Old flame, new fire

The moment passes in a flash. Tokay, the first cut off Dengue Fever’s latest album, opens with a frighteningly lo-fi percussion sample that sounds like it came off a cheap Casio keyboard. The digital cliché stops your heart (and not in a good way), and for a terrifying moment you think Dengue Fever, not long ago one of LA’s finest hipster bands and Cambodia’s own post-pop musical superstars, have jumped the shark.

Then a kazoo drops in (or something that sounds like a kazoo, but maybe not an actual kazoo. Maybe that cheap Casio) backed by African-style drums and a nimble bass line. When the music pulls back and lead singer Chhom Nimol comes in, it’s like an old flame has sauntered into the room and flashed a coy smile. No sharks. No fear. Instant new crush.

So it goes with Dengue Fever, who have not released a full-length album since Cannibal Courtship in 2011. In the ensuing time the band dumped its previous record label, Fantasy, and started its own, Tuk Tuk Records, which has allowed the sextet to create and release music on its own terms.

Since debuting in 2001 as a gimmicky Khmer oldies band, Dengue Fever has continuously defied expectations. The labels – Khmer oldies, garage, world, psychedelic, surf – have never stuck.

The Deepest Lake took a year to come together, and with it the band seems to have fully assimilated its influences. No longer is Dengue Fever just an LA band with an exotic Khmer singer, or a Khmer oldies band with barang musicians. The influences on The Deepest Lake are far more diverse than anything previous. They include African and Latin rhythms, dream pop and even rap. The music defies categorisation – try as we might.

After Tokay, the seductive opening cut, the band drops into No Sudden Moves, a song about some doped-up meth heads who live across the street. The track embodies the classic Dengue Fever sound, from the driving melodies and low-end sax fills to the trademark reverb-drenched guitar licks and high-flying vocals.

The song opens with a solo bass line and an upbeat guitar-driven melody. It’s a bit quirky, and momentarily feels a bit too cute, but Chhom Nimol’s vocals soon take centre stage and pull the track back toward a middle-of-the-road indie rock groove. And then beyond.

In a first for the band, the Battambang songstress starts rapping midway through the song. It’s an unassuming shift, and she handles it so deftly that it takes a moment to fully realise that you’ve just heard Chhom Nimol spittin’ rhymes like a South Central cholita.

The third cut, Rom Say Sok, is big-hair surf rock fun reminiscent of the B-52s in their Love Shack days.

From there the album slips into a dreamy, atmospheric mood with Ghost Voice and Deepest Lake on the Planet. In the former, the band serves up a trippy, jungle rock tapestry composed with cowbells and traditional Khmer melodies, in the latter a hypnotic dream pop journey through submarine fantasies.

The English-language Cardboard Castles marks a return to arm-waving indie pop, and the song is sure to make any college kid worth his microbrew swoon.

Vacant Lot is another moody, minor-key ensemble that seems tailor made for an overdose scene in a Quentin Tarantino film. Still Waters Run Deep, a fast-paced surf rock number, could easily score the chase sequence.

The Deepest Lake closes with Taxi Dancer – a slow-grooving showcase for Nimol’s haunting vocals – and Golden Flute, a similarly inspired tune built with expressive percussions and brooding, musical textures.

If the Khmer oldies hits were the gimmick that started it all, the band, now nearly 15 years old, has certainly evolved into a mature outfit with its own distinct sound. The Deepest Lake is likely Dengue Fever’s finest album yet. And with the new evolved sound, the band seems just a little less crush-worthy, and just a little more like something suitable for a long-term affair. Hopefully, it won’t take another four years to hook up again.

Stepping up to a new stage

Cambodian film will celebrate its largest cinematic premiere since the days of Norodom Sihanouk when Cambodian Son debuts Jan 29 with a red-carpet gala affair at Major Cineplex. The film opens citywide Jan 30.

Produced by Anida Yoeu Ali and directed by Japanese filmmaker Masahiro Sugano, Cambodian Son follows Kosal Khiev, a Cambodian-American spoken word artist and ex-convict, on his journey to the United Kingdom to perform in the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, an international poetry event held in parallel to the Olympics.

Cambodian Son is a documentary. But in the hands of Sugano, until now a fiction filmmaker, the movie unravels like a feature film. In Khiev, Sugano finds a compelling, flawed character and unlikely underdog to represent Cambodia in the 2012 event, also known as the Poetry Parnassus.

Cambodian Son represents the latest in a growing body of powerful contemporary cinema that includes Rithy Panh’s The Missing Picture, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2014, Kulikar Sotho’s The Last Reel, Davy Chou’s Golden Slumbers and Kalyanne Mam’s A River Changes Course.

“It just feels like we are back,” said Ali of her country and its once again burgeoning arts and cinema scene. “We almost died. All of this almost got annihilated. Our culture was desecrated to rock bottom. We were left for dead with nobody around and, just like Kosal’s story, we’re all climbing out of it and back to the light, back to life.”

At the time of Khiev’s selection, the Parnassus was the planet’s largest-ever gathering of poets. Each country participating in the 2012 Olympic Games sent a single representative. More than 6,000 were nominated. Only 204 were chosen.

Khiev’s selection to the Parnassus was the event that compelled the trio to start filming. The moment seemed too big to let slip away, even if everyone involved sensed that the road ahead was likely to be rocky. “It just felt like if we didn’t start rolling the camera then we were going to lose it, lose the moment and all the things that come with that,” Ali said. “It was impulsive.”

Sugano, a filmmaker trained in fiction and production, perhaps knew best the dangers of documentary moviemaking. The Osaka native completed his master’s at the University of Illinois in Chicago, the city of Hoop Dreams, an award-winning, $11 million grossing documentary about high-school basketball players. The crew originally estimated three weeks for filming. It ended up taking eight years.

“In a documentary, you keep filming without knowing when it’s going to end,” said Sugano, who is Ali’s husband and co-conspirator in Studio Revolt, the couple’s Phnom Penh media collaborative. “It seems ridiculous to me. You have to be crazy. As a matter of fact, all the documentary filmmakers I have met are crazy. It doesn’t make any economic sense – time, money, nothing.“

Yet, Sugano found it impossible to say no. Khiev was too rare a talent, the injustices done to him were too great, the social problems he personified were too widespread, and his selection to the Parnassus was too significant to leave the story untold.

“Kosal is a poster child for so many social and historical issues,” Sugano said. “He’s a poster child for the conflict in Southeast Asia, issues of immigration, racism in the US, gang problems, the war on drugs, excessive incarceration for children, hate, xenophobia, deportation, all those things I only read about in the newspaper.”

Kosal Khiev was born March 12, 1980, in a refugee camp on the Thai border. He immigrated as an infant to California, in the United States, with his mother and eight older siblings. He never knew his father, a man who, like so many others, disappeared from the camps and was never heard from again.

Khiev struggled to find his place growing up in Santa Ana, CA, a densely populated urban area about 30 kilometres east of Long Beach. He was in trouble early (and often). When he was 13, his mother shipped him to the New Bethany Home for Boys, a Christian school in Arcadia, Louisiana.

New Bethany seemed just as troubled as Khiev, if not more so. The home was often under investigation by police or welfare authorities. Stories of abuse that escaped from its barbed-wire fences included children being beaten with golf clubs and PVC pipe (PVC stood for “pound victims cruelly,” the children joked). Police found one 14-year-old boy “bound, in his underwear, on the floor of a dark and padlocked isolation cell,” according to reports.

After a year at New Bethany, Khiev returned to Santa Ana. At 16, he was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Because he had never completed a citizenship test, upon his release in 2010, at age 30, he was seized by immigration officials. Khiev spent another year in an immigration detention centre before being deported to Cambodia, a country in which he had never once set foot.

Against nearly impossible odds, Khiev grew up and got his mind right in prison. He took university classes and joined an art program. “You feel worthless when you’re in prison,” Khiev said. “You feel like you hold no valuable space. You’re just here in a cage. So on the inside, you try to create worth, you try to create value.”

