Byline: Phoenix Jay

From blood-thirsty dictatorships to the mummified corpse of a cannibalistic serial killer, dare you delve into The Advisor’s guide to the dark side of tourism in Southeast Asia?

Mankind’s fascination with Death and the macabre stretches back far beyond the beginnings of history. In Ancient Rome, an 80,000-seat Colosseum had to be built to house the crowds amassing at public executions; the burning of witches by the Spanish Inquisition and hangings in the Wild West were tourist events in and of themselves. Tours of Robben Island spiked suddenly last year following the death of Nelson Mandela. Even now, plans are underway to turn Fukushima – site of Japan’s 2011 nuclear meltdown – into an ‘attraction’, although radiation levels mean it will be a further 25 years at least before it’s even safe to open the doors.

Writers were the first to describe their voyages to deadly places such as this in alluring gore. PJ O’Rourke titled his book about travelling to Warsaw, Managua and Belfast in 1988 Holidays In Hell. Eight years later, Professors Lennon and Foley – of the Department of Hospitality, Tourism & Leisure Management at Glasgow Caledonian University – coined the term ‘dark tourism’. By 2005 a definition existed, courtesy of Philip Stone of the University of Lancaster: “The act of travel and visitation to sites, attractions and exhibitions which have real or recreated death, suffering or the seemingly macabre as a main theme.” From blood-thirsty dictatorships to the mummified corpse of a cannibalistic serial killer, dare you follow The Advisor’s guide to the dark side of tourism in Southeast Asia?

My Lai, Vietnam:
This picturesque village, known today for its tailoring, is the site of one of the worst war crimes committed by the US during the Vietnam War (and the only recognised such site that can be visited in the country). On 16 March 1968, American soldiers entered on a search-and-destroy mission, but failed to find any Viet Cong. What followed is disputed to this day. The official death toll of unarmed women, children and old men stands at 504, according to Vietnam; the US, meanwhile, holds that 347 lives were lost. Filmmaker Joseph Strick interviewed six of the soldiers who had been present for an Academy award-winning documentary in 1970. Most tried to play the incident down, but one – when he thought the camera had been switched off – was recorded as saying “he could just as well get some extra target practice in”. Only one of the perpetrators, a Lt William Calley, who claimed to have only followed orders, was jailed for murder, but soon released. Worthy of mention is helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who – 30 years later – received official recognition for intervening in the killing spree and flying several Vietnamese to safety. Today, the memorial site is watched over by a concrete sculpture of a woman brandishing one fist in the air while holding a baby in the other hand, dead relatives at her feet. Graphic images captured at the scene by a US photographer sit uneasily alongside a souvenir shop selling T-shirts, sandals and even cooking utensils with bullet holes in them.

Death Railway, Thailand & Burma:
In the Burmese town of Thanbyuzayat, the tombstones of 3,149 Commonwealth soldiers are laid out in a semi-circle, beginning with the As. At the other end of the line, in Thailand, another 4,946 men are buried in the cemetery at Kanchanaburi. In between is the infamous ‘Death Railway’, including the bridge over the River Kwai, devised by Japan’s Imperial Army at the height of World War II to transport troops and supplies from Bangkok to Burma. The line was completed in just a year, but cost the lives of around 13,000 Prisoners Of War and 100,000 native labourers: one man died for every sleeper laid. Conditions were beyond brutal, as one survivor, 95-year-old Sir Harold Atcherley, told The Telegraph on the 70th anniversary of the railway’s completion. “Cholera rife and men dying at the rate of 20 per day,” Sir Harold wrote on a small scrap of paper following a gruelling five-day train journey and 200-mile march in 1943. “Appalling state of tropical ulcers – cases seen myself of legs bared to the bone from ankle to knee. No sleep for the wretched patients, who moan all night long – their only hope for the morning to look forward to a repetition of all the previous day’s agonies. No man deserves such a death.”

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Vietnam:
Still known to local devotees as ‘Uncle Ho’, Marxist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh was president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam between 1945 and 1969 and led the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War until he died aged 79. For the past 35 years, despite his wish to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in Vietnam’s hills, Ho Chi Minh’s mummified corpse has been on public display in a mausoleum inspired by Lenin’s in Moscow. Dimly lit in a glass case flanked by eight military guards, his body is reportedly flown to Moscow for three months each year for touch-ups. A sign at the entrance declares: ‘You may only look at Ho Chi Minh’s body three times – once upon entering, once when rounding the halfway point and one more time before exiting the room.’

Burma:
The world’s longest-running military dictatorship opened itself up in the 1990s, inviting foreign investment and bumping tourist visas up from a week to 28 days. When word leaked out in 1995 that the regime was using forced labour, however, it immediately triggered a tourism boycott. Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said visiting the country during the junta’s ‘Visit Myanmar Year 1996’ was “tantamount to condoning the regime”. While some still endorse the ban, others – including many exiled citizens forced to flee government bullets in 1988 – insist that isolating Burma, also known as Myanmar, only pushes it further into the arms of neighbouring states with serious human rights issues. Suu Kyi herself, freed in December 2010 after almost 20 years in detention, has also said “the people of Burma can open up the eyes of tourists to the situation… if they’re interested in looking”.

