Phoenix Jay – Page 8

Silent screams

A small boy cradles his face in his hands, wide eyes aghast at the graphic horrors unfolding before them. Mouth contorted in agony, he calls to mind The Scream, expressionist painter Edvard Munch’s iconic 19th-century depiction of existential angst. The look etched onto his features a mixture of mortal fear and incomprehension.

This tiny figure, dressed in a red shirt with yellow dots – the only colour in an ocean of otherwise muted greens, browns and greys – is a lone spectre caught between two worlds: the heady ‘Golden Era’ of 1960s Phnom Penh, a time of beehive hairdos, miniskirts and psych rock, and the dark, nightmarish netherworld of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime.
One of hundreds of minuscule clay figurines hand-carved by famed local sculptor Sarith Mang for use in the first Cambodian feature ever to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival, this small, chiselled child is a tiny avatar of Rithy Panh. Today the country’s most celebrated filmmaker, he was 13 when ultra-Maoists seized the capital, frogmarching folk from the city out to rice fields that would later serve as their graves.

Panh’s The Missing Picture, which won the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes festival, has been described by hollywoodreporter.com as “a deliberately distanced but often harrowing vision of a living hell”. The image to which the title refers is something that has haunted Panh for decades; photographic evidence to embody the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, or his own endeavours to do so on celluloid.

“For many years, I have been looking for the missing picture: a photograph taken between 1975 and 1979 by the Khmer Rouge when they ruled over Cambodia,” says a disembodied voice as the opening credits roll. “On its own, of course, an image cannot prove mass murder, but it gives us cause for thought, prompts us to meditate, to record history. I searched for it vainly in the archives, in old papers, in the country villages of Cambodia. Today I know: this image must be missing. I was not really looking for it; would it not be obscene and insignificant? So I created it. What I give you today is neither the picture nor the search for a unique image, but the picture of a quest: the quest that cinema allows.”

As the film’s narrator, via a philosophical script credited to Christophe Bataille and voiced matter-of-factly by Randal Douc, Panh’s clay avatar roams through the litany of Khmer Rouge abuses and horrors, positioned in elaborate dollhouse-sized scenes or superimposed using rough-edge visual effects. For 90 minutes these bleak, monochrome scenarios, mixed with grainy black-and-white archive images from the regime’s own propaganda files, are chillingly contrasted with rose-tinted recollections from the filmmaker’s pre-revolutionary childhood.

Asked why he chose to present his quest as a montage of images past and present, Panh says: “It came with the shooting. I bought Chinese acupuncture material and I thought I would start filming with this. Then I interviewed a former Khmer Rouge photographer and cameraman in order to know if there was a missing picture, a picture hidden somewhere. And I ended with clay figurines. In fact, I don’t know why this combination of images. It is like a painter who looks for a special light in his painting; a musician who searches for the blue note, the perfect note. The missing picture is the picture which does not exist and which I was looking for.”

Film spools past on the screen. A young Princess Norodom Devi Buppha, guardian of Cambodia’s Royal Ballet and here swathed in the golden garb of an Apsara, entwines her fingers in physical prayer to the gods. Crowds of 20-somethings twist and stomp to the sound of West Coast rock ‘n’ roll. Pristine cyclos pedal serenely past city markets overflowing with produce.

Panh was born into a world of books, music and laughter, his father a peasant who had risen to become chief undersecretary of education. Theirs was a lively, boisterous family: sisters, a mother. But when Pol Pot set about converting the urban population into pre-industrial ‘noble savages’, there was no place for education. The word ‘study’ took on new meaning. As Panh recounts in his book The Elimination, on which this film is based, Khmer Rouge commanders would tell selected people: ‘The Angkar has chosen you. You’re to be sent away to study. We leave at once.’

The next day, their bodies would be discovered with their skulls smashed in.

In using clay models to depict such atrocities, the speechlessness and immobility of each figurine underscoring the collective helplessness of a people being methodically exterminated, Panh finds a way of representing the unrepresentable – the sort of images that might otherwise be better left unseen. Writes variety.com: “These re-creations are meant to stand in for the unfilmed, unphotographed images that inspired the film’s title: the concrete dikes and rice fields where these former city-dwellers were forced to work; the meagre rice yields they were forced to live on, leading to widespread malnutrition; and the brutal executions that occurred on a matter-of-fact basis. The result is a carefully aestheticised catalogue of atrocities that… generates its own strange, complicated line of ethical inquiry.”

Long live the independent masterful way of Democratic Kampuchea’s Angkar
Long live its extraordinary clairvoyance

Propaganda footage rescued from rusting canisters shows a smiling Pol Pot, or ‘Brother Number One’, waving to the assembled crowds. Black-clad cadres alternately thump their chests then pump their fists in the air, shouting well-rehearsed party slogans. Over each image floats the ever-emotionless voice of the narrator: “Brother Number One was inspired by young humanity. The original people – the Jarai, the Kuoy, the Bunong – a handful of families who shared everything in common. By observing them, he understood. Like Rousseau’s noble savage.”

The clay Panh sits with his head bowed in a muddy field, recounting over mournful strings and clinking cow bells the time a sleepy comrade shared memories of the United States’ Apollo mission – a gesture the storyteller was ultimately made to pay for with his life. “On our moon, there is nothing,” says the thumb-sized sculpture. “Parched earth and dust bury everything. It took me years to learn to walk upon it, bare feet on thorns.” The camera pans to reveal clay water buffalo being herded by a gaunt-looking man wielding a stick. “Muddy water trickles down my throat. Little by little I disappear. I’m nothing any more. It is strange to drink mud. The buffalo watch us. ‘What odd humans to drink our water.’”

Of sculpting the hundreds of cartoon-like figures, a process that took Mang many months to complete, Panh says: “Each facial expression was made according to the requirements of the sequence, and according to my memories, and according to what I had in mind, what I wanted to film. Most important was that the expression had to be a human one. The figurine is the depiction of the soul. It had to be embodied.”

Perhaps one of the most disturbing memories in The Missing Picture is how Panh’s father deliberately chose, with great dignity, to starve himself to death rather than continue living on ‘rations fit for animals’ – a small gesture that nonetheless defied the regime. Yet in suspended animation, despite the crimes to which he was subjected (his sisters and mother also perished), Panh – this eminent chronicler of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge dictatorship – seeks neither judgement nor revenge, only to understand. “My film aims to ensure that the deep wound caused by the Khmer Rouge belongs to the past and that the new generation builds her future with confidence in herself and in her creativity.”

WHO: Filmmaker Rithy Panh
WHAT: The Missing Picture screening
WHERE: Bophana Centre, #64 Street 200
WHEN: 6:30pm August 3 – 10
WHY: The film, rising from the ashes of a system designed to exterminate intellectual and artistic achievement, is itself a powerful form of resistance

Good vibrations

When Italians chat, they do so as much with their hands as with their mouths. Gesticulating is a vital part of communication in the country, where roughly 250 gestures are used regularly and studied by scientists and philosophers. When he gestures, diminutive Italian pianist Gabri Faja, whose sheer force of presence dwarves his physical size, does so nimbly, posing questions with open palms.

In a 4am flash of inspiration, this Italian scholar of the UK’s Royal College of Music (who also directs The Piano Shop; Soundskool Music Solutions and is the new events manager at Doors) says by email: “Phnom Penh is a volcano powered by creative magma – everything is possible, all dreams can come true – and it hasn’t even started smoking yet. You simply cannot organise a festival in two weeks and get away with it. Really, this is ridiculous and it can only happen here. The wealth of talent is astounding for a city this size, from writers to poets, jammers to drummers, painters to sprayers and other species in between. I. LOVE. IT.”

As well he should. Some 50-plus of the capital’s finest musicians are assembling because of him for Vibe, a ten-day music festival this month that will feature upwards of 17 bands – and a 3D mapper, fellow Italian VJ/DJ Roberto, whose dreadlocks must weigh almost as much as the man himself. “Basically, I put you on a blackout wall there and shoot onto you only and I can change your face; I can make your hair blonde; it’s unreal!” says Gabi. “I can make you walk out of yourself! Not me, but Roberto does this. He’s a mega, mega guy.”

Fittingly, the festival is carved up into three ‘vibes’: Dancing & Bouncing (August 16, 17, 18 & 23), Cooling & Chilling (18, 19, 20, 21, 22 & 25) and Quiet Listening (24), the only night for which there’s a cover charge ($3, available in advance at Doors on Street 84 & 47 and The Piano Shop on Street 13 & 178). The central message, says Gabi, is one of friendship.
“Phnom Penh is a village and it always will be, with people checking in and passing by; new-found friends leaving for good and waving goodbye. It is a mixture of emotions held together by this strange, gravitational anomaly that propels me forward; it’s like being on the moon, bouncing around and waiving my arms like a little kid. The never-ending conversations about what to play, where to eat, who to shag, what to write and where shall we meet? And if this is all too much, home alone does it just fine, knowing that outside it’s there for me, five minutes away.”