Khiev found his greatest salvation in poetry and spoken word, and he planned for a day he could pursue his art on the outside. His dreams were almost prophetic.

“I used to talk to the guys inside, and we’d talk about dreams.

‘So, what do you want to do?’

‘Man, one day, I’ll be in the Olympics. Not participating in the Olympics, I just want to go to the Olympics. That’s just one of those things I want to do.’ Especially after the Beijing games, I was like, ‘Wow, this is spectacular. That’s what humans can actually do when coming together. One day. One day I will be there.’”

Getting selected for the Parnassus put that “one day” on his calendar. “I just couldn’t believe it,” Khiev said. “It’s a dream to even think about it. This is one of the biggest stages I’ll ever be on.”

It was bigger than the Apollo or Def Jam Poetry stages he had fantasised about performing on while honing his craft in solitary confinement. “This was even bigger than that,” Khiev said. “I couldn’t even fathom; wow, is this all really happening?”

But first came the challenge of living it all out in front of Sugano’s camera, an assignment more complex than it first appeared.

“In the beginning it was really rough, because you’re always so conscious of someone there filming your every word, every action,” Khiev said. “I felt really vulnerable and uncomfortable.”

The creative process at times weighed heavily on all of them. Not only were they close friends, they were now work colleagues and three extremely passionate artists, each with strong ideas. Filming tested the strength of their relationships.

“As a media collaborative for us – myself, Masahiro and Kosal – I think it’s really been an incredible journey,” Ali said. ”Would we repeat it? I don’t know.”

The trio started with almost no money, and in the beginning it was financially difficult for everyone. Sugano was demanding, and Khiev, still coming to terms with life on the outside, often seemed unprepared for the rigours of a daily production schedule.

“It was hard,” Khiev said. “Masa is kind of like this totalitarian director. He wants what he sees and he sees what he wants.”

Sugano doesn’t completely disagree. “I’m Japanese, right? So I got my work ethic. It is embedded, beaten in, in Japan,” he said. “I also come from the film industry, which is really regimented, and you can still get cussed at as an intern. So there is that culture of severe commitment that I come from. I expect the same here. My wife always warns me not to bring out my Japanese on the Khmer people in my work expectations, but I can’t help it.”

Still, he realised that not everyone comes from the same privileged background that he did.

“Kosal himself is also not the most stable, boring person,” Sugano said. “He’s got temperament. He’s an artist. He spent time in prison. So he’s not necessarily the most well-adjusted in the ways of fulfilling commitments and what not. So I was always afraid that he might just disappear. That was always a big concern for me. So I didn’t know how much I could push him to find stories. There were moments when I had to take two steps back and give him room. That was the hardest part, actually.”

Slowly the three of them began to find, if not a groove, at least a tenable peace where they could all work and learn. A shared commitment to the bigger picture kept them focused.

“I knew from the get-go that I couldn’t do this for my career,” Sugano said. “I couldn’t do this for Kosal’s career. I had to do it for something bigger. And I actually talked about this with Kosal many times, because he was going to have to reveal a side of himself that he might not want people to see. But the bottom line was that this had nothing to do with me or him. When this story comes out, it will serve a cause much bigger than who we are. And that’s why we are anointed to be part of it. In many ways, we were sacrificed for something bigger. His privacy was sacrificed. My time and sanity were sacrificed.”

That bigger cause holds slightly different contours for each of them. For Sugano, his cause is the fight against the culture of hate and fear spreading across the globe. It’s based on labeling, us and them, and it allows us to castigate others without considering the humanity of our actions.

“We skip out on thinking of people as people,” Sugano said. “We just fall back on the label and get rid of people and that’s exactly how these guys got kicked out. They got labeled as criminal aliens.”

For Ali and Khiev, Cambodian Son takes on far more personal tones. “I think Kosal can really bring a complexity to the intersection of so many of these issues, whether it’s justice or immigration or geo-politics or the past Cambodia-US relations,” Ali said. “I think he can put a human face on it. In the end, he is somebody’s son who just wants to be home and to find where he belongs.”

That sense of belonging, or lack of it, seems pervasive among many Cambodian communities. Khmers who grow up abroad often struggle to find their place in foreign cultures. And in Cambodia, members of the diaspora are often viewed as less than native-born Khmers.

“For a local Khmer to watch this movie and then find a way to relate to this individual that looks nothing like their world, that to me is what it’s about,” Ali said. “That moment of relating to the outsider, to the underdog, that to me is that moment of finally connecting the diaspora with the Khmer who are here, that union of finally making Cambodia and the Khmer identity whole.”

“We need to feel good about who we are, because being who we were, that’s what got us in trouble,” she said. “Being artists, being middle class people, being professionals, that is what they tried to annihilate in that terrible revolution. But they can’t squash the spirit.”

Laura Mam: Making it happen

Two major events have altered Laura Mam’s life in recent weeks: one, she has left her comfortable California life and moved permanently to Phnom Penh; two, she has just released her second full-length solo album, In Search of Heroes.

No matter what anyone tells you, the timing was no accident. And if it says anything, it says this: Laura Mam has arrived.

Mam, a Cambodian-American from San Jose, first gained popularity in 2008 with a string of video blogs on YouTube. The low-fi performances often included just her and a guitar. She spoke directly to the camera, occasionally hamming it up and ranting about the demands of university or shoddy recording equipment. She sang about Cambodia and Sin Sisamouth, her boyfriend and smoking weed.

The videos proved a perfect vehicle for her intimate dorm room manner. She was cute, funny and likeable. And when she started singing, her talent was instantly recognisable. When she started singing in Khmer, Cambodians around the world began to swoon.

After college Mam put together an all-Cambodian girl band, The Like Me’s, and started playing the Bay Area club scene. The band visited Cambodia in February 2011; they were an instant hit.

The Like Me’s split in early 2013, but the journey Mam started with the band was now her own. The pop chanteuse carries with her the musical influences of contemporary American culture. She plans to dive into the music scene and absorb all its cultural influences. And maybe even share a little American flair along the way (possibly even a lot).

Like many overseas-born Khmers, Mam appears driven by a need to connect to her parents’ homeland and contribute to its rehabilitation. More than any of her previous works, In Search of Heroes seems a musical amalgamation of Mam’s personal journey, maybe even a self-portrait.

Musically, In Search of Heroes is a departure from Mam’s earlier efforts, too. Most of her past works carried traditional pop stylings. Her new album might be described broadly as a mix between ‘80s-era synth pop and Asian electronica. Yet it is neither, and so much more.

The 10-track album begins with Buong Suong, a modern-day interpretation of the ancient royal ceremony. The song opens with Mam singing alone with a drummer. A trickle of reverb gives her vocals a soft, smooth edge. The rhythm feels tribal, with heavy, expressive percussions, traditional Khmer instruments and chanting. A thunderous dance beat comes crashing in midway through the song. But at just 1:08, the song, like a flash flood, is over quickly.

The second cut, Yusop Yulsong, is dance house Asian electronica mixed with traditional Khmer chanting and instrumentation. Like the previous track, the sound is reminiscent of Talvin Singh’s 1997 genre-defining compilation Soundz of the Asian Underground, and Yusop Yulsong easily joins the clique and mingles among its peers.

After the first two cuts, the album veers from its ancient influences and moves to more contemporary sounds. The third track is a cover of Pan Ron’s super hit Kyom Min Sok Chet Te. The fourth, a cut called Madizone Thmey. Mam’s version of Kyom Min Sok Chet Te comes with fuzzy bass, a big dance-club beat and vocals that at times border on the scandalously sensual. Madizone Thmey is straight-up Khmer wedding pop with heavy electronic undertones.

From here Mam slows down and her music takes a softer, sometimes darker tone. Kou Preng Veasna is a slow love song with brooding vocals and big refrains that would easily fit into any modern-day karaoke love triangle. The next two tracks, In Red and In the Hands of Men and Monsters, drop into shadowy introspection, the latter reflecting on the American bombings.