Ellis Pathological Museum, Thailand:
Bangkok’s Siriraj Hospital contains a gruesome collection of forensic specimens related to Thailand’s modern history, from cyclops babies to severed heads. Founded in the 1920s by American Professor AG Ellis, the first pathologist in Thailand, it was principally for the education of medical students. Today, its ghastly exhibits – including the instruments and surgical gowns used during the 1946 autopsy of murdered Thai King Ananda Mahidol – are as a much a lure for macabre-minded tourists. The most grisly is the mummified corpse of Chinese cannibalistic serial child-killer Si-Oui, who suffocated then ate the hearts and livers of at least six boys before he was sent to the gallows in the 1950s. A sign on his cabinet points out that he ate people ‘because he loves to eat human’s organ, not because of starving.’

Krakatoa, Indonesia:
Perhaps the world’s most famous volcano – second only to Italy’s Mount Vesuvius, which wiped out Pompeii – Krakatoa produced the deadliest eruption in modern history. On 26 August 1883, in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, this three-mile-wide, five-and-a-half-mile-long, 813-metre-high behemoth spewed a cloud of gas and debris 24km into the air above Perboewatan, one of its three peaks. The next morning, four tremendous explosions sent both Perboewatan and Danan, a second peak, plunging to the depths. Superheated steam blasted the searing clouds over a 275-mile radius at speeds of 100kph, with an explosive force equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT (the bomb that devastated Hiroshima had a force of 20 kilotons). Those who weren’t killed immediately drowned in the 120-feet-tall tsunami that swept the islands, leaving a final death toll of more than 36,000.

Taman Prasati Museum, Indonesia:
Built by the colonial government in 1795 as a final resting place for Dutch noblemen, this former cemetery now serves as an illustration of the evolution of sepulchral practices across Indonesia. Translated as ‘the Museum Park of Memorial Stones’, this collection in central Jakarta includes artefacts used in a variety of ancient burial practices, a replica of a 17th-century hearse and the gravestones of some of Jakarta’s most notable historic figures. Perhaps the most infamous is Pieter Erbeveld, a wealthy cavalry captain of German and Asian descent executed for being a traitor. He died pinned to a cross with meat cleavers, his gut ripped open and heart torn out, after being convicted of treason for refusing to sell part of his land to the governor general. His body was then quartered in a square in the Old Town quarter. For the final 220 years of colonial rule, a grisly monument warned the public of the horrific futility of betraying authority: Erbeveld’s head, impaled on a spike and mounted on a slab inscribed with a chilling warning not to do ‘what traitor Pieter Erbeveld did’.

Tuol Sleng, Cambodia:
Codenamed S-21, the most infamous Khmer Rouge interrogation centre was known locally as konlaenh choul min dael chenh – ‘the place where people go in, but never come out’. Its sole purpose was to extract confessions from political prisoners before they were taken to the nearby Killing Fields for execution. Of the 20,000 detainees who entered, only six are known to have survived. The former school today bears testament to the regime’s brutality. Torture implements gather dust on the same metal beds that bodies were found chained to when the Vietnamese invaded in 1979. The floors of hastily built brick cells are still stained with decades-old blood and a handwritten plaque serves as a chilling reminder of the horrors endured within its walls: “While getting lashes or electrification, you must not cry at all.”

Rommani Nart Prison Museum, Thailand:
Once a maximum-security prison deep in the bowels of Bangkok, this former corrections centre is today a monument to the savage retribution system that ruled Thailand in days of old. Upon entering, you’re greeted by a skeleton bearing a placard that reads: ‘Uncle Tow, who devoted his body to the prison for people’s awareness of their mortal lives.’ Capital punishment rules the day: life-sized models of executioners and their soon-to-be-beheaded victims replicate the gruesome scenes show for real in graphic photographs adorning the walls; actual swords used for loosing heads from shoulders glint nearby in the gloom. But Rommani Nart’s horrors aren’t solely historic. Under a slightly lost-in-translation sign reading ‘Execution of bed’ sits the sort of stretcher to which prisoners today are lashed before being given a lethal injection. Torture methods are described in a series of crude but disturbing drawings; the fate of modern drug users and smugglers played out by leering mannequins alongside.

 

 

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” – Plato

When ‘father of Singapore’ Lee Kuan Yew visited Phnom Penh in the 1960s, he turned to his host and said: “I hope, one day, my city will look like this.” The Cambodian capital, at the time, bore few hints of the Maoist horrors that would soon mar the entire country. Women piled their hair high in towering beehives; men wore flares, the more daring growing their hair long; packed cinema halls screened the country’s reigning movie sirens; heaving night-spots reverberated to Cambodia’s unique spin on the new phenomenon called rock ‘n’ roll.

Dubbed the ‘Golden Era’ of this tiny Southeast Asian nation, the resurgence of which has become the focus of global fascination (not to mention an epic party being hosted by The Advisor on April 5), the ‘60s became synonymous with the ‘new sounds’ floating across the airwaves from US forces stationed in Vietnam to the insatiable ears of young Cambodians.

King Norodom Sihanouk, having liberated his country from French rule, had modernisation foremost on his mind. By the early ‘60s, this most creative of monarchs was leading the capital’s elite in the art of partying hard. On political tours across Cambodia, described by historian David Chandler as “a nation of musicians”, the king was accompanied by an entire musical troupe. As soon as he had delivered his speech, the dancing would begin.

