that Brahms, a close personal friend, had dealt him “a resounding defeat” (another celebrated violinist, Josef Hellmesberger, said of Op. 25: “This is Beethoven’s legacy”).

No less revolutionary for its time was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, KV 478, which, a century earlier, had paved the way for a new musical genre. For the first time in music history, the cello was given a voice of its own, independent from the bass line of the piano. Chamber music would never be the same again: now, the strings of the violin, viola and cello could be brought together in a united front complementing the piano. Alternatively, they could be separated, and each given equal prominence.

Today, both pieces are among the world’s most beloved classics – even though the enduring appeal of Mozart’s quartet wasn’t immediately obvious (his Viennese publisher FA Hoffmeister had commissioned three quartets, but after disappointing sales he offered to let the composer keep his advance in exchange for tearing up the contract). Fitting, then, that they will feature in a performance by Germany’s Notos Quartett at Meta House this month, alongside the lesser known but no less impressive Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 67, by Spanish composer Joacquín Turina.

Together since 2007, the Frankfurt-based Notos Quartett is named after the god of the south wind – sometimes a gentle breeze, sometimes the bringer of storms – in ancient Greek mythology. Winners of the 2011 Parkhouse Award in London, and First Prize at the Charles-Hennen-Concours in Holland just a few days later, theirs promises to be a suitably tempestuous performance – the sort the country  is apparently developing quite the appetite for.

“In the 1960s, former King Norodom Sihanouk – a gifted musician himself – sent Cambodians to study Western Classical music in East Germany,” says Nico Mesterhaum, of Meta House, where the concert will be held. “His son Norodom Sihamoni, nowadays the King of Cambodia, enrolled at the Academy of Music Arts in Prague, Czechoslovakia to study classical dance and music. Then the civil war started. Arts and culture were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge regime.

“Nowadays, Western classical music is again new to Cambodia and Cambodians. Only a few Cambodian musicians have studied it, such as Loch Bonsamnang, Chan Vitharo, So Soronos and Him Savy, as well as established Cambodian composers Ung Chinnary and Him Sophy.

“Today there are no orchestras in Cambodia, unlike in Thailand and Vietnam. Most Cambodians only know this kind of music from TV or they have heard CD recordings, but to experience a master performance of Western classical music is a different thing. Nowadays, more and more Cambodians are joining such concerts, fascinated by the skills of the musicians and the depth of the music.”

WHO: Notos Quartett
WHAT: Piano quartets by Mozart, Brahms and Turina
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 7pm May 17
WHY: It beats being Brahms and Liszt

 

Peace love music

Immortalised by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the 50 moments that forever changed the history of rock music, the famed Woodstock Festival of 1969 was far more than just three days of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

On the front page of a special report on the so-called ‘Aquarian Exposition’ by Rolling Stone’s editors, the photographer – shooting from over the shoulder of a young, shaggy haired Carlos Santana – captured an apparently endless ocean of human flesh, stretching from the front of the stage to the vanishing point of the festival’s sprawling 600-acre site in Bethel, New York.

High on marijuana and dancing naked in the mud, half a million devotees of hippie counter-culture flooded dairy farmer Max Yasgur’s fields between August 15 and 18. During ‘three days of peace and music’, 32 acts – including Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin – took the stage in one of the most pivotal moments in music history.

“Woodstock was a spark of beauty” where half a million kids “saw that they were part of a greater organism,” Joni Mitchell later said. Hers was a sentiment shared by Michael Lang, one of the organisers: “That’s what means the most to me – the connection to one another felt by all of us who worked on the festival, all those who came to it, and the millions who couldn’t be there but were touched by it.”

Among the festival’s audience was one of the owners of Indochina’s longest running rock ‘n’ roll bar, which this month will host its very own three-day rock-fest in tribute not only to the original ethos of Woodstock but also to emerging local talent. Then just 13 years old, he is today known as ‘Big Mike’ and is one of the chief architects of Sharky’s transformation from arms dealers’ den to legitimate showcase for new rock bands, both Khmer and barang.

“There’s a photograph of me at Woodstock with Jimi Hendrix,” says Shanghai-born Mike, balancing his large frame on a tiny stool in the bar’s cluttered rehearsal space, known as The Shark Cage. A bold handwritten notice taped to the outside of the glass door serves as a warning to would-be invaders: ‘BAND ONLY.’ Beneath the capital letters, in Biro chicken-scratch, someone has scrawled the words ‘and beautiful and available groupies’.