As a whole, the album seems to move through periods of the country’s history, each one an obvious influence on Mam’s identity. Her journey, now ours, finishes with the ‘80s synth-pop optimism of You Never Know.

Someday I’ll be a star, I’ll drive a fancy car, and everybody will love me
Oh, I’ll be on tv, and karaoke, and everybody will love me
I want a family, and they will love me, because I made it all happen

There is little doubt that Mam has superstar potential. Or that music is primed for a new pop icon. Fans are swooning already.

Keys to the past

Dr.Him Sophy is leading the way up four flights of stairs to his personal concert hall. The room would host 150 people if he had the chairs, but for now, the auditorium remains one of the musicians countless works in progress.

Born in Prey Veng in 1963, Him Sophy represents the country’s lone musical composer. And while his name is still relatively obscure (for now, at least), his music has helped define nearly every notable creative endeavour to originate from the Kingdom over the last several years.

He scored the critically acclaimed Where Elephants Weep, the rock opera by John Burt and Arn Chorn-Pond. Sophiline Cheam Shapiro tapped him for the music to her 2013 dance drama, A Bend in the River. In addition to Shapiro’s dance, Dr. Sophy’s Pamsukula made headlines at Seasons of Cambodia, the 2013 festival in New York celebrating contemporary Cambodian arts. He is currently collaborating with Rithy Panh, the renowned film director, on a new project.

International exposure and critical acclaim, however, do not always bear in their wake local fame or great riches. His modest Phnom Penh music hall straddles a mid-sized duplex in Toul Kok that he shares between his home and music school. “I am only a composer,” he says. “But even if I am not a millionaire or a banker or something, I feel like I do many things for Cambodia.”

Surviving the genocide and witnessing the collapse of the Soviet Union, where he obtained his PhD in composition, does not a lazy man make. At 9am on New Year’s day he is at school working. The students and his classes are what keep him afloat, but they are not without cost. His first true love, the piano, is often stranded on the wayside of treble clefs, students and family.

But not today. In a rare break from his churning creativity, Dr. Sophy sits and pours through a dozen or so flawless stanzas of Tchaikovsky and classic French compositions before moving on to Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. The master and his most prized possession reverberate in unison. His eyes rise and fall, his chest heaves as his fingers race across the ivories. His listeners are not exempt from the exercise: guess the chef d’oeuvre.

He stops and laughs. “It’s not easy,” he says.

The composer might be talking about the concerto, a notoriously challenging piece, or the rather obvious logistical question of how one goes about getting a 300-kilogram piano up four flights of narrow stairs. His simple manner is disconcerting, but the sub-current of existential commentary on the Cambodian condition is undeniable.

THE MEMORIES

Him Sophy was 12 years old when the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and forced his family to return to their native province of Prey Veng. From the suffering, the hunger, the pain, he has extracted variations and allegros to remember that which has been lost. And in doing so, he may have created his life’s defining work: Memory From Darkness, a 25-minute piece written for the violin, cello and piano.

Him Sophy was a student at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory when he wrote Memory From Darkness in 1990. The wounds were still fresh in those days, barely a decade removed from Pol Pot’s atrocities. His music represents one of the country’s earliest attempts to face its horrific past.

Haunting, intensely personal and profoundly human, the composition has only twice been performed publicly. The first time occurred during a series of concerts in Phnom Penh in July 2013, when the New York New Music Ensemble recorded the piece in collaboration with Cambodia Living Arts, a local non-profit that supports music and art. The last was a recital given by his students in his fourth-floor auditorium the Sunday before Christmas. It was a poignant performance celebrating the long-awaited release of Memory From Darkness on CD, nearly 25 years after its conception.

The Advisor recently sat down with Dr. Sophy to discuss Memory From Darkness, the state of classical music, and the delicate balancing act of honouring tradition while pushing creative boundaries.

You composed Memory From Darkness in 1990, when you were a student. It was first played publicly in 2013 by the New York New Music Ensemble. Why did it take so long for it to come to the public?

Memory From Darkness was composed for my exam at the Conservatory. There was one recording, but it was not good. There was lots of noise, but I still kept it and brought it to Cambodia. In the beginning, it was not easy to know who would play my music. Nobody played these instruments well. Even now, I tried to test Cambodian violinists and cellists for the launch on December 21st, but they could not play it. Their technique is still very limited.

Memory From Darkness is a really difficult piece, and it’s from the heart. The technique is very high. That’s why nobody ever performed it here. It was only through the support of Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung, who is actually coming next month, that it could happen. He came to Cambodia with his ensemble and then had the idea, “Oh, I want to support Him Sophy because his pieces, many pieces, were only performed a long time ago.” That’s why the New York New Music Ensemble came with him in 2013.

Why do you stay in Cambodia if you cannot find musicians who can play your music?

Many people go outside. I went to the United States. I finished my PhD in Moscow and came back to Cambodia. I wanted to express my feelings. That is why I chose to stay in Cambodia. I feel like the world is round for me. I don’t feel nationality. I don’t feel different. I can live anywhere. I can stay anywhere. In Cambodia, if I want to play Western music, I can. When Sophiline Shapiro commissioned me to compose music for A Bend in the River, I composed music from the Angkorian period. From Angkor until now, no one composed this music. But I am composing new pieces of this ancient culture. It’s like a battle between a human and a crocodile. I had to find a balance: not too different, but not too easy, either, otherwise they never learn.

It’s a Russian professor who told you to come back to your roots as part of your composition. Had he not pushed you back toward your origins, would your music be more European?

Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes it depends on the student. If the student doesn’t want to continue from their own roots, it’s okay. Nobody is forced. Of course, I learned a lot of Western techniques. I learned them all. But Khmer culture is brave. I think we continue to learn and improve. Our music is not bad. But techniques like polyphony and harmony in orchestration come from the West. We can say that without Western culture, it would be hard to develop our own root culture. That’s true. But that’s globalisation and cultural diversity.

So you composed a Cambodian rock opera?

A rock opera, yes! No one believed I could do it, not even the American musicologists. From the beginning, they said it would never come out. They did, yeah, because I used traditional Cambodian instruments to accompany an opera, and there are a lot of traditional Cambodian instruments. Thirty-seven traditional instruments combined with a rock band — electric guitar, electric bass, piano, synthesizer — it took me eight years to complete it. I think many people around me ran away because they couldn’t survive from the small money. It was big, huge work, but little money.

And there is a lot to say about that opera. There are still many dissertations you could write about that opera, because there are a lot of secrets inside. But in Cambodia, no one knows that much about opera because the knowledge is still limited. Now, the younger generation, they are trying, they are starting to understand. That’s why in my opera I used a lot of traditional Cambodian instruments and a rock band, because I could not find the right cellist here. It was a new musical genre, something nobody ever did before. That’s why it took such a long time.

How would you assess Cambodian creativity in 2015?

We have good contemporary dance. First, I think of Amrita Performing Arts and the Sophiline Arts Ensemble. Cambodia Living Arts also gives very big support to traditional music and dance. But it seems like it’s the private sector where things are growing and developing the fastest. In the aspect of music and composing, I think it’s only me, and maybe also my students, but they are still not ready to compose symphonies just yet.

What do you have planned next?

There are a lot of opportunities, but how to choose? Right now, they are waiting for my music for Requiem For Cambodia. That’s a huge project. We are collaborating with a very famous Oscar-nominated Cambodian filmmaker, Rithy Panh. He has joined me on the Requiem project. He will make the film for my music.
Also, well, it’s sort of a secret, but I’ll tell you: I am working on a new musical combining traditional Cambodian styles and modern dance. Sometimes, when I think about how to survive as an artist, I think maybe I need to come back and create a musical that is less complicated, that can serve the people more.

Cambodian Space Project: Pushing wax

If living life in a 1960s-era time capsule is the goal, The Cambodian Space Project, those musical champions of retro Khmer space rock, continue to blast their way back to a simpler, sublime past.