Cambodia’s first gen rock ‘n’ rollers were thus hardly the drug-taking, hotel-room-smashing type. “It would be wrong to see Cambodian rock music as about rebellion – it was pretty much your patriotic duty to don white trousers, hit the dance floor like Cliff Richard, and catch up on the latest dance moves,” writes Clive Bell in thewire.co.uk. “The fluttering vocal line, baroque with strange yodels and ornaments, those gentle saxes and clarinets, exotic organ solos, the crisp beat combo drum kit – there’s a tropical sweetness here that’s hard to resist… Tradition blends with modernity: the flowing hand movements of Southeast Asian dance are readily adapted to contemporary rhythms. The country’s musicians were wiped out and their recordings now evoke a sunnier period

of Cambodian history: a time when Phnom Penh was hopelessly corrupt, lacking in democratic accountability and plagued by graduate unemployment, but at least you could dance to a decent band every night.”

Musician Chum Kem first heard Chubby Checker’s music while he was a student in Italy. When he returned home, he brought with him The Twist – Checker’s 1960 cover of the B-side of Hank Ballard and The Midnighters’ 1959 single, which topped the US charts in 1960 then again in 1962. Guitar bands Drakkar, Baksei Cham Krong and Apsara seized on this extraordinary sound, infusing it with local traditions to create their very own genre. “They knew that rock ’n’ roll was from America, France or Cuba,” Youk Chhang, head of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, said in a recent VOA Khmer interview. “The music influenced the way they behaved and their way of wearing clothes. It was not just a copy. They made that music more like Khmer, so it was not really harmful to Cambodian culture or identity.”

Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock ‘n’ Roll, a new film by John Pirozzi which was seven years in the making, is perhaps the most exhaustive exploration of this ‘Golden Era’. “A big part of why there was so much great rock music back then was that there was a demand for it,” the director said after the film’s premiere at Chaktomuk Theatre earlier this year. “Rock ’n’ roll was associated with modernity, and young Cambodians after independence wanted to be modern.”

DJane Sao Sopheak, a broad-shouldered 30-something filmmaker who throws her head back when she laughs – which is loud and often – remembers being regaled by her mother’s tales of “hippy singers”. An avid collector, with more than 200 songs in her set, she speaks passionately and eloquently. “Cambodians are only just realising the value of their music,” she says, perched on a chair in the Meta House office. “In the ‘60s, all the Cambodian singers composed their music by themselves. Sin Sisamouth wrote not only the words to his songs, but also the music. When you listen to the meanings, it’s totally different than what we have now.

“A lot of the songs in the ‘60s were meant in a literal way; their meanings were very direct. For example, Sin Sisamouth sings a song about Battambang. He talks about everything: it has fruits, beautiful girls, he explains everything. When you listen to the song, you feel as though you are there! You can imagine it in your mind and when you close your eyes you can see everything. Other songs, like ‘I’m not going home tonight,’ talk about staying out all night, partying. But Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t just about that. People also sang about the environment, about religion, about relationships, about politics. And there wasn’t just rock ‘n’ roll; we had hippy music, happy music, romantic music, every kind of music!

“When I first saw the band Dengue Fever, I realised: ‘Wow! They’re foreigners and they love Cambodian music. Why don’t I play it here?’ My husband encouraged me to play, putting me in the Meta House schedule, but the first time I looked, I couldn’t find the right music here in Phnom Penh. I went to YouTube, but the sound wasn’t good and some of the remixes didn’t sound like the originals. Then I found someone who had been collecting music on tape, so I bought from him and converted it to digital. One of my favourite songs translates as ‘All chilis are spicy’, but it has another meaning: that jealous women are like hot chilis! The music’s really good to dance to…” [Erupts in song, jiggling on chair then exploding in laughter]

A manic mash-up of the garage rock, doo-wop, bluesy surf guitar and psychedelic distort synonymous with 1960s America, Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll was unlike anything the country’s ears had ever heard before. “Exposed to Western pop for the first time, Cambodians swallowed it whole – the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, Phil Spector, the Beach Boys and the Doors, as well as Latin dance beats and country and Western ballads,” wrote music journalist Nik Cohn after discovering it on the soundtrack of City Of Ghosts in 2007. “They don’t seem to have bothered with categories; their records were the stuff of mad scientists, mixing genres at random… The bathos of the lyrics is contradicted by the music, which tends to be raucous and joyous, with bubbly Farfisa organs, piledriver drums and slashing Hendrix-esque guitar solos… The music’s keynote is mad adventure, a feeling of new worlds opening up, of infinite possibilities. Of course, the fact that it bangs doesn’t hurt.”

From visceral growls and machine-gun drumming on Neary Shork Kley (‘Lady with short hair’) to the honky tonk piano underpinning shrill sax solos and wailing guitar riffs on Srey Srey Alov (‘Ladies nowadays’), Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll is a tripped-out nod to its Western forebears. The fresh-from-the-lunatic-asylum giggling throughout Sva Rom Monkey (‘Monkey dance’) calls to mind The Surfaris’ high-energy anthem Wipe Out, a B-side smash from California 1963. Yos Olarang’s much-loved Jih Cyclo, equal parts bounce and funkadelia, melds the classic wow-wow-wow guitar refrain with a chorus even the least cunning of linguists can grasp. Twist-‘n’-shoutin’ ladies pogoing up and down under towering beehives are the stuff of Rom Ago Go (‘Go-Go Dance’), while Sa Ek Mok Teat (‘Come back tomorrow’) combines rousing Hendrix-esque guitar riffs, warbling organ and a sentiment anyone who’s lived here can surely relate to.