VIBE: THE HIGHLIGHTS

9pm August 16: Dub Addiction & Roberto

“Arguably Cambodia’s tightest and most professional band in their last gig before their European tour, with new faces and tunes. Roberto provides snippets of latest-technology 3D video-mapping and visuals” – Gabi Faja

Dub Addiction features a veritable Who’s Who of the local reggae scene, but the main ragamuffin toasters are MC Curly and DJ Khla, the latter someone German music producer Professor Kinski compares to Cutty Ranks, Sizla and Anthony B. Sights and sounds familiar to Phnom Penh long-termers ooze through the mixer to create a distinctly Cambodian soundscape. A high point – if you’ll pardon the pun – is The Mighty Plan, on which “the voice of LSD guru Terence McKenna is lecturing about mankind’s first contact with aliens over an ultra-massive slow shuffle dub groove of Lee Perry”. “We intend to conquer the universe,” a disembodied voice declares as one track drives its mega-phat electro dub juggernaut into your sternum. Accompanying the wobble bass and distorted e-guitar solos will be a 3D visual feast by VJ/DJ Roberto. Psychedelics not essential.

9pm August 17: Vibratone & Bluesabelle

“Making a big splash in their second time out, this much-needed addition to the upbeat reggae scene is a great new band featuring the insanely talented Luis ‘El Brazilero’ and will be followed by just about the best jazz DJ in Asia” – Gabi Faja

Named in honour of Fender’s Leslie speaker, designed for use with electric guitars, Vibratone are a new all-original reggae band. Following them is Lady Bluesabelle, originally from Australia and now resident at Sofitel. She’s been host DJ for the Brooklyn International Film Festival; crowned the Philippines’ Nova Lounge Queen on Asia MTV; played fine jazz for the launch of Ministry of Sound Radio’s chill-out sessions in London and was the first female DJ in Goa, India. Along the way, she’s worked alongside everyone from Al Green to Herbie Hankock. Expect a selection from Caribbean and funk to electro swing and Afro beat.

7:30pm August 18: Kin & Swing Kings

“The capital’s awesome jazz band returns after three months for a night of bop and swing dancing and original arrangements, featuring a grand piano and Euan Gray on tenor sax” – Gabi Faja

What happens when three of the capital’s jazz pioneers adopt their very own saxophonist? Kin – not just by name, but by nature. Gabi Faja (piano), Sebastien Adnot (double bass) and Toma Willen (drums), known in their own right as the GTS Jazz Trio, recently joined creative forces with Euan Gray, front man of Australia’s The Rooftops and now a permanent Phnom Penh resident. New forays include pop, rhythm and soul, but all bundled into a jazz aficionado-friendly package. Expect “funky stuff,” Sebastien, one of two Frenchmen in the band along with Toma, says, like Stevie Wonder. “We are all from very different backgrounds,” says Gabi. “Classical, gypsy, jazz, reggae. In fact, our music is a hybrid of all.” Fitting accompaniment to it all are fleet-footed lindyhoppers the Swing Kings.

7:30pm August 19: Cambostomp

“An awesome Cambodian drum show by scary good, grooving local artists” – Gabi Faja

For centuries, the sound of the skor (‘drum’) has been at the very core of Cambodia’s musical traditions, seen as a way of emulating the sound of thunder; an important way of connecting to the natural world. In the instrument’s absence, Cambodians will convert almost anything to create the necessary rhythms, from striking pots and plates with cutlery to banging on the bottom of an upturned stool. The country boasts more than 10 main types of drum, most made of wood – often the jackfruit tree – and covered with animal skin. Historically, their purposes have been many, from ‘female’ and ‘male’ drums representing the bride and groom at a wedding, to the skor chey (‘soldier drum’) used to transmit military information in secret. Tonight, rousing traditional beats from the Pin Peat Orchestra at Sovanna Phum lend a distinctly tribal feel to the evening, from the percussive rumana to the giant, barrel-shaped skor thom.

8pm August 20: Wash

“The man responsible for riveting acts of original music-making in town lets out his acoustic-based read-out-loud originals in this musical poetry project” – Gabi Faja

Fronted by Scott ‘kind of a music guy; writes a bit’ Bywater, Wash brings together some of the city’s most inventive souls. There’s DJ/VJ Warren Daly; electronic musician Alex Leonard, one of the original Grass Snake Union line-up, and ‘English production guy’ Hal FX whose recent performance at Le Jardin was his first public gig in years. Here, exotic soundscapes meet stunning visuals and dreamy spoken word in a collaborative effort that stimulates several senses at once. “We’re working on brand new pieces, which we are increasingly excited about,” says Scott. “The text is poems that I’ve been writing this year and we’re now more confident about what it is we’re putting together. The music is a bit more written this time. It’s like having learned how to drive the vehicle, we’ve thrown away the manual and now we’re converting it into something amphibious.” Listen out for beats, loops, bass lines and sound effects courtesy of two laptops plus a midi guitar and a midi keyboard fed through a laptop. Cripes.

8:30pm August 21: Joe Wrigley and the Jumping Jacks

“The only thing that was missing in town was Mr Wrigley. Now completing the Penh’s surreal music scene, Joe and friends bring you an evening of awesome songs from the West Side” – Gabi Faja

British-born country singer/songwriter Joe Wrigley meets the Cambodian Space Project’s Scott Bywater (vocals) and Adrien (bass) in what was originally intended to be a Buddy Holly tribute band but has since evolved into a “vampire rockabilly” trio. “We’re going for the Sun Records/Gene Vincent kind of sound,” says Joe. “We’re all into our ’50s stuff, so it will be authentic in terms of the rockabilly spirit and there will be originals in the set list too, with some Khmer vocals from Melea. It’s the awesome era of guitar sound in between jazz and rock music, so players like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were playing big archtops and gretsches very loud with lots of echo and it sounds like they’re just making up rock ‘n’ roll on the spot. You have that energy combined with the wild exuberance of early Elvis and Gene Vincent and it’s just wild, wild. It’s experimental and primitive and rough and sounds like it was written and recorded in two takes: that’s the energy that I want to happen onstage. I have a jacket being worked on at the tailors. Just wish I still had my quiff!”

7pm August 22: Khemera, Akhia & Amanda Bloom

“Sam’s rebellious-yet-understated pop vocals from Khemera; 15-year-old sensation Akhia and the beautiful, seductive and all-original voice of Miss Bloom all make for an evening never offered before. Watch out for a guitar, a grand piano, a spotlight and a mic, because that’s all they need” – Gabi Faja

Doubling as frontwoman for post-hardcore band No Forever, 22-year-old Sam tonight goes unplugged, along with her guitarist Tim, in acoustic act Khemera. And it’s all about love, apparently. “The name Khemera means we are Khmer youth and Khmer people,” she says of the 14-month-old pop, rock and, well, pop-rock duo. “We love making music. We want to show that Khmer young people have the ability to do so. We can do it. We love it and we do what we can and what we love. We love to bring people together with the music and joy.” Watch out also for Akhia, a self-taught guitarist from the Philippines who will be channelling Chrissy Constanza, Alex Goot and Boyce Avenue. Amanda Bloom, meanwhile, arrives fresh from recording her second album, Atlas, which features Australian saxophonist Euan Gray and Malaysian Asia Beat drummer Lewis Pragasam. “The album draws its inspiration from my experiences living in Cambodia for the last two years and is a melting pot of world, classical and piano-driven melodic pop music,” says Amanda. She is perhaps best known for a song by the name of Rosetta, from her first album – so called in honour of the Rosetta Stone, which famously unlocked the secrets of Ancient Egypt. The track contains the line: ‘An idea does not gain truth as it gains followers’ which, when the album was released in 2010, was immediately seized upon by freethinkers the world over. They’ve since been immortalised on everything from websites and radio shows to t-shirts and at least one tattoo.

9pm August 23: Jahzad & Lady Bluesabelle

“Sebastian Adnot’s latest mega-successful band, ska sensation Jahzad kill you with their unstoppable bouncing groove. Party time is here! DJ set by Bluesabelle to chill your spirits while keeping you going” – Gabi Faja

Mixing the danceable rhythms of The Skatalites with popular jazz are some of Phnom Penh’s most talented musicians, among them Sebastien Adnot (bass), Greg Lavender (drums) and Alexandre Scarpati (trombone). Afterwards, expect from Lady Bluesabelle everything from Caribbean and funk to electro swing and Afro beat.