The band’s latest efforts come by way of a 7-inch 45 titled Rom Ding Dong (Ding Dong Dance). The vinyl serves as a teaser to the band’s forthcoming album, Electric Blue Boogaloo, scheduled for release later this year.

Much has been written about CSP’s recent touring schedule and the band’s high-profile hook-ups in the Detroit music scene. Last year the band played and recorded its third album, Whiskey Cambodia, with Motown guitar maestro Dennis Coffey, who polished the CSP sound with a wide-brimmed ointment of 1970s-era funk.

Electric Blue Boogaloo was recorded in Bali and France and mixed by veteran Detroit producer Jim Diamond, once a collaborator with White Stripes and the owner of Ghetto Recorders, an old-school analogue recording studio. With Diamond behind the mixing boards, CSP drifts from the slick R&B moorings of the band’s previous album and returns to its fuzzy rock ‘n’ roll roots.

The titular track is a daytime dreamscape balanced precariously between driving, masculine rhythms and effervescent female vocals. From the opening bar, a square-jawed line of background vocalists chant “go, go, go – go, go gorilla, go.” The heavy repetition and flattened R’s evoke a band of ape kings escaped from Timothy Leary’s version of Godzilla vs King Kong. A little dark, a lot of trippy.

Lead singer Kak Channthy’s vocals surf like a sea goddess on top of the monkey-men’s waves. Her voice is expansive and playful, a lyrical contrast to the simplicity of the sounds that carry her. And the deep background vocals set a perfect stage to showcase her range. In similar recurring fashion, she sings along the low end for two verses, soars to the clouds for a third and then parachutes down through the middle ranges for the fourth. The duelling repetitions, different in cadence, complexity and tone, combine for a sonic tapestry both dreamy and surreal yet rhythmic and danceable.

The B-side is a CSP mashup of two 1970s-era hits, Broken Heart Woman and Land of 1,000 Dances. Broken Heart Woman was originally penned by Yol Aularong and called Broken Heart Man. As such, it was intended for a male singer, and the song talks about playing fast and loose with the ladies. Yet almost as soon as it was released, female singers of the day co-opted the lyrics and gave the song a definitive vixen quality.

In CSP’s hands, the song remains true to its straight-ahead rock heritage. The original was no doubt inspired by Van Morrison’s Gloria (or maybe the Door’s version a few years later), and the song’s signature bass line drifts in and out, appearing just long enough to give the tune the feel of familiarity. The refrain riffs off Cannibal & the Headhunters’ cover of Land of 1,000 Dances (originally written by Louisiana gospel singer Chris Kenner and made famous by Wilson Picket).

As a teaser, the 7-inch Rom Ding Dong is nearly certain to leave fans itching for more. The only hitch is the format. Vinyl’s promise of superior sound is only as good as the turntable that spins it, if you can even find such a thing (hat tip to Ramon and Chris at The Flicks). For aficionados with the gear at home, the decision is easy. For the rest us, well, we’ll just have to crank up the volume and piss off someone else’s neighbours.

Rom Ding Dong is available for $15 at the Vintage Shop in Russian Market, Space Four Zero, and KAMA Records in Kampot.

WHO: Cambodian Space Project
WHAT: Rom Ding Dong, 7-inch vinyl
WHEN: Yesterday, man
WHERE: A CSP merchant near you
WHY: Retro pop musical swag at its trippiest

The holiday is over: Pol Pot, Jello Biafra and the legacy of punk rock music

In April 1974, as the Khmer Rouge fortified its positions surrounding Phnom Penh, Saloth Sar unlikely could have known that 9,000 miles away in New York a former mental patient named Jeffry Ross Hyman was about to change rock music forever.

Hyman was the lanky, 6’6” frontman for a band called the Ramones, and along with three other misfits from Forest Hill, the unknown quartet was about to take the stage at CBGB, a newish little club and restaurant at Bowery and Bleecker Street in the East Village.

For the previous decade, hippies in the United States had been singing about smoked-out utopias where peace reigned and people wore flowers in their hair. Musically, the ’60s era had culminated in a maelstrom of extended-play commercial rock. Songs were often marked by complex orchestration, long guitar solos, multiple time signatures and chrome-plated production values. Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven stood at the pinnacle of the genre, but the list included other epic 1970s anthems such as Hotel California, Free Bird, and Dream On.

The Ramones, by contrast, could barely play their instruments. Hyman, performing under the stage name Joey Ramone, had zero formal music training. But the Ramones cared little for musical proficiency and when they took the stage at CBGB the night of April 16, they turned up the Marshall stacks to 10 and unleashed a torrent of noise and distortion that would alter the course of music history.

Their impact would not leave Cambodia untouched. For without the Ramones, Eric Boucher and East Bay Ray would have never formed the Dead Kennedys, Boucher would have never taken the stage name Jello Biafra, and Biafra would have never written the second-greatest punk song of all time, Holiday in Cambodia, which permanently consigned Pol Pot and his rag-tag band of communist killers to the annals of punk rock legend.

The way of the savage

For all that Cambodia’s horrors unwittingly gave punk music and the world, the country itself got precious little in return. In the West, Pol Pot and his genocidal politics made the Kingdom song-worthy. In the East, however, few places could prove more inhospitable terrain to punk attitudes than the land of Angkor.

Like most Southeast Asian countries, Cambodia is not just deeply religious and socially conservative; it is defined by an overarching need for order. Such need manifests on many levels, oftentimes in ways outsiders struggle to understand.

Social hierarchy is probably the most visible example. At its foundation, members of society are ranked according to their age, sex and religious standing: the young are expected to defer to the old; women are expected to defer to men; laymen are expected to defer to the pious. Clans and alliances are built around the family, and the individual is subordinate to the group. Yet classification goes further than just influencing interpersonal relationships; it serves as the foundation of an ‘ordered’ society.

In his influential 1980 essay Songs At The Edge Of The Forest, David Chandler explores perceptions of order in three Cambodian folktales. In each story, order is contrasted with the wild. Rice fields and families represent order; forests represent the wild.

“In 19th century Cambodia, when people were always in danger and almost always illiterate, examples of orderliness (such as an elegant ceremony, a design in silk, or a properly chanted poem) were few and far between,” Chandler writes, adding that “to many Cambodians, things, ideas, and people – societies, in fact – were thought to be safer and more authentic when they were ranked and in balance, arranged into the same hierarchical pattern (however ineffectual or unhappy) which they had occupied before. Wildness was to be feared, and so was innovation.”

Chandler termed this approach “backward-looking”; not in an intellectual sense, but in its perspective. “Their social conduct was based on ideas, techniques and phrases which had been passed along through time and space like heirlooms, with the result that people were continually reliving, repeating or ‘restoring’ what was past.”

Community and family hierarchies weren’t just curious social artefacts, they were the threads that bound the past to the present. They weren’t just novel vestiges of the social fabric, they defined it. “Being ‘wild’,” Chandler concluded, “meant having no one to respect.”

Down with the establishment

For many, the idea of punk conjures thoughts of fast music and rough-around-the-edges teens in scuffed leather jackets and Stegosaurus-spiked hairdos. But punk is far more than just music or fashion or drug-addled street hoods kicking over trash cans and hurling four-lettered abuse at the squares (but it’s that, too!). Punk is an ethos, a philosophy of which music and clothing are manifestations of the underlying attitude.

At its heart, punk is a rejection of popular culture, of polite society’s accepted social standards and its homogenous expectations. Punk is “just doing what you felt like you had to do,” said Australian Brett Tollis, guitar player for the local grunge/punk quartet Psychotic Reactions and a veteran of the LA music scene.

Almost immediately, punk became the clique of the disaffected everywhere. “It’s people who feel like they don’t fit in,” Tollis explained. “And they see a whole bunch of other people that don’t quite fit in. And you say, ‘If I am not going to fit in, I am going to go totally the other way. There’s no middle. You just tend toward a group of misfits.”

On the tame side, the punk manifesto glorifies the individual, celebrates uniqueness and dismisses the conventions of the masses. In a sardonic monologue, the character Mark Renton in Danny Boyle’s film Trainspotting frames the attitude with enough cynicism to float the British Navy:

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourselves.