Dy Saveth was the diminutive star of three of Sihanouk’s films in the ‘60s and one of the few artists to have survived the Maoist madness of the Khmer Rouge. Crowned Miss Cambodia in 1960 at the age of 19, she has lost none of her poise, seated with an impossibly straight spine in what for anyone else would be an impossible-to-get-out-of comfy chair in the Bophana Centre. ”I remember every one of the nightclubs, including The Mekong River Club,” she says, smiling demurely. “We would dance like Europeans and Americans; it was a very happy time. There were many ‘dancing girls’ in the clubs, who could do everything from traditional dance to modern dance. I was very modern in the 1960s. Our music at the time took a little bit from Europe, a little bit from America and a lot from Cambodia.

“We were very proud in the ‘60s. We thought hard about where we came from and what we represented. Now, it is starting all over again. We are thinking about this. Don’t forget! If people forget, there will be nothing left; everything will be gone. Davy Chou is a very young boy, but he is thinking about this in his recent film, Golden Slumbers. I love him! I love my country, I love my king and I love my people. That’s why I came back.”

WHO: An epic line-up of Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll stars
WHAT: The Advisor’s Return of the Golden Era party
WHERE: The FCC Mansion, Street 178 & Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 5pm April 5
WHY: “Even if I never come back, my voice still remains” – Sin Sisamouth to his son, shortly before he was murdered by the Khmer Rouge

 

Tool, Incubus, Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chilli Peppers: heads bobbing in flawless four-four time, the quadruple drum pattern that serves as the heartbeat of rock and its many manic derivatives, a quartet of European 20-somethings stand draped over drums and guitars. From a wall of speakers comes a familiar rush: the sort of sonic crescendo designed to reduce Olympic stadiums to near-rubble. Two-thirds French, one part Italian, Sangvar Day – headlining a new hard rock festival at Slur on March 7 – are among the capital’s newest and most accomplished noise makers. The Advisor ambushed Mat (bass, made in Marseilles), Julien (drums, also French), Julian (guitar, from Paris) and Robin (vocals & guitar, made in Verona, Italy) between sound checks to talk fighting, avant-garde orchestras and how to make hard rock that really rocks.

Mat: The thing I like about this band is that we never agree on anything at all.

Makes for good creative energy. Fighting is the best foreplay, is it not? 

Mat: Tension – exactly!

Are you all this pugnacious? Where did you spring from?

Julien: I played in bands in France as a teenager then moved to Seattle three years ago. It’s a great indie rock city.

Julian: I’ve been playing in bands in France and first recorded two years ago.

Mat: He also attended a conservatory in France, but he’s too modest to tell you that.

Robin: I come from a more acoustic background and was in the States for a couple of years, in San Francisco. I first started writing songs because I wanted to get laid! For the first couple of years it didn’t work because I sucked, then in a slightly sadistic fashion I thought maybe girls were sleeping with me only because I could play the guitar.

The guitar can bea powerful aphrodisiac. Now, who’s next?

Mat: I was in a very narrow niche, in the avant-garde scene in Marseilles.

You do look a little like one of the Nihilists from The Big Lebowski… How avant-garde are we talking, exactly?

Mat: I jumped into the scene as a listener then started master classes and workshops and ended up in an orchestra. There were a lot of spin-off bands from the orchestra built around the idea of free improvisation. The bottom line is that musicians are listeners, so you interact with the sound of others and what you hear on the spot. You don’t know what anyone will do and no one can predict what you will do by way of feedback. If you think about academic music, somebody plays something with a rhythm, a harmony, a tempo, a melody, a bass and you try to join them and do the same – just add on top of that. But that is only one answer. Then you have the opposite: I don’t follow your harmony, I don’t follow your riff, I don’t follow your rhythm, or your bass. There are lots of variables that you can play with: low volume, high volume, low pitch, high pitch. The key is to interact the way you want and don’t try to predict what might come out of that.

Were you using avant-garde instruments?

Mat: Sometimes we played with violins – typical classical music stuff. That was interesting, but any kind of instrument can join. It’s experimental. Before that I was a guitarist, but I grew up!

Robin: Oh, come on!

Gentlemen, play nice… Anyway, experimental music is a far cry from what you just played, which is all original.

Robin: There is a skill involved in interpreting other people’s music, but we’ve all already done that.

Julien: I love playing many kinds of music, but as a listener I definitely prefer bands who have their own music. When I was in Seattle, there were many, many original bands and only a few cover bands who didn’t have their own stuff, so I insisted we play original music because these guys are all awesome and more than good enough. Julian had 15 original songs when we first got together. Some of them are very old and I’m not a metal fan at all; basically I don’t like metal, but this stuff sounds good.

And Robin, you’re head of the Lyrics Department?

Robin: At the beginning, I was just singing random things. I learned very early on that because in Italy nobody really understands English I could just get away with it. I could say something random and people would think it was a really deep, meaningful song. Sure! [Laughs] I had a couple of words I always repeated and people out there – my friends especially – started to notice. ‘Aren’t you always saying the same nonsense?’

Rumbled!

Robin: Yeah! [Laughs] But from there you have some kind of mess and maybe if you record it you can catch some kind of sense in it, perhaps a single line. Then maybe, from just one line, perhaps you have the making of a really cool song; a really cool idea.

What inspires you? Do you have a process? 