7:30pm August 24: Master Kong Nay & Krom & VJ Roberto

“Possibly the most important musician from the Kingdom, Master Kong Nay is one of the world’s finest chapei players. He has played in packed halls from Asia to New York and tonight makes an extremely rare live appearance. He will be followed by the magical beauty of Krom, who deliver moving, sensual vocals with understated acoustic accompaniment. In combination with VJ Roberto on projectors, this evening provides a theatre for the meaningful and silent listener” – Gabi Faja

Silence is indeed the only way to greet certain works by Krom. She’s 7 Years Old (Her Body Sold), from the band’s forthcoming second album, Krom – Neon Dark, is perhaps the single most disturbing item on the Vibe menu. It recounts the true story of a Cambodian child sold into sexual slavery, and was described by BBC broadcaster Mark Coles as “Harrowing; a very disturbing, powerful song.” Songwriter Christopher Minko wrote the lyrics after reading a news report in the local press that described the rescue of a girl from sex traders on the Thai-Cambodia border. The photo showed her chained to a bed, “a horrendous mix of fear and utter bewilderment shown within the eyes of the enslaved young girl”, says Minko, noting that the song “is meant to make the listener feel uncomfortable, very uncomfortable”. On an ever-so-slightly lighter note, Krom will also perform material from their first album, Songs From The Noir, featuring the ethereal vocals of sisters Sopheak and Sophea Chamroeun, for which the band is famed. Even more famous is master musician Kong Nay, one of the few to survive the Khmer Rouge and known respectfully as ‘the Ray Charles of Cambodia’.

8pm August 25: Charlie Corrie, Euan Gray & Friends

Drawing on the sounds of Smokey Robinson and Sam Cook, with just a dash of James Morrison and Gavin Degraw, self-taught pianist/guitarist Charlie Corrie will perform a selection of covers and his own work. “I’m writing new songs now which I hope to turn into an EP,” he says (proceeds will go to help Cambodian singer/songwriters record their own original music through Euan Gray’s Songkites project at Ragamuffin House. Euan, frontman of Brisbane-based band The Rooftops, has promised his first all-original solo in Phnom Penh: “It will be some Rooftops stuff, some non-Rooftops stuff and possibly some new stuff. This could be my long-awaited push to finish some new songs I’ve been dreaming up. I have half a chorus for a new song, called Paper Lexus. Last Chinese New Year, I saw people burning paper, factory made Lexuses along with fake money. All things will pass. Amazing symbolism: ironic and hopeful at the same time. I have another one that no one has heard yet called We Live Amongst The Tigers, about how ex-Khmer Rouge are everyday folk, driving our tuk tuks, planting rice, doing business; all trying to move on. ‘Working hard at moving on, working just as hard as anyone…’”

VIBE: THE HIGHLIGHTS

9pm August 16: Dub Addiction & Roberto

9pm August 17: Vibratone & Bluesabelle

7:30pm August 18: Kin & Swing Kings

“The capital’s awesome jazz band returns after three months for a night of bop and swing dancing and original arrangements, featuring a grand piano and Euan Gray on tenor sax” – Gabi Faja

7:30pm August 19: Cambostomp

“An awesome Cambodian drum show by scary good, grooving local artists” – Gabi Faja

8pm August 20: Wash

“The man responsible for riveting acts of original music-making in town lets out his acoustic-based read-out-loud originals in this musical poetry project” – Gabi Faja

8:30pm August 21: Joe Wrigley and the Jumping Jacks

“The only thing that was missing in town was Mr Wrigley. Now completing the Penh’s surreal music scene, Joe and friends bring you an evening of awesome songs from the West Side” – Gabi Faja

7pm August 22: Khemera, Akhia & Amanda Bloom

9pm August 23: Jahzad & Lady Bluesabelle

7:30pm August 24: Master Kong Nay & Krom & VJ Roberto

8pm August 25: Charlie Corrie, Euan Gray & Friends

“The festival finale involves the finest songwriters and solo acts in town, a fitting end bringing all of our friends together. Euan Gray goes all-original for the first time, after which a jam session is highly likely” – Gabi Faja
Drawing on the sounds of Smokey Robinson and Sam Cook, with just a dash of James Morrison and Gavin Degraw, self-taught pianist/guitarist Charlie Corrie will perform a selection of covers and his own work. “I’m writing new songs now which I hope to turn into an EP,” he says (proceeds will go to help Cambodian singer/songwriters record their own original music through Euan Gray’s Songkites project at Ragamuffin House. Euan, frontman of Brisbane-based band The Rooftops, has promised his first all-original solo in Phnom Penh: “It will be some Rooftops stuff, some non-Rooftops stuff and possibly some new stuff. This could be my long-awaited push to finish some new songs I’ve been dreaming up. I have half a chorus for a new song, called Paper Lexus. Last Chinese New Year, I saw people burning paper, factory made Lexuses along with fake money. All things will pass. Amazing symbolism: ironic and hopeful at the same time. I have another one that no one has heard yet called We Live Amongst The Tigers, about how ex-Khmer Rouge are everyday folk, driving our tuk tuks, planting rice, doing business; all trying to move on. ‘Working hard at moving on, working just as hard as anyone…’”

Tangled up in the blues

HE’S BEEN NOMINATED FOR nine Grammys; shared Newark Festival’s stage with the Rolling Stones’ Mick Taylor; is signed by legendary bass player Andy Fraser – and, in his native UK, he’s barely old enough to vote. Tobi Earnshaw, just 18 years old and already being critically compared to rock monoliths John Mayer, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Eric Clapton, is rather more boy-next-door than such accolades might imply. Until, that is, his fingertips meet the strings of a guitar. What happens next shouldn’t be possible for someone who produced an unholy cacophony when he cradled one for the very first time aged 12, but the success of his debut album Spirit In Me, recorded just three years later, suggests the improbable is precisely what this young, London-born biker does best. The only artist handpicked by Andy Fraser, of Free fame, for his label Mctrax International, Tobi is poised to release his second album as he sets out in August on his first tour of Asia (expect workshops and performances at ICAN International School and The Youth School in Phnom Penh). The Advisor cornered Tobi in the studio to talk man-crushes, selling his soul to the Devil and being described by dmme.net as the ‘British answer to Justin Bieber’.

Dad was a saxophonist, but you picked up your first instrument relatively late.
We had this guitar which one of Dad’s old band mates had given to him. I found it in his room, picked it up and thought: ‘I’ll try to play it.’ I went downstairs and said to Dad: ‘Is this a chord?’ ‘Um, no…’ I’d made this noise that was absolutely awful, so he showed me a basic A chord and an E chord and then said to me: ‘Do you actually want to learn the guitar?’ At the time my parents owned a theatre school and there was a student whose dad was a session musician called Billy Liesegang – he’s played with Nina Hagen, David Bowie, Red Hot Chili Peppers – and he’d lent me a guitar. I hated singing at the time.

And your mum had to blackmail you into singing at your first open mic?
It was even worse than that! She didn’t expect me to sing; that’s why she said she’d buy me a guitar if I did. I was 14 at this point, which was when I started really getting into the blues. This is when I first found Gary Moore. Mum said: ‘If you learn the Gary Moore song Still Got The Blues and play the solo, I’ll buy you a new guitar.’ So I played it and got my new guitar and I’ve been singing ever since. After that I really got into John Mayer, because I saw him at the Crossroads Guitar Festival with Eric Clapton. That’s when I started songwriting: I looked him up on YouTube and was absolutely amazed with the way he writes his songs. I became obsessed; I call him my man-crush. That’s how deep it goes. You can imagine: I’m sitting at school with my headphones on and my guitar, learning Hotel California, while everyone else is listening to the stereo. Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Gary Moore, George Benson…

You’ve been compared to some extraordinary musicians already: from folk you’ve cited as influences, such as Mayer and Vaughn, the list goes wildly off the deep end and you’ve been called – and I quote – ‘Britain’s Justin Bieber.’ How do you feel about that? In certain places, that’s considered an insult…
[Laughs] It is! It is! To be perfectly honest, I try to look at it from a positive point of view: he’s definitely done something right. Maybe if it’s also being said that I’m influenced by John Mayer and Stevie Ray Vaughn I can be more of a respected musician. You won’t be hearing any Justin Bieber covers from me, I can tell you that. If you’re going to introduce me to anyone while I’m in Cambodia, the worst thing to say would be: ‘He’s the English version of Justin Bieber.’

Have you been asked to define your own sound yet?
As a musician I’m really critical, so if I was asked to define myself I don’t know; I just sort of sing a melody and try to stay in tune! There are pop magazines who say: ‘We won’t take you because you’re too blues for us.’ Then there are blues magazines that say: ‘We won’t take you because you’re not blues enough.’ I’ve had interviews with MOBO… and there’s something else I was going to say but I’ve completely forgotten what. I’m having a senior moment and I’m only 18! I’ve been doing radio interviews all week and this keeps happening; it’s ridiculous!