And it escalates quickly, from an attitude of extolling uniqueness to one of tearing down the status quo. Punk loathes the establishment, and the more radical punk ethos preaches rebellion and anarchy, corrosion of conformity and, if not a wholesale destruction of the state, something approaching it, because the people wielding power are abusing it and what they need is someone or something to jack-slap them out of their power-drunk stupour.

Few personified such wanton disharmony better than Sex Pistols bass player and punk rock icon Sid Vicious. “Undermine their pompous authority,” he said. “Reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don’t let them take you alive.”

the demon garuda

If honour of the family and respect for the past are the cornerstones of Cambodian culture, punk ideals must look like a cackling Satan riding a demon garuda and shooting flamethrowers over Angkor Wat. Nothing, it seems, could be more anathema to the prim social sensitivities of Cambodian culture. So it’s little surprise that now, 33 years after the release of the Dead Kennedys’ Holiday in Cambodia, punk culture in the Kingdom remains almost non-existent.

Almost.

Three years ago, four 20-something musicians came together and created the country’s first punk rock act, The Anti-fate. More upbeat pop-punk than angry London anarchists, the band are not at all political, but in their own quiet way, they are every bit as anti-establishment as The Clash or The Dead Kennedys.

Chhuth Sen Propey, Anti-fate’s frontman, said the name derived from the band’s stance against Buddhist attitudes on fate and destiny, which, to oversimplify, argue that fate cannot be escaped.

The music of Anti-fate inspired others and in the years since more bands have started playing original music. Chhuth guessed that there are “maybe 30 bands that play their own music,” but “mostly they play rock and metal”.

For cultural reasons the rest have shied away from punk, but the metal scene is flourishing. “Teenagers want something new and cool,” Chhuth said, “but punk is anti-social, anti-government, so they don’t want to do it.”

Politics can be dangerous business in Cambodia. Chhuth’s face goes sour at the mention of the word. It might be tempting to say the country’s current leadership has discouraged the youth from getting involved, but protest music in Cambodia is without precedent. Constituents, too, are expected to defer to their representatives.

Nothing, however, is permanent. Elsewhere in the region, punk has found fertile terrain. The largest and most well-known scene exists in Indonesia, where punk sprouted during the late 1990s – its anger aimed at the oppressive Suharto regime. A band named Marjinal started it all. They dedicated their music to the country’s street kids and sang about corruption and the failures of the government. Their songs immediately found resonance among the country’s disenfranchised youth. Even today, street kids busk Marjinal songs on $5 ukuleles while riding the commuter trains, earning a meagre existence off tips.

The punk scene in Myanmar began even earlier, but under threat from a paranoid-tyrannical government, punks were forced to remain quiet until more recent years. Riding a wave of anger and frustration after the Saffron Revolution, a new wave of punk angst erupted in 2007, led by the band Rebel Riot and its media-savvy front man Kyaw Kyaw. Like icons of the movement in the West, punk in Myanmar seemed to have lived fast and died young. Rebel Riot seldom plays anymore and Kyaw Kyaw now makes a living selling punk paraphernalia and interviews to foreign journalists. In a recent article with the South China Morning Post, the lead singer of a band called Kultur Shock, who goes by the name Scum, lamented the decline. “When we were young, punk was rebellion. Now it’s fucking fashion.”

Such a fate seems unlikely to befall Cambodia, at least any time soon. Punk landed in Myanmar in the early 1990s, in Indonesia not long after. Cambodia is just now getting its first tastes. “Maybe in 10 years it’s gonna be good,” said Chhuth.

Taking the longer view, it’s not hard to see parallels with other countries in the region. The Kingdom grapples with many of the same urban problems as her neighbours and while the number of street kids is unlikely to ever match the population in Indonesia, the ever-deepening chasm between rich and poor continues to grow, corruption and the ‘culture of impunity’ continues to flourish and the government’s apparent indifference to the suffering of its own people continues to outrage. The influence of the Internet, which streams in music, culture and ideas from around the world, cannot be dismissed either. The spigot has been opened, and awash in new views, old attitudes are fading.

It might not yet be time to warm up the flame-throwers, but don’t put them away just yet either.

This story first appeared on June 6, 2013, in Advisor issue #76.

The way of the warrior

Asia’s largest mixed martial arts event is kicking open the doors for a new generation of Khmer fighters, but are they ready?

…..

US senator John McCain has likened the sport of mixed martial arts to human cock-fighting. And there is no denying its brutality. The point is, after all, to beat your opponent unconscious. Cuts, bruises, broken bones and concussions are common.

Like sex, violence sells – and sells big. In the span of a few short years, MMA has rocketed from relative obscurity into a full-blown worldwide sensation. The sport’s two largest promoters now dominate a global market worth billions.

Ultimate Fighting Champion, the industry leader, began in 1993 as a single event in the United States. UFC now beams regular pay-per-view shows to more than 130 countries in 22 languages. The company is reportedly worth upward of $2 billion, making it the most valuable sports franchise on the planet, surpassing the New York Yankees baseball team and Manchester United football club.

UFC’s Asian rival, the Singapore-based ONE FC, controls 90% of MMA markets across Asia. Through deals with ESPN, Fox and Star Sports, the ONE FC promotion broadcasts to more than 70 countries and counts more than a billion viewers. The sport hit Cambodian airwaves in early 2013, broadcasting on CTN affiliate MyTV.

Now, after 18 months of watching the brutal television spectacle, Cambodian fans will get a chance to see the real thing come September 12, when ONE FC arrives at Koh Pich Theatre with its multi-million dollar leviathan. Titled ONE FC: Rise of the Kingdom, the card comprises five international and five local bouts, including a four-man grand prix.

For Cambodian fighters and fight fans, the night offers a chance to finally bask in MMA’s big-money pomp and pageantry: at the global top end, the sport offers lucrative promotional deals, valuable sponsorships and jaw-dropping pay cheques. But down in the local trenches, where air-conditioned gyms are unheard of, the training is brutal, the paydays are meagre, and the modern world of fight science may as well be written in Martian.

Most importantly, the local matches guarantee a Khmer will win on a ONE FC card, something that has eluded the Kingdom’s fighters in five attempts so far. For the eight Cambodian fighters on the card, all of whom are making their ONE FC debut, it also means the biggest payday of their respective careers. Fighters are guaranteed $1,000, plus a thousand more if they win.

By contrast, big-name fighters in Kun Khmer, the Kingdom’s traditional kickboxing style, typically earn between $80 and $100 for local bouts and occasionally as much $200 or $300 for international matches. Local MMA fights pay better, around $150 regardless of outcome.

Yet as hefty as a $2,000 winning purse may appear, it pales next to the One Warrior Bonus, a whopping $50,000 cash prize awarded to any combatant who can suitably impresses ONE FC boss Victor Cui with his or her “warrior spirit”.

Oh, yes. Her. Girls fight, too.

“I can’t wait,” says Tharoth Sam, a 24-year-old female fighter known as Thalon Thon (‘Little Frog’), about her ONE FC debut. Sam trains at the Afighter Team gym, one of only three MMA clubs in the country. A native of Banteay Meanchey, Sam found her way to the cage after years of training in Bokator, the Kingdom’s traditional martial art, and fighting Kun Khmer.

“In Bokator, some girls think it’s too dangerous,” she says about fighting in the ring or cage. “But I wanted to use what I had from Bokator in a real fight, to see what I can do, to see how confident I am.”

The art of killing

The roots of Bokator stretch back to the time of King Jayavarman VII and the Angkorean Empire. History suggests that ancient Khmer dominance of Southeast Asia was due in large part to the Kingdom’s superior battlefield skills. The Angkorean army used Bokator in hand-to-hand combat, and the ancient discipline incorporated striking, weapons and ground-fighting techniques.