Robin: I can’t control what comes out; it’s really a subconscious process. Anybody can do it, really. Get drunk, record it… [Laughs] But they don’t have to be good; they’re just an idea! Queen is about a prostitute, which by the way nobody knows here. [Laughs]

My band’s a bit like that with lyrics. ‘Know the bit when I sing XXXX?’ ‘Err, no…’

Robin: It’s about a prostitute in Phnom Penh and the song talks about her problems in being here and being used by white men. The lyrics aren’t moralistic at all, but they do contain lots of anger and disgust and hurt. It’s almost like seeing yourself through this woman’s eyes. Most of our songs are about Cambodia, many of them still a work in progress. There’s one about the big hydropower dams they’re building on the Lower Mekong; I really wanted to write something about this. These guys [gestures to band mates], I always asked them to join in at the beginning, but they’d be, like, ‘Yeah, yeah. You’re good. Great lyrics…’ [Laughs] There’s another one inspired by the book First They Killed My Father; you see it for sale everywhere here. I just opened the book and thought: ‘I need to write a song.’ There’s this one page about two girls hiding in the forest, being chased by the Khmer Rouge. The song starts with them running and one gets killed, so the other vows to avenge her death. What’s really great about Julian’s compositions is that he doesn’t get jealous about them. A lot of songwriters, including myself, when they bring a song to the group their attitude is: ‘Don’t fuck with it!’ The rest of the band tends to fight over songs, but Julian’s just like: ‘Sure, whatever.’

And what are you listening to when you’re not playing your own compositions?

Julien: I like classical rock, I love punk, I love soul. I also listen to a lot of free jazz: John Coltrane. I like prog-rock and experimental contemporary music, like noise music. I love that! Classical music and opera, too. Modern music: think dub stepping…

So anything BUT hard rock. Again, why are you here?!

Julien: I’m a drummer! I like to play rock and punk.

Julian: I’m more into early punk and have a weakness for maths-rock.

I hate maths. This had better not involve long division or algebra. But back to your sound: there were some eye-twitchingly psychedelic moments in there, along with angry thrashing ARGGGGH mosh-pit guitar. It’s got all sorts of twisted energy in it. Julian, you’re the mad professor…

Julian: For me, music was born in the ’90s: metal, Deftones, Def Jam, a lot of hip hop. It was a very creative time: a mix of hip hop and rock. I’ve been composing since I was at high school. I was the screamer in my band.

How do you do it?!

Julian: [Laughs] You just have to find a way! You open your throat and ARRRRRGGGGGHHHH! [Guttural scream]

So, a question that’s been bugging me: where does the name Sangvar Day come from?

Julien: In Cambodia’s traditional boxing, called bokator, it’s the red silk sash that fighters tie around their upper arm. We wanted something related to Cambodia, something historic – and a band name no one else already had!

And you’re planning on recording?

Julien: We’re trying to find somewhere at the moment, but it isn’t easy. We went to one place and it was like a Khmer wedding store. The recording studio was a tiny room out the back that didn’t even have room for a drum kit. I think it was used for recording karaoke songs. The owner suggested we record in the local police station. I think he was trying to make them some extra money…

WHO: Sangvar Day
WHAT: All-original hard rock
WHERE: Slur, Street 172
WHEN: 9pm March 7
WHY: See ‘WHAT’

 

 

B-boy culture, peeled-off G-strings and 1970s Communism: a night with one of the UK’s most unusual exports

B-boy culture, peeled-off G-strings and 1970s Communism might seem unlikely bedfellows, but when a small band of Scotsmen find global fame by pretending to be Cuban, ‘unlikely’ takes on a whole new meaning. The Cuban Brothers – not one of whom is actually Cuban – perform a bizarre breakdancing, stripping, stand-up comedy and singing medley in what is quite possibly one of the UK’s most unusual exports of all time.

And if the reception is anything to go by, Unusual is the new Black: Elton John flew The Cuban Brothers to France in a private jet; Robbie Williams stage-invaded their act at his own end-of-tour party; artist Damien Hirst hired them for his Christmas bash; British TV presenters Vernon Kay and Tess Daly booked them for their wedding, and their debut album, Yo Bonita!, features ‘a crack outfit of some of the finest funk players on the planet’, including the band that once backed the late Amy Winehouse.

But how did several lads – from a permafrozen place synonymous with men who wear skirts but no knickers – take the quantum leap from 21st century Scotland to 1970s Havana? Miguel Montavani, Cuban Brothers’ front man and founder, wasn’t always so. As the rather more modestly named Mike Keat, he hopped the English Channel almost a decade ago to take up residence in a hotel in Palma, Mallorca. It was there, among Latin entertainers from a bygone era, that inspiration first hit.

“I’ve always had a fascination with sub-standard cabaret performers,” he told The Guardian in what the reporter describes as ‘a disarmingly Scottish accent’, “and there was this amazing guy working in the hotel I was living in who did the kids’ discos. He was in his early 50s, about five feet two and had a fuck-off, big Tom Selleck ‘tache. He’d run out from behind this little console and be like [adopts Spanish accent]: ‘Hokay keeds! Eess my fabourite, I sure eess your fabourite ass-well! Less go… Whigfield, Sadurday Night!’ It was the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen in my life and I just thought: ‘This guy’s a genius’ and fell in love with him.” Mike, enchanted by the entertainer he describes as “so awful he was fantastic”, added his own touches – including stripping off “just for the wrongness factor” – and the lascivious lothario Miguel Mantovani was given life.

Back home in Edinburgh, Miguel took control of a Tuesday club night in a basement bar and within three weeks takings had rocketed from $500 a night to $9,000. Outings to hip-hop clubs in the city soon turned up Archie Easton, a former dancer

with The Prodigy (now known as Archerio on stage), and conspicuously Oriental-looking One Motion breakdance champion Kengo Oshimo, whose alter-ego is Kengo San, ‘a dancer and fever man who can make you come without touching you’ (Miguel’s Japanese lovechild was sired inadvertently on his national service with the Cubano Merchant Navy in 1978, so the story goes). Miguel’s dance floor encounter with Archerio, a Glaswegian Buddhist and ex-welder, was a formative moment in The Cuban Brothers conception. “I battled him,” says Miguel. “He wiped the floor with me.”