“I had no idea it even existed. I found it about four or five years ago when I went back to Woodstock. I went into a music store and asked the proprietor if he had any posters. He said: ‘Only one, in the front window, of Jimi Hendrix.’ I said: ‘Perfect!’ Hendrix was my hero. So I went outside and I’m looking at this poster and it’s Jimi Hendrix on stage at Woodstock – he was one of the last acts. I was really young, 13 I think. I’d gone with a few friends, was there for four days and stayed up way past my bedtime. I didn’t care about the mud. It was just on my mind to get to the front of the stage. I had to see Jimi Hendrix.

“So I’m looking at this photograph of Hendrix, with his drummer Noel Redding, and I thought: ‘That’s it! My God, I was there…’ And then all of a sudden, in the foreground of the photo, I see myself – wearing dark sunglasses that I still have and a hat that I lost – giving two peace signs. I fell in love with rock music at Woodstock.”

It was to prove a lasting romance. By the time the nascent punk movement of the 1970s was gaining momentum, Mike was old enough to start work – first as a bus boy, later as a music manager – at what would become New York City’s most legendary rock clubs. One of the first was Dr Generosity’s, a saloon at 73rd and 2nd on the East Side, where he met a young Keith Richards. “This was a starting place for rock stars,” says Mike, jet black hair cascading down to his shoulders, both wrists heavy with studded leather trinkets.

But it was at Max’s Kansas City, on the corner of Park Avenue and 17th Street, that Mike jabbed a needle into rock music’s main artery. The downstairs restaurant, where Debbie Harry once waited tables, was a hub for poets, painters, fashionistas and photographers; the seedy backroom was immortalised in Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side. Upstairs was converted into a performance space where Patti Smith and Television played. “That’s when I began to know all the bands and I became a Hell’s Angel, because all the Angels came in on a Friday and Saturday night. Andy Warhol was afraid of them, so they had to go upstairs – and upstairs is where all the music was, where all the bands came.

“That’s where Iggy Pop and the Stooges got started, and The New York Dolls, David Bowie, Blondie before she was Blondie…  It was fantastic to see all these bands. It was the end of plastic rock and going into glam rock. I saw Bowie for the first time, cross-dressing. He was wearing all gold, totally all gold, and sparkles, with platform heels. I looked at him and said: ‘What have I got myself into?’ Then The New York Dolls came in and they were all cross-dressers too. But their music was fantastic. It was music I’d never heard before.”

More than a decade later, following tussles with both ends of the legal spectrum – the Hell’s Angels and the US authorities – Mike landed, via a stint in Bangkok, in Cambodia, a country still in the throes of civil war. “By 1996, Sharky’s was full of arms dealers and soldiers. That was the nature of our clientele – mainly military.

“It was very, very rough. We had a lot of drive-by shootings. We had a locker downstairs with about 12 AK47s and M16s in it. We had six rocket-propelled grenade launchers in the office, 12 RPGs, a box of 96 hand grenades, about eight to ten handguns, and everyone had to learn how to use them. It was tough. The change came right after 2000. I was walking down by the riverfront and I remember very distinctly that I saw a young, well-dressed European woman walking in high heels. I turned to my business partner and said: ‘It’s over.’ He said: ‘What’s over?’ I said: ‘The military. It’s over.’

“Suddenly, I remembered my past, with the Ramones, CBGBs, the Dead Kennedys, the Misfits, and all those bands. Having been friendly with them and having worked in that bar environment, at world famous punk and glam clubs, it hit me in the head. I said: ‘This place will be converted into a music club.’ So here we are: it’s 2012 and we’re now three years into the change.”

Sharky’s is budgeting another three years for that change to take full effect, hinging in part on the relaxation of local laws to allow bands to play deep into the night, but – like New York’s famous cradles of punk rock – the club is already spawning its own nascent scene. And the annual crescendo is Penhstock, when more than 30 bands will take the stage over three days.

“Penhstock is about my memories of Woodstock and my contribution to the alternative music scene here in Cambodia. The first year, we had five bands and we realised we needed to get more, so I begged the musicians to find splinters – get another musician from over here, and another musician from over there. We were able to turn five bands into eight bands within the space of three days. Last year, we were more fortunate and had 20, which began to allow us to turn this place into a showcase for young Khmer bands and alternative music – indie, rock and heavy metal. That’s what we did in New York – at Max’s, at CBGB’s, at Dr G’s – and some of those bands, like The New York Dolls, turned out to be huge.”