Bokator is widely believed to be the predecessor of modern Kun Khmer. Bas reliefs at the Angkor and Bayon temples depict warriors striking with elbows and submitting opponents with choke holds and arm locks. Proponents point to such carvings as evidence of the Khmer’s innate warrior heritage and, like Angkor itself, the art taps deep into the national identity.

Like many traditional martial arts, however, the true history of Bokator is shrouded in mystery and lore. If ever there was a written record, it disappeared during the Pol Pot regime.

A new Bokator began re-flourishing in the mid-2000s under the direction of Grandmaster San Kim Sean, the art’s most vocal evangelist. The grandmaster spent months canvassing the country in search of old teachers and new students.

Cambodia held its first modern Bokator championship at Olympic Stadium in September 2006. Practitioners mostly competed in forms and weapons demonstrations. Deadly battlefield techniques do not easily transition to competitive sport, the grandmaster says. What little actual fighting occurred took place on wrestling mats. Competition was confined to a large circle. Fighters wore traditional loin cloths, with only kramas wrapped around their heads and hands, no gloves. A drummer beat out hypnotic rhythms tracing the ebb and flow of the action.

Only men fought, and at the lower levels the fighting looked a lot like a schoolyard donnybrook. Competitors were often badly off balance and swinging wildly from the hips. Whatever claims Bokator makes to being a complete art, fighters were not allowed to compete on the ground for more than a few seconds. Even at the highest levels, the champions looked merely like novice Kun Khmer fighters.

That was admittedly the first year. But Bokator still has yet to establish itself as a viable combat style, much to the frustration of its supporters. “The ground fighting in Bokator is extremely weak compared to Brazilian jiujitsu and wrestling,” says MMA fighter Antonio Graceffo, who holds a Bokator black krama (equivalent to a black belt in other disciplines). Jiu jitsu and wrestling have heavily influenced the ground-fighting styles of modern MMA. Bokator supporters believe that, with proper training and support, their art could hold its own against those disciplines. And among the faithful, there still smoulders the dream that someday soon Khmer fighters and the Bokator style will take their rightful place among modern mixed martial arts.

Little Frog, for one, is not giving up. “Some people say that Bokator trainers can only dance and perform, that it’s not for real fighting,” she says. “Those kinds of words motivate me. I’m going to show those people: Bokator is not just for dancing, not only just for performing; we can fight, too.”

A boy from Brooklyn

Chan Reach was born in the US to Cambodian parents on 13 June 1988, and grew up in Brooklyn. Raised by his grandmother and an uncle, Reach doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t involved in the fight game. He began training with his uncle at an early age, started fighting Kun Khmer around 16 and moved into wrestling then jiu jitsu and MMA after that.

As he grew older, Reach made regular visits to the Kingdom. He moved permanently to Cambodia in December 2012, taking the position of head trainer at the newly formed Afighter Team gym in Phnom Penh. He is one of four fighters in the ONE FC grand prix.

“When I was in the States, I always wondered: Cambodia, we have fighters, we’re freakin’ born fighters. Why don’t I see enough Cambodians in MMA?” he said. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t see any at all. So I decided to just quit my job, leave everything behind and come here to bring MMA to Cambodia.”

Reach was not alone in his ambitions and, when he landed, Dave Minetti at the K1 Fight Factory was busy with similar ideas, too. The former French legionnaire was looking for Khmer fighters to train in MMA striking and grappling. He was drafting rule books, designing logos and collaborating with Vath Chamroeun, secretary general at the National Olympic Committee, to create an official MMA governing body.

There were others, too. Across town at CTN, the station’s well-known head of sports, Ma Serey, had been trying for years to get Bokator on television. He had even run a few untelevised dress rehearsals, but there simply weren’t enough quality fighters to make weekly bouts viable.

Encouraged by his general manager and backed by the station’s powerful owner, Kith Meng, Serey was now pushing to get MMA onto his airwaves. But almost nothing was going his way.

“I contacted Bokator,” said Serey of those early forays. “But Vath Chamroeun said it was impossible. ‘We cannot do it because there is a lack of fighters. We cannot find fighters for every week.’”

He spoke next with the president of the Cambodian Boxing Federation, the influential body that oversees Kun Khmer and professional and amateur boxing. “I went to see Tem Moeun, but he also refused. He was afraid of Bokator, of Vath Chamroeun, because MMA is not under his responsibility; he’s only Kun Khmer.”

With no fighters or sanctioning body, Serey was stuck. The others were facing different but seemingly impossible challenges, too. Over at K1, Minetti, who was now technical director of the newly established Cambodian Mixed Martial Arts Association, was short on quality students. And while Afighter Team had managed to attract a dozen or more brand-name Kun Khmer fighters, converting them to MMA was proving more time consuming than originally planned. But none of that mattered, because for all the men’s efforts, without a sanctioning body, without rules and referees, fighting was exactly what Vath Chamroeunsaid it was: impossible.

Quitting, however, wasn’t really an option. “‘Bong Serey, We must do it,’” implored the station’s General Manager Pol Vibol. “’I like it. Even the oknha [Kith Meng] likes it and supports us and wants this to happen. You must make it happen.’”

In previous years CTN had found success with a reality series called Kun Khmer Champion. The show pulled 16 fighters together to live and train. Through regular bouts, the pack was whittled down to two final contenders, with the winner of the ultimate match crowned the season champion.Serey put out an open call for fighters and quickly gathered two-dozen strapping young men in three weight classes: 57, 60 and 65kg.He modified the show’s format to cater for cage fighting and called it Kun Khmer Warrior Champion. To kick off the inaugural season, CTN scheduled two international cage fights as part of the station’s massive 10-year anniversary celebrations at Koh Pich.

Behind the scenes, however, negotiators at CTN and the newborn CMMAA had failed to reach consensus over referees and sanctioning fees. Tem Moeun and the Boxing Federation, sensing a second chance, quickly stepped in and agreed to sanction the bouts.

So on the night of 8 March 2013, Serey stood in the middle of a six-sided ring – a full cage couldn’t be built in time – and delivered an elaborate explanation of the new sport to thousands of onlookers. Not once did he mention MMA.

Backstage, Chan Reach wrapped the hands of Say Teven. Beside him, Little Frog offered words of encouragement. But both knew – in fact, everyone knew – that the two Cambodian fighters were heading towards near-certain defeat.

Minutes later, Chuth Chunlee tapped under a barrage of punches from the mounted position at 3:42 in the first round. Teven, a durable veteran from Siem Reap, made it to the second stanza, when he tapped to an arm bar with 1:15 left. Quietly people complained, but few dared openly criticise Serey or CTN.

Fight club

The Cambodian MMA Association officially launched four days later with a small press conference on the second floor of the National Olympic Committee building. If the pre-launch CMMAA remained muted in its opposition to ‘unsanctioned’ MMA bouts, the officially stamped CMMAA was loud and unequivocal: nothing regarding MMA could happen without the CMMAA’s express approval.

The position put the newfound sports body and CTN on an inevitable collision course. After the station announced a second international MMA card just weeks later, tensions simmering behind the scenes boiled into public view.

Dave Minetti, now the CMMAA’s technical director, fired off a missive blasting the event and warning those involved. “[The] CTN MMA show is an illegal event,” Minetti said. “[CTN didn’t] get CMMAA approval. They don’t respect MMA rules. Their referees and judges are untrained and not qualified. The CMMAA will not allow any fighters who compete in CTN’s event to fight on any CMMAA official show or The ONEFC.”

Tough rhetoric, but on the ground the words had little effect. For one, boxers are rarely involved in decisions regarding their opponents. They fight who, when and where their trainers tell them. Further, active Kun Khmer fighters had little reason to fear the CMMAA because Kun Khmer falls under the protective wing of the Cambodian Boxing Federation, which had a long and close relationship with CTN. But most importantly, the television station had one important thing that the newly formed MMA body did not: money. For all its big aspirations, the CMMAA was operating with a near non-existent budget. And without purse strings to pull, everyone knew its words would be difficult to enforce. Im Ouk, owner of the Afighter Team, echoed what many at the time were thinking. “The CMMAA doesn’t have any clubs or any professional fighters,” he said. “All they have is their association, which I see has no credentials in this sport.”