Thus far, The Cuban Brothers have supported James Brown, Chuck Berry, Fatboy Slim, De La Soul and Talib Kweli, performing along the way with everyone from The Prodigy and Q-Tip to Roy Ayers and Jocelyn Brown. An appearance at last year’s Big Wig Festival in Singapore sowed the seeds in Southeast Asia and this week they’re bringing their bizarre blend of comedy, breakdancing, stripping and spectacular music to Code Red.

The show isn’t for the faint of heart or humour, but as the boys have proven, even a Communist state such as Cuba can take the joke. “I was a little bit worried the first time we performed in Cuba,” says Miguel. “I was like, fuck man, they could be thinking: ‘Our culture’s being bastardised by these jocks,’ but surprisingly enough they recognised we’re not taking the piss out of their culture, that the joke’s on us. They love it.”

Miguel’s vocal skills have since made it to the big screen in Sunshine On Leith, the film version of a British musical which follows two men relearning how to live life in Edinburgh after returning home from the front line in Afghanistan. The soundtrack features songs by Scottish pop-folk peddlers The Proclaimers, of whom Miguel is a life-long fan. “I met [director] Dexter Fletcher at Jamie Oliver’s Feastival where we were playing,” he says. “We hit it off and he told me he was doing the Proclaimers film. I was into it right away. I’m the Proclaimers’ biggest fan. I grew up sat behind them at Easter Road when I first started going to the football with my grandad. So Dex and I ended up sitting having a drink, arms round each other singing Proclaimers songs and he’s telling me I have to read for the film. It was real serendipity.

“He told me there was a film with Proclaimers music set in Edinburgh, that there’s the role of a guy running the bar that might suit me, with Peter Mullan in it too. He wasn’t going anywhere until I had a shot. The producers asked if I could shoot something but I was on the road, so I got Archie to set up a camera in my kitchen. I filmed the audition there and they loved it. They want to put it on the DVD – they said it is the best audition they have ever seen. When I learned I got it, we were off doing Holly Valance’s wedding to Nick Candy in Hollywood at Universal Studios. So I’m walking up Rodeo Drive dashing back for a soundcheck when I got the call from Dex saying I got the part. You can imagine it was one of those moments – I was in the blazing hot sun, on my way to a film set to a glam showbiz wedding to perform, punching the air. At the Edinburgh premiere, The Proclaimers made a beeline for me as I came through with my parents and said I have an amazing voice and it was their favourite bit of the film. My mum was amazed. She loves them too.”

And Sunshine On Leith isn’t Miguel’s only brush with the big screen: he’s also to be spotted in Cuban Fury, the new film from British comedy stalwarts Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. But music remains The Cuban Brothers’ mainstay: Yo Bonita! was declared album of the week by the UK’s Sunday Mirror and Mail on Sunday when it was released. Highlights include So Sweet, featuring soul chanteuse Mica Paris, which blends Philly soul with slick faux-Cuban vocals: “Won’t somebody take me back to the days in the hood, when it was good”, croons Miguel in this unashamedly retro summer track.

Instrumentation comes courtesy of The CBs, a band originally put together to back the mighty James Brown on one of his last-ever tours and which has since backed everyone from Tom Jones and Mick Jagger to Nick Cave and Prince Buster. “Yo Bonita! was the album started just after my firstborn Bonbon, I wanted to do an organic project not using any samples with the extraordinary live band I’d put together to support James Brown on one of his last tours out in Australia,” says Miguel. “The players comprise cats from Amy Winehouse’s outfit, Primal scream and so many more and they are the dopest musicians. The main idea was to do some great songs, dope beats and keep it free of gimmicks. With the exception of Kurtis Blow, who is just a legend of hip-hop culture and somebody I’ve always admired, the guests are some of my favourite British artists, all with their own true voice.” Keep your ears peeled for Motorhead’s Ace of Spades and Jermaine Stewart’s We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off rendered as they’ve never been rendered before.

But it’s on stage, in the unforgiving glare of the spotlight, that these not-so-Cuban, not-so-related ‘brothers’ come into their own in a gloriously testosterone-charged show hinged on slick slapstick banter. Not that that won them any friends at a party for the master distiller at Jack Daniel’s, who was so shocked he walked out. “He was this 80-odd-year-old southern Baptist,” Miguel recalls in The Guardian. “Apparently the ‘homoerotic nuances’ weren’t to his liking. Part of the show was to drag a guy from the audience on his chair and lap-dance around him. I finished by licking his bald forehead for about 10 seconds. I think that’s where it maybe went a bit wrong.”