Let’s talk more about these interviews. How does it feel being catapulted into the professional rock realm at your age?
Three days after my GCSE exams, I flew over to America to do a three-month tour to promote my first album, which is where that Justin Bieber-ish video, Brighten Up My Day, happened – I was only 15 and signed to Andy Fraser, the bass player with Free. Everyone wanted to talk to Andy and hear what he’d done in his past, maybe bringing me in at the end because I’m his new project. I’d just sit there and be really nervous. Now I’ve been doing interviews for a couple of years, I just roll with it. People ask me: ‘Have you figured out what you’re going to say yet?’ Well, no. Everything comes naturally. When you say it naturally, you mean it.

Do you remember your first meeting with Andy Fraser?
Yes I do! It was actually quite similar to this; you meet all the important people on Skype [Laughs]. I had my guitar in my hand – that was the only difference. He emailed me and we sent over the Brighten Up My Day video before he’d remixed it then Nothing’s Going To Stop Us, from my first album. We talked on Skype and then another email came through with a recording contract and publishing contract. Being 15 at the time, you don’t really understand these things. Even now it doesn’t seem like it’s happening. I don’t know whether it’s that I’m the least excitable person, but I just thought: ‘Yeah, that’s cool.’ The cool thing was when he flew me out to America for the meeting: I get a flight to LAX and I’m there with my dad, who’s my headmaster as well, and we got picked up in a limo. It was a bit strange because I’d never met him before, but I know who he is because one of the first songs I learned was The Stealer, by Free. My guitar teacher’s band was named after that song. So I went up to him, he smiled at me and gave me a hug and goes: ‘Do you want some sushi?’ By the end of the trip, it felt like we’d known each other for years. Andy’s very warm and open.

You’ve said in a previous interview that he spends most of his time locked in the hotel toilet when you’re on tour together because you can’t stop playing guitar.
[Laughs] There are two truths to that: I play guitar loads and he does get fed up with it sometimes, but not as much as my parents because I play during Coronation Street and that’s on every night. The other truth is that Andy does spend most of his time in the toilet: after every meal he’ll go to the toilet, brush his teeth and do his mouthwash. The other day we were sitting outside in the smouldering heat and he spent ages in there. Is he having a shower in there or something?!

Let’s talk about your first album: nine tracks, recorded when you were just 15.
We did it in Andy’s house; he has a studio there. We did the album in three weeks. We’d have a day to do each thing: a day to do the guitar; a day to do the vocals. It was an amazing experience, listening to Andy talk – especially when I was younger, because now I’ve heard the majority of his stories but they never, ever get boring [Laughs]. One of the stories was about when him and Paul Rodgers got together and helped each other out by finishing each other’s songs. They learned a lot about how to write. I’ve met Paul, but because Free split up they don’t really talk much; even Andy says they’re never really on the same page.

There can be more politics in music than there is in actual politics.
Funny you should say that because – and this is another of Andy’s little stories – when Free first got together, Andy said to Paul Kossoff and Paul Rodgers: ‘Right, now, I’m the leader.’ Apparently they just looked at each other and Paul Rodgers was really angry. When I listen to their songs – I listen to Rodgers in Bad Company and the Free stuff – the choruses are so much like each other; very blues based. That’s what I like about working with Andy: he can teach me this stuff. Having someone else look over your song and bring it all back to the centre. I’ll do some R&B and then he’ll somehow bring it back to pop-rock. I don’t know how he does it. It’s great because I have half-written songs: I’ll write a guitar riff down on my phone, start it and then stop it. It’s great to get a different perspective. A lot of people say you should write a song all in one go, but if I do that and then go back to it I think: ‘What was all that about? Why was I whining so much?’

Hang on: don’t you have to be 60 and toothless to write in the great blues tradition?
[Laughs] If it would get me somewhere, maybe we could knock a couple of teeth out and I could shave all my hair off! I remember when I was younger, listening to Robert Johnson and trying to sell my soul to the Devil in my bedroom. I was about 13 and I had this little red guitar I’d chipped away at and sanded down. I was sitting in my room, playing this cheap bit of rubbish, thinking about Johnson and thinking I’d sell my soul if I could be one of the best guitarists in the world. I said it just like that, almost with contempt, but I don’t know if it’s happened yet.

Where were we? Ah yes, the first album.
I do that a lot, sorry. You can imagine what my room looks like, comparing it to my mind! Yeah, first album: one of the first songs I wrote was called There’s Always Hope. As you can see, I go off on tangents. When I was 14 I got robbed: three boys took my phone. They didn’t even want it; they put it on the floor and stamped on it and they took a bite out of my Crunchie bar! You can imagine what happened next. I went home and started playing this groovy sort of blues riff. I’d play it all the time and my parents used to get so annoyed with me. Rather than going: ‘Oh, I got robbed yesterday…’

[Singing] Da nah nah nah nah… Wait, I know this one!
[Laughs] It was more about OK, what was that? One day out of my life, just like many others. It’s about turning it around. People can hurt you and hate you… and what? You keep on going; you keep the right mentality. I don’t really care, to be honest, because I’m going somewhere even if it’s not with music and I’ve always believed that – not in a big-headed way, but I’ve always felt that. It’s like a hint that someone’s given you; it’s there in your mind. You’ve got the drive to want to do something and that’s enough. That’s the way I go about writing most of my songs.

Your second album is due out soon. What’s changed since the first?
I was only 15 when I did the first and I listened to the critics – as a musician, I criticise myself a lot but it means more coming from someone else – and it was all: ‘It’s very good but he’s still very young and naive.’ This next album, I want to make it more like I’ve moved on because that was the main thing that stuck in my head: ‘young and naive’. I’ve always been one of those people who want to be older than they are. Ever since I was 13, I was going on 30 anyway – that’s what my mum used to say. Seeing as how I hang around all the old rock musicians, I sort of adopt their way of speaking – in the good way and the bad way.

How far does the new album go in communicating that you’re no longer ‘young and naive’?
I think I could have done better, but I’m always going to criticise myself. I try to be positive, especially in interviews otherwise it seems like I’m moaning all the time, because that’s what I normally do! But talking about the songs, they’re more about a teenager – I say that and I hate myself for calling myself a teenager – there are songs on there, like Lips Of Sin, that I hope show my maturity. That’s one of the songs I’ve written that’s like a story.

Lips Of Sin? That’s something someone your age should know nothing about! Is your mother there? Can I have a word with her?
[Laughs] That’s why the door’s closed! I don’t want her listening to it, but it’s a story I have to tell. For my 18th birthday we went out to a club. A girl I knew turned up quite randomly and we were in the VIP area. She was dancing about – the lyrics are ‘Played me all night, she was reeling me in’ – but I’m not very good at reading the signals. We were dancing and then she pushed me away. We got a cab back – I paid, of course – and we’re sitting there. She pours a drink, gives it to me and I go in for a little kiss then she pushes me away and says: ‘Right, I’m off. See you later.’ What was that all about? Leading you on and then… I don’t know. So that was my very interesting 30-second summing up of what was at least an eight-hour saga.

WHO: Tobi
WHAT: “Likened to John Mayer and Robin Thicke, TOBI is actually right in the middle of the two, with a smooth sound enriched by perfect guitar sweeps.” – Music-News.com
WHERE: Latin Quarter, Street 178; The Village, #1 Street 360; Memphis Pub, Street 118 and The Quay, Riverside
WHEN: August 16 (Latin Quarter), 17 (The Village), 24 (Memphis) & 27 (The Quay)
WHY: “Having Tobi not only on the Grammy eligibility list but in multiple categories is confirmation of my initial instincts that here is a new, young artist to be reckoned with” – Andy Fraser

In defence of decadence & depravity

REVERED FOR HIS PLAYS but reviled for his private life, flamboyant Irish poet Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde – Oscar Wilde, to the literati – was never one for dull moments. Opium addict; bisexual; anti-establishment aesthete: the labels were many. But although he died destitute at 46, having been sentenced at the height of his fame to two years’ hard labour for ‘the love that dare not speak its name’, Wilde left behind him a legacy that, according to some of the capital’s resident poets, still resonates with the rebellious of soul today.