Still, the division between the two heavyweights would cast long shadows. Without the support of Vath Chamroeun, a former Olympic wrestler who was tightly aligned with the National Olympic Committee and the Wrestling Federation, CTN would have no wrestling coaches or wrestlers among its development programme. And because of their excellent skill at controlling action on the ground, wrestlers represented perhaps the finest pool of talent from which to develop new MMA fighters. “The hardest part in this sport,” Ouk lamented, “is the politics.”

Ready to rumble

Nearly 1,000 people packed the CTN stadium in Russey Keo in anticipation of Cambodia’s international MMA debut. The first two matches held in the WWE-esque, six-sided ring at Koh Pich were easy to dismiss as test fodder. “That was just a sample,” Serey said. Tonight, the home team would shine. And Serey and CTN would silence the doubters.

To head off criticism of ‘untrained’ referees, the station hired veteran UFC third man Marc Goddard to workshop with local officials and oversee action during the night’s most important bouts.

For opponents, the station brought in three fighters each from South Africa and the UK. Perhaps hedging his bets, Serey matched the foreigners against three up-and-coming MMA fighters and three seasoned Kun Khmer fighters.

Only Tok Sophorn from Afighter Team won. The other five got bludgeoned. In the second fight, Sam Angdun lay motionless for a full 90 seconds after getting KO’d at 2:26 in the first round. The third bout ended in just 63 seconds. To the horror of everyone, the same storyline unfolded again and again all night long.“ My job is to take them into deep water,” said Goddard after rescuing Kun Khmer veteran Pich Arun from a first-round thrashing. “But I don’t want to drown them. He was clearly a fish out of water.”

If the Koh Pich bouts could be written off as a test run, these six fights, under the critical eye of fighters and genuine fans, could not. The assault on national pride was immense, and the blowback came hard and fast like an elbow to the teeth. “That show was kind of sad,” Ouk said. “I knew our Khmer fighters were better than that. All they needed were proper training and better support.”

The Phnom Penh Post described the night as “shambolic”. Minetti labelled it “ridiculous”. Vath Chamroeum took to the local papers and publicly demanded the suspension of CTN’s programme, calling the bouts “unsanctioned”. Hem Thon, administrative director of the National Olympic Committee, said the fights must “be halted”.

Serey was under the gun, and anger seethed at the highest levels of government. “The Ministry of Youth and Sport called me,” he said. “They said: ‘Serey, you must stop doing this because it’s dangerous. We are not happy. Cambodians are not happy. You brought good fighters from overseas to beat Cambodians in our own house.’”

What Serey had envisioned as a crowning achievement turned into a nightmare. But he wasn’t about to give up. Sure, the sport was new to him, he said, and he was still learning its nuances. Sure, he underestimated the strength of the foreign opponents and, just as mistakenly, overestimated the ability of his own fighters. But losing was better than not trying at all. Not trying was giving up. And Serey was not about to do that.

So back he went to the Ministry of Youth and Sport. “I said to the ministry: ‘How long do we wait? If you start right now, I think it will take 10 years for our fighters to be strong. If you say now we cannot do it and we must wait for 10 years more, that means we will wait until 20 years.” The ministry relented. “They let me do it,” Serey said. “They knew I was right.”

Little Frog

Little Frog got her first taste of martial arts when a friend invited her to the Bokator national tournament in 2007. “The first time I saw it I really liked it. I asked my friend: ‘How can I train? Do they allow female students?’” They did, so Little Frog began training. She was a natural. “When I was young, I really loved sports,” she said. “I played football with the guys and stuff like that. I love the challenge.”

She entered the national tournament a year later and brought home one silver and three gold medals, all in forms and demonstration categories. Winning was euphoric. She was hooked.

In the ensuing years Little Frog has become Bokator’s leading female practitioner and now she’s among the art’s most active evangelists. Bokator has taken her to Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Czech Republic, and she’s among the sport’s most ardent ambassadors.

In 2012 she represented Bokator at a regional martial-arts conference in Ho Chi Minh City, where organisers asked the girls to join a beauty pageant. “I didn’t trust myself,” she said. “I didn’t think I could do that because I love to dress up like a tomboy. I don’t know how exactly to walk or do girly stuff. I jumped in because I wanted to get the Cambodian name to compete with them, too.”

She got first runner-up, but being a beauty queen was never the goal. Fighting was. So in more recent years she has diversified her styles, adding some wrestling and Vovinam, Vietnam’s traditional martial art, winning medals in both. Two years ago, she began fighting Kun Khmer in earnest.

“Every time they call me and ask ‘Do you want to fight next week?’ I say ‘Yeah, OK. Put me in the ring.’ One day I am going to fight in an international competition. If I want do that, first I have to be the best in Cambodia.” In 10 fights she has won six – three by technical knockout – and lost four.

If her parents were proud, they were also worried; mostly about her safety, but social pressures weighed on them, too, especially her mother. “She was really worried about me, because, you know, I’m a girl. And she wants me to stay home like a normal girl, take care of my parents, be a nice girl and stuff like that.”

Even though she never told them about her desire to fight, the intuition of Little Frog’s parents kicked in early on. “From the beginning, when I started Bokator, they complained about it,” she said. “They said: ‘Don’t fight. If you train for fun it’s OK, but please don’t fight.’”

The more she trained, the better she got. And the better she got, the more she wanted to train. And the more fraught her parents became. “We had some arguments, too. I said: “Come on, Mum; I’m not doing anything bad. I spend a lot of time on this because I want something more. I want to be the best. I want to be on the top.”

After she lost two consecutive fights, her mum begged her to quit. “She was crying, she was complaining, complaining, complaining every day. That put a lot of pressure on me.” Still, Little Frog couldn’t live with herself if she gave up on her dreams. “Sometimes they really get tired of giving advice to me. Sometimes they stay quiet. But they are sad. And I am sad, too, because I made my parents like this. But I don’t know. I still keep fighting.”

Bright lights

For now, at least, the prospects of the big-time stage have everyone lining up for success. ONE FC seems to have navigated the local waters well: they’ve included everyone and offended no one. Fighters from every club will make an appearance on fight night, CTN will handle local broadcasting and CMMAA will sanction its first official bouts.

Longer term, ONE FC could open doors that have long been shut to Khmer fighters. The pinnacle of a local champion’s career would be marked by a few fights against foreigners for a couple hundred bucks. The Cambodian game has never had international connections and, for the best in the country, the prospects of fighting beyond the local stage were typically zero.

ONE FC now offers a gateway to the world. To get through those doors, though, fighters will have to start winning. Considering the current level of the local sport, which is just barely a year old, there is still much distance to travel. “Our goal now is to look after the younger Khmer fighters because they will be the future of MMA in Cambodia,” Ouk said.

That future begins on September 12 and, no doubt, future MMA stars will one day look back on the local debut of ONE FC with nostalgia and pride. And all the obstacles everyone faced to make MMA happen in Cambodia will seem worth it.

WHO: Khmer Warriors
WHAT: MMA cage fighting
WHERE: Koh Pich Theatre
WHEN: 7pm September 12
WHY: There are few sporting spectacles more exciting than a prize fight

Cheap Eats & Lakeside Nostalgia

Guesthouse food is the dirty little secret of every self-respecting expatriate.

Barely a step up from street food (but without any of the excitement), guesthouse restaurants cater to backpackers, the wandering jobless and other price-sensitive classes. That clientele often earns eateries a double-barreled blast of bad reputation: not just cheap, but worse – full of tourists.

For years Boeung Kak Lake served as the local outpost for value-conscious travellers and like-minded long-termers. But most of the businesses there disappeared along with the water as developers filled the lake with sand and thuggishly chiselled apart the community.

As a hedge, the #11 Happy Guesthouse, a lakeside mainstay, opened two new places closer into town, including their newly remodelled location on Street 258. They have expanded the front patio, added two metres to the bar, built an air-conditioned movie room and, as of August 15, completely rebranded.