WHO: The Cuban Brothers
WHAT: Crazed David Lynch/Chippendales hybrid
WHERE: Doors, Streets 84 & 47, and Code Red, opposite Naga World, near Koh Pich Bridge
WHEN: 9pm February 21 (Doors) & 1am February 22 (Code Red)
WHY: See ‘WHAT’

 

Lionel Scherer, Kosal Khiev and Vatthina Tola talk Allen Ginsberg, sleeping in peculiar places and the great responsibility that comes with being a poet

“The very word ‘poetry’ repels people. Why is that? Because of what schools have done to it. The slam gives it back to the people… We need people to talk poetry to each other. That’s how we communicate our values, our hearts, the things that we’ve learned that make us who we are.” – Marc Smith

Bored with conventional poetry recitals so snobbish almost no one in the audience was listening, Chicago-born Marc Kelly Smith – a self-described socialist who had been writing verse since the age of 19 – executed a dramatic ‘up yours’ to the literary establishment in 1984 with the launch of the world’s first poetry slam. A departure from the naval-gazing norm of genteel readings, the slam injected an element of fierce competition: poets performed; cheering (or booing) onlookers acted as judge, jury and execution. In September 1992, when Smithsonian magazine covered the poetry slam phenomenon, the reporter described Smith as “almost visionary on the need to rescue poetry from its lowly status in the nation’s cultural life”. The spoken word revolution had begun.

It would take a further three decades for the movement sparked by ‘Slam Papi’ to reach Cambodian shores, but when it did – in the form of US deportee Kosal Khiev, a Cambodia-born convict who discovered poetry while serving time for attempted murder – it carried with it the necessary tinder to light a new, more local revolution. In a culture where creative self-expression remains largely an alien concept, three international poets are uniting for a very special performance that, they hope, could hold the key to unlocking a nation.

On February 14, Kosal will take the stage at Oscar’s 51 alongside two fellow poets: Ucoc Lai, a Cambodian returnee from France, and Lionel Scherer, who describes himself as ‘Franco French’. More than a reading, more even than a ‘regular’ slam, the night is billed as a ‘four-set live performance with three international artists, each with their own universe/style and language’. The Advisor meets Lionel Scherer, Kosal Khiev and aspiring local poet Vatthina Tola to talk Allen Ginsberg, sleeping in peculiar places and the great responsibility that comes with being a bard.

Lionel: I was just a normal kid, but one day poetry started pulling at me. I was 13 and doing my homework. Suddenly it was like a rush in my head and I started writing. It was a gift which came out of nowhere; I was just the vector. I didn’t know what to do with it; I was actually disturbed. I went to my parents and said: ‘I have to read this to you.’ And they started crying! What is happening? I was just a lonely boy in the countryside; my parents didn’t allow me to go out in case I became a bad guy. Because of the writing, I started to meet people: it was the end of the ’70s, still rock ‘n’ roll, but punk was coming.

I came from a part of France where the first thing you learn is depression, because it’s grey all the time. You had a choice: work at the beer factory or at the steel factory. I needed to escape. Because of the singing in rock bands and writing, I had a chance to go to Paris to work for a music production company, as a sound engineer/producer, but I was like a lion in a cage. So I moved to New York City in 1990, where I met Allan Ginsberg through a friend. But his beat poetry readings and recitals weren’t like the energy we are producing now. In New York, I was walking the streets, spending the night driving around in taxis, sleeping in crazy places: I was looking for poetic circumstances.

In 2000, I ran into an old friend: a tramp we would always see at parties, speaking text and asking for “money for my talk”. It was at La Coupole, near Montparnasse. He said: “We are the slum movement – come join us!” Two weeks later, I was on stage. The movement began in Chicago, where people were bored of poetry readings: Marc Smith went to New York and was putting poets in a boxing ring, with boxing gloves, but they weren’t boxing each other. It was a verbal battle, just like the troubadours in the south of France. The scene exploded!

By 2000, we were putting on the Printemps de Poets in France: 15 people in cars, touring over 10 days between libraries, cultural centres, theatres, festivals, streets, parks…. I was getting back the punk energy of the beginning with this free talking – whatever you wanted. There was the woman from my bakery; the wife of my policeman; Ucoc’s child; old junkies; old poets; old actors; young singers… It was a fantastic energy – exactly the same energy as punk, but more freedom because there’s no music.

I’m interested in the deconstruction of language. At the beginning I was following rhyme and so on, writing very classical poetry, but after going on stage I went to something more accidental: improvisation. Freedom and transience – like trance music, you know when you take LSD or mushrooms? You go through the borders of Death and then it opens into another field. This is what poetry does, but without the drugs. Dali is my influence; Dali and Surrealism. I have spent a lot of time in his village. And I’m interested in the poetry of transcendence: to go through, from one state to another. And the cruelty of Charles Bukowski: sex, drugs… I’m in search of beauty in chaos.

I have two ways of writing. I have a title, but don’t do anything with it; I just travel. The second way is to ramble, to travel around, to lose myself in many stories and then to work on it and write, short but quick. Unification happens on stage. Charles Bukowski; punk; Hunter S Thompson: these are my influences, much more than poets. I like people who are going into poetic states – even if they don’t write poetry. They embrace the world. Where are we now? We want free talking; free energy; free thought; free acting. It’s revolutionary! This is a land of silent speaking, which is why we are doing this event at Oscar’s. I don’t know if Khmer people can take it, but down in Sihanoukville I take whole families to the beach and I throw my text at them – I’m slamming them – but it’s hard…

What makes me happy? Poetry, because it’s a state of mind. You can live in Phnom Penh; you can live in Paris; you can live in Buenos Aires. I was following this line of poetry against all the powers – and I’m still here. Looking for poetic circumstances, it’s hard work. In my country, when people say: ‘Oh, you are a poet,’ it’s very negative. It means you have no sense of reality. This is not true. As poets, we need to embrace reality to find ways through: poetry is the path of transcendence. This is what I have felt since I was 13 years old; now I’m 50 and I want to continue. To find a way through poetry into outer space: this, for me, is poetry.