In 1890, writing his first and only novel, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Wilde set forth his personal philosophy: how art should represent higher ideals, most notably the pursuit of pleasure and beauty. “It’s an astonishing piece of work; magic realism before its time,” says Tasmanian poet/writer/musician Scott Bywater, part of an Oscar Wilde night featuring film, live music and spoken word at Meta House. “It always makes me think of Jekyll & Hyde, running these same parallels: two sides, the dichotomy of human nature. It’s also the dichotomy of someone who could write the character of that Lady Havisham woman in The Importance Of Being Earnest: ‘A HAAAAANDBAAAAAG?!’ He was able to get in and satirise from the inside; that was the only way to be in the public eye at that time.”

Being in the public eye was indeed problematic, what with Wilde’s insatiable appetite for the taboo. But Antonio Pineda, a San Franciscan neobeat poet, insists there was method in his masochism. “What Wilde was really saying – and this goes for today – is that the white power elite are a bore: they’re boring, bigoted, small-minded, anti-intellectual people. And this so-called ‘miserable’ world of hard sex and hard drugs and hard drink is fascinating. As Aleister Crowley once said: ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’ The fact he was anti-establishment in everything he did is very important today, when the establishment is so strong. I actually think there’s a connection between Thelema – Crowley’s philosophical/religious society – and the magic of the return of Oscar Wilde, which I wrote the poem Winged Bull about. The winged bull is an ancient Sumerian symbol, like Pegasus. For me, the winged bull is sensuality and intellect together. That’s what Oscar was.

The sage-like Scott Bywater nods slowly. “John Lennon is a similar figure: he was a pain in the arse during the 1970s, causing all sorts of disruption and then retreating. He could be criticised and you could be annoyed by him, but he was actually out there, doing some very interesting things, pushing the boundaries. There are those who desensitise themselves by dumbing down and there are those who try to wake themselves up by peeking through to the other side. That’s Dorian Gray, that’s Jekyll & Hyde and this is all pre-Freud; they don’t have the same psychological insights we have today. Here artists are at the front, trying to understand what it is to be human.

“And this, culturally/socially/temporally/geographically, is what artists do. Awash in the social soup, they confront the issues that arise from their developing awareness of who they are bumping against in the world they are in. So we struggle to be artists in the place we are in – just as Wilde did, just as Lennon did – and our self seeps into our work because it’s what drives our perception of it. Wilde is a reminder of the dangers of being an artist, just as he’s a reminder of the dangers of bourgeois society.”

WHO: Oscar Wilde aficionados
WHAT: Dorian Gray screening, with live blues music and spoken word by Antonio Pineda, Scott Bywater and Joe Cummings plus special guests
WHERE: Meta House, Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 6pm July 21
WHY: “If Oscar Wilde had been part of the beat movement, I think he would’ve been a blues and jazz man” – Antonio Pineda

Alternative reality

“Costumes aren’t just for Halloween and cosplay isn’t just a fad with teens. Cosplay is on the verge of becoming a major force in American pop culture.”

Cosplay: n. The habitual act of dressing up like comic book or cartoon characters favoured by enthusiasts, nerds and batshit weirdos with a loose grip on reality. “There was an alarming rise in tentacle-rape incidents at this year’s anime cosplay convention.”

– urbandictionary.com

Declared Urban Word of the Day on October 31 2006 by resident logophiles at urbandictionary.com, the term ‘cosplay’ – an abbreviation of ‘costume play’, or kosupure in Japanese – has something of the geek about it. This Japan-centric movie and comic book world, one of giant-eyed heroes and junk worship, was sired by the sci-fi/fantasy universe once synonymous with Star Trek conventions, but seems to be overtaking it at warp speed.

More than half a million fanatics dressed as their favourite anime and manga characters swarm Tokyo’s biannual Comiket fairs, the largest cosplay gathering in the world (the city hosted what is believed to be the world’s first cosplay fair in 1978). In Tokyo’s Akihabara district, cosplay restaurants cater to the imaginatively attired with maids dressed as everything from Pokemon to the Mario brothers. Yuichiro ‘Jienotsu’ Nagashima, one of Japan’s top-ranked kickboxers, makes all his appearances for K-1 dressed as different female anime characters, accompanied by cosplaying girls.

But this renewed dalliance in dressing-up is by no means limited to Asia. In 2011, US webcomic Onezumi ‘Oni’ Hartstein, co-founder of the Internet culture convention Intervention, told The Diplomat that “Costumes aren’t just for Halloween and cosplay isn’t just a fad with teens. Cosplay is on the verge of becoming a major force in American pop culture.” And here in Phnom Penh, a month after the city’s first manga cafe opened in Golden Sorya Mall and five months since the first local cosplay party at the Cambodia-Japanese Friendship Kizuna Festival, cosplayers are readying themselves for a second comic coming.

On July 21, sporting face paint, liquid latex, neon wigs, contact lenses, body modification and outrageous cyber fashion, the truly committed will make their way to Kizuna Hall in the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre to worship at the altar of the weirdly dressed. But why? “Since cosplaying here is quite new, people might think we are getting crazy wasting money on anime/manga stuff and costumes,” says Rose Zarino, a 25-year-old Cambodian marketing executive and founder of the KH Anime Fanclub page on Facebook, replete in bright green wig and apparently channelling CC from hit anime series Code Geass. “But to us it’s fun because I love photography and being a model.

There’s more. Yumi Anna Ono, CEO/creative director at Chiara Angkor Music Production, is a devotee of Studio Ghibli, her favourite character being Sophie Hatter from Howl’s Moving Castle, British author Diana Wynne Jones’ 1986 fantasy novel. “I’m totally a novice at cosplay because I dressed up for the very first time in February for the Kizuna Festival that the Japan Embassy presented, but since then I had a surprising revelation that it was so much fun,” she says.

“We can exaggerate an existing trait in ourselves and it is indeed empowering to assume the role of a character of our choosing, such as Sophie, who is independent, brave, agile, responsible, confident yet vulnerable and most importantly kawaii (‘cute’) all at the same time! I believe that one of the elements of cosplay that appeals to so many people – and it has turned into a global phenomenon – is that you can really become the character you’re dressed as. And who doesn’t like to dress up and transform into fantasy land?”

WHO: Cosplayers
WHAT: Comic Party
WHERE: Kizuna Hall, Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Russian Federation Blvd.
WHEN: 10am – 6pm July 21
WHY: Who doesn’t like to dress up and transform into fantasy land?

A walk on the wild side

HE MIGHT CLAIM TO KNOW LITTLE about Oscar Wilde, but Joe Cummings certainly subscribes to Wildean philosophy. A Canadian poet who plays host to rock royalty at his adopted home in Bangkok, he was one of the first writers to set foot on Southeast Asian soil for the Lonely Planet travel guides and is the author of Southeast Asia On A Shoestring, the third most-shoplifted book Down Under, according to Australia Bookseller and Publisher magazine (behind only Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and Junkie, by William Burroughs). Here’s what he had to say to The Advisor ahead of his appearance at the Oscar Wilde night:

Let’s start with the screamingly obvious: you’ve famously spent several days showing Mick Jagger a good time in Bangkok – you lucky, lucky bastard!

[Laughs] If you think that’s good, guess who I met a few weeks ago.

If it’s Keith Richards, I may actually have a seizure.

I wish! I wish! No. Steven Tyler. I took Steven Tyler around Bangkok for four nights.

Damn. Where do I sign up for these gigs?

They just call me up! Tyler was interesting because he and Jagger are pretty close in age; one’s American, one’s British. But their styles of hanging out were very, very different. Tyler was very boisterous, ready to be recognised and loving being recognised. He wanted to be out on the scene, but at the same time didn’t want anybody to bother him, so had his bodyguards to keep a perimeter. Jagger, on the other hand, was just obsessed with preserving his anonymity as much as he could. He took a lot of pain to make sure he wasn’t recognised, although he was a couple of times. He wore a disguise. He wanted to go unnoticed.

Jagger in disguise? Talk us through it. Who’s his chosen cosplay character?

We were having dinner one night and then when the limousine came around to pick us up, in the back of the limo he put on a real baggy sweater with holes in it; almost like something a homeless person would be wearing. Then he put on a floppy hat and some sunglasses.

What did you and Tyler get up to? Where exactly does one take someone like Aerosmith’s frontman to show him a good time in Bangkok?

Some of the normal sites, of course, but I always like to give people something they might have seen in tourist brochures and stuff. On the first day I took him on a boat trip deep into the canals: that’s where some of the so-called normal sites, like the floating villages, are. I took him into this little artists’ community, where some artists have squatted in an old wooden homestead built into the canal itself. He really liked that because he got to meet all these crazy artists. Then at night, like I said, he wanted to be seen. I think in his mind he wants people the world over to know that he’s still out partying.