Among the local bands already making ample soundwaves are Cartoon Emo, who played at last year’s Penhstock and are now perhaps Cambodia’s most famous Khmer rock/heavy metal group. They released their first album of original music, Shadow, on Svang Dara Entertainment in 2010 in what Mike hopes will prove a precedent-setter.

“We’re also fortunate enough to showcase other Khmer bands such as Anti-Fate and Millennium. All of these are going to be headlining at Penhstock. The bands with the largest following will be the last on each night; the bands we feel will be very difficult acts to follow. On the Friday night, Herding Cats will be our last band. Their vocalist has what it takes to become an overwhelming personality on stage. Someone who’s out in front, right in your face, not ashamed of it, and if you don’t like it, go fuck off. That’s the kind of music I grew up with and I love it.

“Saturday’s last act is Sliten6, which we believe is the next Cartoon Emo. Last time they played here, they all took their shirts off and the crowd went crazy. They’re a very difficult act to follow. On Sunday night, to show our respect, we’re giving the show over to the longest running rock ‘n’ roll band here, Bum n Draze. They’re impossible to follow; great entertainers.

“Next year, we’re hoping to have 40 to 50 bands, possibly an outdoor venue. We’ll see where it goes, but this bar is going to be a stage for new Khmer and barang talent. We’re going to clean up the place a bit, but it has a certain grungy charm and that’s how it’s going to stay.”

WHO: 30 of the best local rock bands
WHAT: Penhstock III
WHERE: Sharky Bar, St. 130
WHEN: May 11 to 13
WHY: Southeast Asian rock music history in the making

 

Twist on a bloody classic

The gallows looms large and lethal over the audience, its menacing L-shaped frame stretching towards the sky; at the scaffold’s morbid side, a fearsome life-sized coffin. This is the fear of death in its naked, most terrifying glory. Suddenly, a young woman swathed in 19th century clothing appears. “Are you looking forward to it, too?” she asks the audience, in a bloodthirsty Cockney twang, of the looming public execution.

The second of English author Charles Dickens’ novels, Oliver Twist – the tale of a naive nine-year-old orphan’s miserable existence among a gang of juvenile London pickpockets, first published in serial form between 1837 and 1839 – remains, according to The Children of Charles Dickens author Frank Donovan, one of English literature’s bluntest portrayals of criminals and their sordid lives.

Also known as The Parish Boy’s Progress, this seminal work of Dickens – a child labourer in his early youth – exposes the brutal treatment of many a waif in Victorian London.

His literary model has undergone many transformations since it was first released, perhaps most notably the1968 Academy Award-winning film starring Ron Moody as criminal mastermind Fagin, and one of the most recent is being brought to Cambodia by Britain’s TNT Theatre this week.

In their charming stage adaptation, directors Paul Stebbings and Phil Smith have successfully condensed Dickens’ 500-page novel featuring more than 50 characters into a 90-minute play requiring only five actors.

No mean feat, given the social structures of the day that Dickens is portraying. For this is a world in which poverty and crime go hand-in-hand; in which the ultimate penalty is to hang from a noose until dead, no matter how bad a hand the cards may have dealt you.Here lies the turf of gallows humour, a big city being steered by the criminal underworld – a model that, despite the passage of centuries, still manifests itself in the urban nightmares that plague us today.

But even gallows humour is humour of a sort, and it’s not without a generous helping of slapstick the TNT approach their tragic subject – which is seen in this adaptation through the dying eyes of Fagin as he awaits execution, trying to justify his life of crime. Switching between roles at lightning speed, actors are one minute the money grubbing Mrs Corney, the next the Artful Dodger; first the big-hearted whore Nancy, then the murderous Bill Sykes.

Thomas Johnson’s original score, according to the critics, somehow makes it darker and more real; an effect also achieved by Arno Scholz and Paul Stebbings’s set design.

“The enormous energy of these characters and the full bloodied portrait of the first modern urban nightmare, London, make the story not only exciting and dramatic, but also truly contemporary,” said a spokesman for TNT Theatre.

“The themes and social issues raised by Dickens are as relevant today as they were when the novel was published over 160 years ago. The central theme is the link between poverty and crime. Beyond that it explores the way society treats its weakest members.”

WHO: TNT Theatre Britain
WHAT: Oliver Twist
WHERE: Chenla Theatre, Phnom Penh Cultural Centre, Mao Tse Tung Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm May 6; 11am and 7pm May 7
WHY: Because you’ve got to pick a pocket or two, boys…