I’ve known Ucoc for a long time and when we saw Kosal perform in a slam at Show Box we realised he was a brother; another trans-global poet. We are living our art and have special stories. The energy we put on stage is global, whether the language is French, English or Khmer. It’s touching. It’s very cool to do an open mic but this guy, Kosal, has a the recent elections: they cannot talk about it. We want to show people here that it’s possible to be a Kosal, to be a Ucoc, to be a Lionel: to be yourself – and free, in mind and in speech. Do you have energy? Open it, for creative purposes. That’s living. In open mics and poetry readings, we don’t usually have the time to show who we really are. We want to show who we are: most importantly the two Cambodian sons, Kosal and Ucoc, coming back and living here, one having experienced the difficulty of exile. Think of what you see on stage: the physical side of them; their energy; their intensity; their whispered cries.

Kosal: Poetry takes young Cambodians out of the box; out of what society says they should do and be. Breaking that containment, to say: ‘Hey, you can be anything you want to be – and the most important thing is to be yourself.’ It’s a thing of beauty to behold when I see this younger generation and that’s why I do what I do, hoping young people see it and it breaks that mental barrier: ‘If he can do it, I can do it too.’ It’s different when they see a foreigner doing it: of course he’s doing it; he’s a foreigner! Poetry is an alien concept in Cambodia, so when they realise I’m Khmer… and we have a French-Khmer, too. We have two different backgrounds and were raised in two very different environments because of what happened during the war, when so many families were forced to join the Diaspora. What’s interesting now is that they’re coming back because we have so much going on. There are so many layers: politically, culturally, artistically; the influence of foreign Khmers – the Diaspora – coming back and bringing their own influences with them. What I hope young Cambodians take away from this is that anything is possible. That’s what creativity is. The creative world is limitless – you can do or be anything. Why can’t we apply that in this world, be it business or everyday living? Why can’t we say: ‘These barriers are holding us back. Let’s break them! Let’s create new possibilities!’ I just crack open that space and let all the ugly stuff out. It’s a transformation: turning the ugly stuff into something beautiful. I’m giving people glimpses of who I am, in different stages.

Vatthina: I’ve seen Lionel perform twice; he was so passionate! Even though I couldn’t understand it all because it was in French, the way he said it you could appreciate it. It drew my attention. That’s what I love about spoken word rather than poetry; it’s not just about the words, but the way you project them. When you perform, what you want is to recall the memory of how you felt when you wrote that piece. When I do my pieces, what I really want – and it’s the best feeling in my life, doing spoken word – is when you look out at the audience and you know they’re feeling the same thing that you feel. What I want people to know from my pieces is how different it is for me, as a local. As a Khmer, the culture is so restrictive. It’s a sad thing to say but the truth is that we are born in a place that won’t allow us to be who we want to be or do what we want to do. Hanging out with you guys is great because you think we’re cool, but when old Khmer people look at us, they take our present and compare it with the stereotypical Khmer kids we ‘should’ be. We’re too different. They don’t label us ‘outcasts’, but we hear: ‘What you’re doing isn’t what you should be doing! What you SHOULD do is this…’ That’s why it’s so hard for us. When we’re growing up, people don’t talk much. It’s very hard to find people we can actually talk with, for any reason – whatever the topic. Nobody is willing to listen to you, much less to understand you. They don’t even try; they don’t want to. So when I write, I write about that. We don’t get the credit we should. After the first time I saw Kosal perform, I stayed up all night watching his videos. He’s so inspiring: the fact he’s Khmer and the fact he has a sad past. These intriguing things drew me into writing. I feel it’s my duty to break free of my own shackles. You need to inspire people. There are so many kids my age who have the same problem of being frustrated because they live in a culture where they have no one to talk to and no one is willing to understand them. For 18 years, I had to wake up and pretend to be happy; pretend to be someone who isn’t me. Now that I’m able to break away a little bit, I just want to enjoy myself. The main thing I write about is growing up in this place. I don’t know why, but if I were to write about a happy topic that wouldn’t feel natural. When I’m happy is when I’m around you guys; around my friends, people to share with. The best thing that ever happened to me was when a friend cried at my performance. Whatever it is that breaks these shackles, directly or indirectly, is because of the foreigners who come here. I study at law school and some of my friends and I won a competition and got to go to Portugal for one week, with everything paid for. I went home and told my parents and their reaction was: ‘Yes, good.’ That was it! Then I come to Show Box to tell my friends and everybody comes over to shake my hand and hug me. The reason I get so confused and upset is why is my own blood not supporting me? But no matter how hateful it is that I hate how my parents react, I can still understand why. My dad caused a lot of problems for me when I was younger and I hate that guy, but at the same time I understand why he does it. His dad was murdered by the Khmer Rouge when my dad was six or seven. When a guy that young never received love from his father, how can he know what love is and project it or even understand the feeling? So many young Cambodians get upset because their parents won’t let them go out, but try to understand why: they’re still traumatised; still scared of society. That’s why so many of us Khmer kids are so angry all the time; so frustrated all the time. If I didn’t have a punch bag at my house right now, I’d be punching people in the street! That’s what’s so good about people like Kosal: they inspire us to express ourselves creatively. He’s the guy who got me into it and he’s Khmer. I’m so proud of him!

WHO: Kosal Khiev, Ucoc Lai & Lionel Scherer
WHAT: International poetry performance
WHERE: Oscar’s 51, #29 Street 51
WHEN: 9:30pm February 14
WHY: “We need people to talk poetry to each other. That’s how we communicate our values, our hearts, the things that we’ve learned that make us who we are” – Marc Smith