It’s not enough that he’s doing concerts; he wants to be seen as a party guy. I took him to this new absinthe bar: we called in advance to arrange it and we didn’t rope it off, but we arranged the chairs so that it was harder to get into his corner. He was fully visible to everyone at this absinthe lounge, but it would have been awkward for someone to come up to him – although people did try. He’d also rented the entire 11th floor of the hotel Poseidon. Everyone knows about the more famous, sleazy red-light districts, like Padpong, where all the tourists and sexpats go, but there’s also a very large street that has a giant entertainment centre. They’ve got everything from massage parlours to karaoke, it’s mainly an upscale Asian market plus a few farangs who are connoisseurs of that sort of things. It’s got 12 storeys and an emporium of sensual delights for your well-heeled men. He rented the 11th floor, with a private dining hall, a private karaoke theatre and five bedrooms – and it had 11 models on staff that night.

Did anyone check for ladyboys?

Yeah! I suggested that: I was thinking about Dude Looks Like A Lady [Laughs], which is very androgynous itself. So yes, I asked if he’d like to go see some ladyboys and he said he would, so I took him to a small but well-known ladyboy bar called Temptations. It didn’t really turn him on much. He was there for about 20 minutes and then he was, like, ‘Okay. Let’s move on.’

So, Stephen Tyler didn’t fall for the whole ladyboy thing. That’s reassuring.

Yeah, I kind of expected he would. His personal assistant, a 27-year-old girl, did, though. We also had dinner at the rooftop bar/restaurant of the Sala Ratanakosin, overlooking the Chao Phraya River, Wat Arun and Wat Phra Kaew.

Far too civilised. Where’s the hurling of electrical appliances through hotel windows?!

I was waiting for that. He’s 65, doesn’t drink or do drugs, but he’s as energetic as a seven-year-old boy. Dallying with 11 Thai models seemed decadent enough, all in the same hot tub. Those are the only true rock stars I’ve toured with, but I do get a lot of musicians calling for private tours. Last night I was with Robi of Navicula, a mega-popular Indonesian metal band. He wanted to hear local music and meet other musos. Nice guy. Mick was great because he’s actually quite intelligent, well read, and solicitous of those around him. Most of my friends are more rock ‘n’ roll than these guys.

Tell me about being part of the first wave at Lonely Planet.

It was really cool in the beginning because it was a new paradigm for guidebooks. Publishing guides to places no one had ever covered before. Researching the first edition of LP Thailand, I was writing about places no one had written on before, basically. So it all felt very ‘trailblazing’ at the time. After 10 years it started to change as LP started becoming more market-driven and more worried about liability and such.

What were your first impressions of the region when you arrived?

I first came to Bangkok in 1977 and it was more or less in a similar state of development as 2013 Phnom Penh, minus Internet: no air-con taxis, no airc-on buses. Highest building then was 25 storeys. It was never very charming in Bangkok other than the historical attractions, I’d say. It felt pretty Blade Runner even then.

I remember taking a trip to Khon Kaen with a couple of friends. We got rooms in a cheap hotel, the Roma I think, which is still there but very rundown. We’d heard that KK had the best weed in Thailand, known to expats then as ‘Khon Kaen Crippler’. After scoring some from a trishaw driver we started walking back to the hotel. While we were walking, a torrential monsoon rain flooded the streets. We were wading in hip-deep water by the time we got back to the hotel. The power of course had gone off. We walked the stairs, fired up on the balcony of one of the rooms and as the rain stopped and hundreds of bullfrogs started croaking, like Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma, I knew I’d be staying on – and not for the dope.

What’s been the high point – if you’ll pardon the pun – of your journey so far?

Meeting Mick Jagger was definitely one. We’re still in touch, actually. Aside from that there have really been so many; I’ve had a great time almost every step of the way. In 2002 I won a writing award in Mexico and the Mexican president presented the trophy to me in a public ceremony attended by thousands. That was cool. Travelling in Burma in the late ’80s and early ’90s I had some great times as well: the most amazing country in Southeast Asia still.

Were you there for the uprisings?

Yes, I was there in the week of 8-8-88: the big one. I was in Mandalay when the demos began and was supposed to go down to Rangoon, but as news of the violence came I waited until a day or two after the crackdown. I went to see a Burmese friend who worked at the US embassy to find out more about what had happened. She showed me videotapes shot from the embassy windows of the final student-police confrontation. It was pretty disturbing stuff.

At the same time I could also see, from the videos and from eyewitness accounts from Burmese friends, that the blood frenzy manifested itself as much among the protesters as it did among the police and military. Students were disembowelling other students suspected of being informers on the spot, in the street, using rebar. Rebar filed into sharp points. I’d never seen such brutality. I wrote enough about it in the Lonely Planet guide to Burma that it got me blacklisted in 1998.

I had been planning to study intensive Burmese at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Rangoon and my sponsor called me, while I was back in Thailand, to say that my application for the institute had been refused and that he was told I could never get a visa again, for any reason. I didn’t believe him but when I next applied for a visa at the Bangkok embassy, I was taken into a windowless room in the back.

Windowless rooms out the back are never good.

That’s for sure! There the chief consul paced the room, looking very serious, and finally handed me my passport, saying: ‘I know you love my country, but my government has put you on the blacklist so there’s nothing I can do.’ November 2012 I got an email from the Ministry of Tourism in Myanmar saying my name had been taken off the blacklist. Around the same time, I was giving a lecture on Burma at Oxford University in the UK and British students were picketing my lecture because I dared to support travel to Burma!

Have you been back since?

Yes, the week I got the news from the MOT I went down to the embassy to get a visa. When I came to pick it up, a little old man with thinning hair and wire-rim glasses handed me my passport with a smile. ‘Here is your passport and visa, Joe,’ he said. As I turned to walk away, he said: ‘Don’t you remember me?’ I came back to the window and peered at his face more closely. It was the same guy who told me I had been blacklisted back in 1998! He had aged soooo much in that time, but he clearly felt good about giving me a visa. In fact, he seemed a lot more emotional about it than me.

Ancient wisdom, modern world

“The natural world is our home. It is not necessarily sacred or holy. It is simply where we live. It is therefore in our interest to look after it. This is common sense. But only recently have the size of our population and the power of science and technology grown to the point that they have a direct impact on nature. To put it another way, until now, Mother Earth has been able to tolerate our sloppy house habits. However, the stage has now been reached where she can no longer accept our behaviour in silence. The problems caused by environmental disasters can be seen as her response to our irresponsible behaviour. She is warning us that there are limits even to her tolerance.” – His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics For The New Millennium

…..

At precisely 14:46 Japan Standard Time on March 11 2011, roughly 70km east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tohoku, Mother Earth finally ran out of patience with us, her human inhabitants. Furiously shaking the floor of the Pacific Ocean in a fit of vexation, she let loose the fifth-largest earthquake in modern history. Towering tsunamis more than 40 metres high tore through the 6,852 islands of the Japanese archipelago, leaving in their sodden wake level 7 meltdowns at three nuclear reactors and nearly 16,000 people dead or dying.

So powerful was the seismic shift triggered by her rage that it bumped the planet an estimated 10cm to 25cm on its axis, moving Honshu – Japan’s main island – a full 2.4 metres east. But that seismic shift extended beyond the purely physical. Aghast at the horrors unfolding before his eyes, one of Japan’s most distinguished choreographers felt his very understanding of humanity begin to topple. Having produced 55 performances in 35 countries over a period of 30 years, Hiroshi Koike – a quiet, thoughtful man who pauses to consider each response before articulating it – promptly dissolved his Pappa Tarahuma dance company. The time had come to contemplate higher things: namely, the pursuit of a better world.

Sitting cross-legged in the lotus position, perched atop a red plastic chair, Hiroshi moves barely a muscle for a full 75 minutes: a hardly noticeable nod here; a fleeting hand gesture there. Before him, on a floor coated in black rubber dance mats, seven performing artists duck, weave, tumble and spin with balletic grace as a large speaker blares out everything from white noise to punk rock and back. Slightly behind him and to the left, a young Khmer musician sits amid a tangle of traditional Cambodian instruments, his haunting melodies occasionally interrupting the recorded cacophony.

Here, in the shadow of a huge circus tent opposite the National Assembly, an Indian epic is being played out. Only this performance is no relic, rather an attempt to build a bridge between ancient Asian wisdom and the idiosyncrasies of the modern world in which we live. The keystone in this existential viaduct almost defies comprehension: an ancient Sanskrit poem made up of almost 100,000 couplets, the Mahabharata (‘Great epic of the Bharata dynasty’) is roughly seven times the length of ancient Greek poet Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey combined and is considered as significant as the complete works of Shakespeare and/or the Bible.

For generations, this particular epic – chiselled onto the walls of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, and companion to the Ramayana – served as the foundation for religion, philosophy, politics and law in Asian cultures. Decipher the meaning of this monumental text and you can break free from all evil, legend has it. It’s with such promise in mind that Hiroshi, a former TV director, is repurposing the story for a 21st century audience to pose one rather pivotal question: What does it mean to be human and alive?

“I was so shocked by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant problems,” says the choreographer during a rare quiet moment post-rehearsal. “We have to change our ideas, the structure of our societies, our philosophy. I dissolved my company and tried to make a new bridge project – there are many kinds of bridge I want to build up, for example between ancient times and modern times. We need these bridges between the ancient world, this world and future times. We need to go beyond what has come before, to open our minds. After March 2011, I reconsidered the relationship between humans and nature; traditional culture and modern culture; this world and other worlds. We have to think about what it means to be human. We need to change our philosophy, so we have to talk with ourselves: what is our philosophy? What are humans? What are animals? What is this world? How do all these things work together?”

On the surface, the Mahabharata might seem an unusual vessel for such rigorous self-examination: its mass of mythological and didactic material swirls around a central heroic narrative detailing the battle for sovereignty between warring factions of cousins, the Kauravas (the ‘bad’ side) and the Pandavas (the ‘good’ side). Set sometime before 500BC, this long-winded tale of Hindu war is believed to have been primarily authored by the sage Vyasa (with a little help from his friends, of course).

The story begins when the blindness of Dhritarashtra, the elder of two princes, causes him to be passed over in favour of his brother Pandu as king on their father’s death. But a curse prevents Pandu from fathering children and his wife asks the gods – Dharma, the wind, Indra and the Ashvins – to father children in Pandu’s name.

The bitterness that develops between the cousins as a result forces the Pandavas to leave the kingdom when their father dies. During their exile the five jointly marry Draupadi – born out of a sacrificial fire, who Arjuna wins by shooting an arrow through a row of targets – and meet their cousin Krishna, friend and companion. The Pandavas return to the kingdom but are again exiled to the forest, this time for 12 years, when Yudhishthira loses everything in a game of dice with the eldest of the Kauravas.

The feud culminates in a series of great battles on the field of Kurukshetra (north of Delhi, in Haryana state). The Kauravas are annihilated and, on the victorious side, only the five Pandava brothers and Krishna survive. Krishna dies when a hunter, who mistakes him for a deer, shoots him in his one vulnerable spot – his foot – and the brothers set out for Indra’s heaven. One by one they fall along the way, Yudhishthira alone reaching the gates of heaven. After further tests of his faith, he is finally reunited with his brothers and Draupadi, as well as his enemies, the Kauravas, to bask in perpetual bliss.

But this text is about more than myths and legends: equally, it’s an examination of dharma, or Hindu moral law. These much revered codes of conduct – including the proper conduct of a king, of a warrior, of an individual living in times of calamity and of a person seeking to obtain freedom from rebirth – are exposed as so subtly conflicting that at times the hero cannot help but violate them, no matter what choice he makes.

And therein lies its relevance to all of humanity, a relevance director Peter Brook emphasised by using an international cast in his nine-hour-long 1985 stage play – an overtly ambitious endeavour that raised more than a few thespian eyebrows at the time. Hiroshi’s cast, by contrast, is proudly pan-Asian: four Cambodians, two Japanese, one Malaysian. Between them, the seven performing artists play a plethora of roles – up to five per dancer – an effect achieved on stage through the rather cunning use of lightning-quick costume changes; the ingenious deployment of masks and subtle alterations in movement and mood.

Glistening with sweat in the humid afternoon air, the female lead squats at the edge of one of the mats and offers up a cheery ‘Hello!’ Chumvan Sodhachivy, better known as Belle, plays the parts of Draupadi, Bakasura following, Ganga and Kuru. “We play many roles, so we have to change very quickly: the feeling and also the action,” says this graceful Cambodian dancer. “It’s quite a challenge – and we’ve only been rehearsing for one month and one week. This performance has many layers: many different kinds of things are mixed together. The challenge for me personally is in the last scene, when I have to scream. Koyano Tetsuro taught me the technique because I’m really bad with screaming, but he wanted it. Normally the girl is always sweet and when something happens to her she is quiet and crestfallen, but for this performance he wanted to completely change that: you have to open your heart and scream.”

Koyano, a rubber-faced, Japanese-born specialist in Balinese masked dancing who plays four separate roles in the performance, beams at her side – apparently enjoying having his facial expressions clearly visible for once (“His eyes are so big!” exclaims Hiroshi). “We Asians have wisdom from the old ways about how we can best live with nature,” he says. “In Japan, we value this. Now we have to redefine it and recreate it for this modern world. It’s not only about performing arts. I studied a lot of philosophy as well in Balinese culture. We chose the Mahabharata because it is the greatest story in Asia. The story is a source of art, a source of philosophy, a source of society – everything. For example, in Bali they use this Mahabharata story in the famous shadow puppet shows. Before, they didn’t have any schools in which to educate their children so people would go to shadow puppet shows. In the Mahabharata story, it talks about many important philosophies, wisdom and how people can live together in society and co-exist with nature. This is a form of education as well.”

WHO: Amrita Performing Arts
WHAT: Mahabharata dance performance
WHERE: National Theatre, #173 Sangkat Toul Svay Prey I (behind Spark Club, off Mao Tse Tung Blvd.)
WHEN: 6:30pm July 12 & 13
WHY: We are all custodians of an increasingly beleaguered Mother Earth

On the cards

For the record, I have never been an inmate in a lunatic asylum, nor am I – at least to the best of my knowledge – certifiably bonkers. Yet there it is, gazing up at me from the upturned card on red and gold cloth spread carefully over this table in the lofty eaves of Opera Cafe: The Madman.

From simple playing cards in 14^th century Europe to today’s occult tools of divination, Tarot cards are, according to some, adorned with ‘mystical symbols’. Gypsies were the first to tap into their divinatory potential, a course that gathered pace when Swiss clergyman Antoine Court de Gebelin published a paper several centuries later proclaiming the word Tarot to be derived from the Egyptian tar (‘royal’) and ro (‘road’): in other words, the cards signify the path to royal wisdom.

The Advisor met Claudio (stage name: Daniel), Opera Cafe’s resident Tarot card reader, to talk the occult, chasing collective awakenings and whether the editor of this magazine really is insane.

How did you first find yourself involved with Tarot cards?

It’s a long story…

I’m a journalist. I love long stories.

It started in India in the ’70s. I lived in Ashram <CHECK> and oriented my spiritual life. There we had a large community in which more or less all disciplines were performed: therapy, any kind of reading, tai chi, all kinds of bio-energetic therapies. Then we had Tarot readings, counselling… I’ve done more than 40 years in this field. I was born on the summer solstice in 1950.

Ah-ha! You’re some sort of über-being.

[Laughs]

What did you grow up wanting to be?

In touch with nature – a free soul! In the ’70s, we had a very deep impact with the cultural values situation in Europe, so most of the young people would refuse whatever society provided: values, orientation, psychological influence. ‘Just a brick in the wall’; Pink Floyd; ‘leave these kids alone’: it made the point in our minds at that time. I went by land to India; by sea, by air. I had a very famous Tarot reader, a friend of mine, and slowly, slowly I got in touch, but nothing much; it was just one of the disciplines. In the ’90s, I lived in Kenya and it became a professional thing. I met a woman – we’re still connected – she’s a doctor of philosophy and performs readings very well. Even Google pays her for a site which has 6 to 7,000 hits every day. I went deep into that. This golden thing [spreads out red cloth woven traditionally with real gold thread by hand] is my souvenir from that time. I’ve read many people on this. It’s from Italy; like a church garment, a religious symbol. Old, but I love it. [Laughs] Real gold, woven!

So central to your path has always been this sort of psychic enlightenment, a sense of being in tune with the universe.

The unity of all things is my primary purpose.

Here’s a leftfield question for you: what did your parents do, professionally?

My father was a famous musician in Italy, in the Opera Theatre. We’re a family of artists.

I was reading about the history of Tarot cards today: they started as playing cards, but eventually became tools for divination. How would you explain it to the uninitiated?

There’s a belief that Tarot has a 50% chance of being used to exploit people’s weak points to get money out of them. Magicians use them to scare people; they’re not even reading what’s there. It’s used in connection with someone who might have put a curse on you; the ‘old way’. To me, the spiritual way is beautiful because it’s just a mirror: the Tarot symbologically represents all the possibilities for any human situation in life. Spiritually, they reflect your situation. You can only learn if certain things are not clear in the mind. Sometimes emotions are involved. Sometimes someone doesn’t even know what he’s feeling, especially in a love affair. Maybe something’s wrong; there’s jealousy, hatred, whatever. Many people are afraid to be alone, especially when they’re very young or very old, so they cling to a person to fill the hole they have inside themselves. Many times, the person I’m reading is shocked, but this can help them transform. The person is reflected and you can really see what the cards are showing you. They’re a tool for insight and transformation. It’s white magic! Red magic is the magic of love: passion. Black is holding one’s will over someone else. But when the Tarot is transparent, it can help a person become aware of their own mechanisms; their own mistakes.

How does the process work?

The ‘how’ implies always a technical explanation: the know-how. But there is no know-how for this kind of thing. Carl Gustav Jung was asked to write the preface of the I Ching, the first time it was translated into a Western language: a scientific mind was called on to explain how the fuck this non-scientific I Ching works! So he took the I Ching and said: ‘Let’s ask the book what it thinks about itself.’ And he threw the coins and used the old hexagram and the crucible filled with liquid gold and the book defines itself when Jung asks. But the person must have a problem, in a way; a sincere question. It’s unexplainable; it goes beyond short-sighted analytical thinking: ‘Two plus two is four.’ In reality, two plus two can be anything. There’s a link between the known and the unknown. I used to see six, seven, eight people a day and they’d all say: ‘How does it work?’ I don’t know! [Laughs]

Some of the greatest things about this life are its unresolved mysteries. That’s what keeps it interesting. I’m not religious, but…

You are!

Spiritual, perhaps… I believe ultimately we’re all part of the same organism: Earth.

You can’t even call this a belief any more: it’s a reality.

So if you were going to read my cards, where would we start?

If I’m going to read your cards, it means you have a question; you’re supposed to have a question.

I have an existential question.

They are the best questions! We can have an experiment, just like Carl Jung. [Spreads deck] You can touch them, shuffle them; put your energy into them. Now, with the left hand you cut and you start getting into your question. And then if you want you tell me what the question is.

OK: am I finally on the right track; doing the right thing with my life?

So what is this symbol? [Points to first two cards] It’s very simple: family – completion – and… the madman.

[Laughs]

You have to balance these two aspects, which may bring you to the question: am I right? And the very question, in a sense, is already wrong. You’re asking if the universe thinks as you think. The universe does not think. Even you don’t think.

That’s true.

The mind does. But the question ‘Am I right?’ is two-dimensional: one earthly; stable. The very doubt probably goes back to your family. They haunt you, telling you what real life is and giving you those values.

[Diplomatic silence]

So now we cut again. You see how they reflect? Then you have to add intuition. Family and the madman: the division is between so-called normal life – family values – and very earthy, mad principles. The madman is a very dangerous card: very brilliant and alive; exuberant, but in the negative context can become a disaster. Now we cut three more cards with the left hand.

Why the left hand?

The left hand side of the brain is the creative, artistic side. [Reveals card with blindfolded woman pointing two swords in opposite directions by moonlight] You have strong doubts; sometimes you are divided. But we shouldn’t care too much: these are minor arcana cards. So far it’s telling you that you have action and sometimes the doubts come from that part which is still not clear. Give me three more. Major arcana! The chariot means stability and balance.

And there’s a cavalier!

You have a cavalier?

You mean an actual cavalier, all of my own?

Yes.

Let’s just say we’re in negotiations.

[Laughs] This is a symbol for a kind of share-a-joint-and-fuck… a rascal.

[Blushes, grinning]

Perfect! He’s there, in the air! So you’re afraid of change sometimes, but after all you are balanced. Give me three more. ‘In negotiations’ – I’ve never heard this! [Laughs] I will remember this. You have debt?

[More diplomatic silence]

So this is your black area. Sometimes, in spite of all, you have this recurring thing. You are definitely surrounded by friends: this is a symbol of real exchange, balance and friendship; a very good situation. Number two, you are stable. Let’s analyse the negative: you have a few debts and are afraid of changes. There’s a loss of self confidence sometimes. These are the only negatives. You’re quick to doubt because of past conditioning, so one has to be aware. On the positive side are balance and friendship. Your major cards are all strong suits, but left alone you tend to go into regression. So what can be said? Never doubt whether you’re right. The way you deal with your life belongs intimately to you, to your essence, which is beyond a conditioning grip of any kind. This is what we are. The simplicity lies in the recognition that we are beings, but we’ve been levelled to conform. Beyond, in a pristine state, our essence did not undergo any formation. You said earlier something about mystery. The mystery is not something out there, it’s what we are; it’s everywhere. The recognition of this principle is freedom. Never doubt whether your foot swings are in tune with your orientation. Poverty could be economical but it could also be psychological: not recognising, getting into self-denial. The mystery of what we are, ultimately, we are to resolve. [Laughs loudly and bangs fist on table] This is my life! Forty years chasing a collective awakening!

Return to NZ

William Norbert-Munns doesn’t like the term ‘gastro pub’. He doesn’t like it at all. Suggest that his and his brother’s latest venture is akin to that which might be described precisely as such in, say, London, and the New Zealander hisses through clenched teeth: “Bistro! I was going for bistro!”

He has a point, not least because the word ‘gastro’ can have less-than-pleasant connotations in the developing world. Public House, Will and George’s newly opened “bistro” on Street 240½, is less pub – of any hue – more Antipodean Escape.

So busy was the soft opening that we jackals in the press eventually had to find food elsewhere, but our return the following night was triumphant. The intertwining aromas of newly carved wood and fine food, the latter courtesy of an open kitchen policy, are almost as intoxicating as the cocktails (the $5 Mekong Breeze – vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice – is a must if you don’t want to waste any time on the road to oblivion).

Rears planted firmly in soft seating overlooking the alleyway, where the city’s below-the-radar movers and shakers slink in and out of Bar Sito, another of the brothers’ brainchildren, you can take a moment to let your eyes wander over the vaguely sports-themed paraphernalia atop the bar: ancient wooden tennis rackets; a toy yacht. And on the otherwise pleasingly Spartan walls, maps of… um… Thailand (yes, they know).

Onto the menu: mains include corn fritters with salsa, rocket and bacon ($5); cold pan-fried beef on green papaya salad ($5) – a crisp, pleasing study in the word ‘crunch’ – and Shepherd’s Pie with mixed leaves ($7). Roast duck breast on couscous salad ($6) occupied my plate: 5mm medallions of tender, dark meat balanced on top of a small mountain of golden-coloured couscous with no shortage of green crispy stuff. My partner in crime stole most of the pan-fried beef, but I’m told it was “good”.

Perhaps the piece de resistance, however, was the pudding: one lemon tart, one pear tart (both $5). Even if you’re not normally of a sweet-toothed mentality, spare a thought for Public House’s shrines to pastry: expertly coaxed into elaborate fold-over affairs, the tarts are worth every red cent – all 500 of them, to be exact. “They’re REALLY good,” volunteered our otherwise-tight-lipped Art Director. The oracle has spoken.

Public House, Street 240½

Manga, anime and cosplay: everything you need to know

Manga are meant to be read back to front, right to left. If you open a typical shojo like a regular book, you’re likely to see a note saying: “Stop! You are going the wrong way!” The idea is that it’s “a completely different reading experience”, as one popular series, Othello, explains on its first (that is, last) page.

The Chinese characters used to write the word manga in Japanese can be translated as ‘whimsical drawings’. The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century with the publication of Santō Kyōden’s picturebook Shiji no yukikai.

Shojo comics (manga for girls) have become one of the hottest markets in the book business. The genre has been called ‘big eyes save the world’ because of its predilection for girls with saucer-shaped eyes and supernatural powers.

While the earliest known Japanese animation dates to 1917, the characteristic anime style developed in the 1960s – most notably with the work of Osamu Tezuka, considered by many ‘the god of manga’.

On October 31 in 2006, ‘cosplay’ was declare Urban Word of the Day by urbandictionary.com, which defines it thus: “Literally ‘Costume Play.’ Dressing up and pretending to be a fictional character (usually a sci-fi, comic book or anime character).

Yuichiro ‘Jienotsu’ Nagashima, one of Japan’s top-ranked kickboxers, makes all his appearances for K-1 dressed as different female anime characters, accompanied by cosplaying girls.

When choosing your cosplay character, take time to study their mannerisms and be prepared to pose for camekos (‘cosplay photographers’).

Make sure you’re at the right cosplay convention: no self-respecting Doraemon wants to find themselves shoulder to shoulder with Stormtroopers.

Byline: Phoenix Jay

Silent screams

Good vibrations

VIBE: THE HIGHLIGHTS

Tangled up in the blues

In defence of decadence & depravity

Alternative reality

“Costumes aren’t just for Halloween and cosplay isn’t just a fad with teens. Cosplay is on the verge of becoming a major force in American pop culture.”

A walk on the wild side

Ancient wisdom, modern world

On the cards

Return to NZ

Manga, anime and cosplay: everything you need to know

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