The old #11 is now the new Flicks 3. Gone is the name, but the staff, menu and atmosphere are still the same. And on a street that has veered hard toward flashpacker, the new movie house still saunters with the same summertime attitude that once made the lakeside a haven for holidaymakers.

And the food is still a bargain.

The menu runs to 15 pages, with about half that dedicated to drinks. Food sections include breakfast and burgers, pastas and paninis, Indian and Asian. But just like the old lakeside, knowing where to venture – and where not – can make all the difference.

Western food includes such standards as the cheeseburger ($3.50), cordon bleu ($5) and assorted sandwiches, pastas and pizzas. Some dishes are better than others. The chicken sandwich ($4.50), for example, comes plated with skinny fries and served as a triple-decker with pan-fried cuts of chicken breast and lettuce, tomato and cucumber all stacked between three pieces of lightly toasted bread. There’s plenty of food and you’re unlikely to leave hungry. But there’s also a tendency to over-mayonnaise, and despite the fresh ingredients the sandwich comes out a bit oily, as do the fries.

Conversely, the kitchen nails it with the chicken strips ($4): five thick strips of chicken breast heavily crumbed and pan-fried. The batter comes out golden, rough and crunchy with hints of pepper; the chicken unspiced, moist and tender. The dish screams for a sausage-cream gravy compliment (hint, hint). Instead it’s served with mayonnaise, ketchup and sweet chili sauce, which, all things considered, works just fine at this price range.

The sweet spot of the menu is in the back, where the local dishes are found. Workhorses like fried rice ($3) and fried noodles ($3) are all served in generous portions. The gem of the menu is Khmer chicken curry soup ($3.50), a local adaptation of the more well-known Thai massaman. Flicks 3 serves it with carrots, potatoes, green beans, onion and just enough chili to make breathing easy without watering the eyes. If you’re not starving, the dish might feed two.

Crowds are thin at lunchtime, the service typically quick. At night the place tends to fill with travellers and the 32-seat movie room will only increase the numbers.

If the dregs of lakeside moved into Golden Sorya, the sober ones moved onto Street 258, where a mid-town flashpacker strip has long been growing roots. The newly dolled-up Flicks 3 fits right in. Sure, it’s a far cry from the creaky papasan chairs, foul-smelling waters and blood-hungry mosquitoes of Boeung Kak yore. But that’s a good thing, right?

Cue up John Malkovich and pass the buttered popcorn.

Dish: Cashew magic

Photography is rarely so delicious – or healthy. In a new food and photo series at Artillery Cafe, photographer Michael Wild documents the process of organic cashew farming. It’s an all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-cashews-but-were-too-busy-eating-to-ask kind of multi-sensual affair. In addition to the images, the exhibit includes nut samples and a wickedly delicious short menu of cashew-inspired recipes (raw organic cheesecake and key lime pie, to name but two).

Wild’s show is the first of a multi-part installation entitled Meet The Makers, a see-and-taste series designed to introduce eaters to the origins of local organic food. “We believe that when you know where your food comes from it tastes better,” says Brittany Sims, managing director and owner of Artillery Cafe.

The nuts and images come from a facility operated by Mekong Rain, an organic grower in Kampong Thom. Cashews are big business. Growers and middlemen export some 100,000 tons to Vietnam annually, and Vietnamese buyers in tattered clothes and flip-flops are known to carry armfuls of cash in several denominations, ready to snatch up any loose nut.

But cashews are also poisonous and cracking one is no simple job. “It’s rather nasty,” says Mekong Rain CEO Andrew McNaughton. When cracked open, cashews release an allergenic resin that irritates the skin and eyes and is toxic if swallowed. “You can’t do it at home. It has to be done industrially.”

As Wild’s photos illustrate, workers wearing industrial-strength latex gloves open cashews using a hand-operated cracking machine. The nut inside, while technically edible at this point, remains covered with a mildly caustic reddish-brown skin that burns the lips and leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste. While cashews are almost never sold or eaten this way, McNaughton and a few other die-hard fans argue that, stinging sensations aside, cashews are at their most delicious at this stage of the process.

Anyone who has tasted the organic ‘cheesecake’ at Artillery, however, is unlikely to arrive at the same conclusion. Made from a narrow handful of ingredients – almonds, dates, cashews and, depending on the cake, some flavourings – the cheesecake is every bit as rich and creamy as anything made from real dairy. “Cashew nuts are naturally high in healthy fats,” Sims says. “They make a great creamy base when you aren’t using traditionally creamy ingredients like milk and cheese, cream or yoghurt.”

The cake crust is formed from a course meal of almonds and dried dates, the ‘cream cheese’ little more than a thick, creamy milkshake of cashew butter with dates added for sweetness.

The butter turns firm when chilled, with a look and texture nearly identical to real cheesecake. The cold smoothness of the butter contrasts with the rough, nutty crust. The dates give a naturally measured taste of guilty sweetness. And the whole thing seems almost magical considering its list of ingredients.

Other cashew dishes include a raw key lime pie, a passionfruit cheesecake made with an almond crust, raw pizza made with Vegan cheese. There’s trail mix made with raisins and dried goji berries and just plain ol’ cashews available as well. But don’t let the healthy labels put you off. Most of the food is so delicious that you’d swear it must be bad for you.

WHO: Artillery, Michael Wild & Mekong Rain
WHAT: Meet The Makers, a see-and-taste photography and food series
WHERE: Artillery Cafe, Street 240½
WHEN: Until August 31
WHY: Food tastes better when you know where it comes from

Ian Woodford, the man behind Maxine’s

Ian Woodford, a throwback to the country’s bygone Untac era and a tall, wiry character whose colourful Australian language and endless Cambodian anecdotes were a cherished and longstanding part of Phnom Penh expatriate lore, died on May 23 in Sydney. He was 56.

The cause was complications following lung surgery, his daughter Maxine said.

In those heady Untac days, Phnom Penh was a town full of soldiers and mercenaries, chancers and grifters. Few would last; even fewer were worthy of keeping.

“I will always remember Snow as a fearless defender and supporter of anyone he considered a friend, which to my humble pleasure included me,” said Phnom Penh Post founder and fellow long-timer Michael Hayes, using the nickname by which Woodford was known. “Countless times in the last 20 years, when I’d see him somewhere along the riverfront or at his glorious, deliciously kitted-out oasis across the river, he would make a specific point of telling me that, first, he loved the Post and the stories we were running; second, that he admired what I was trying to do; and, third, that if I ever needed any help, no matter what kind or at whatever time of day or night, all I had to do was give him a call and he would be there – physically, in person, ready to do what was needed. And the thing with Snow that meant the most is that I knew what he was saying was a personal unwritten law among mates, not just some kind words thrown out in passing, but an eye-to-eye oath among kindred spirits.”

Born October 30, 1957, in Bega, New South Wales, Woodford grew up in Dundas, a suburb of Sydney. He moved to Phnom Penh in 1993, just as the United Nations Transitional Authority of Cambodia was winding down its $1.6 billion machine. Woodford found work as a contractor with a cowboy Australian outfit. His first job included working with Khmer Rouge soldiers in Ratanakiri, ensuring ‘safe passage’ of UN vehicles out of the province.

“It was just me and an American named Bob, who left after two trips,” Woodford told friend and fellow Australian Bronwyn Sloan in a 2008 interview. “It took five trips, 150 kilometres each way, at nine hours per trip, to deliver all the vehicles. Along the way, we regularly collected groups of Khmer Rouge, who would make us stop on secluded roads to drink homemade wine from plastic bags around the vehicles. Then they’d suddenly disappear into the jungle and we’d be off again. At Kratie, the UN helicopters would pick me up and take me back to Stung Treng to begin another convoy, but one night I got stuck in a Kratie hotel room with 31 Khmer Rouge soldiers because the choppers couldn’t land. I thought I was finished. When I returned, the UN soldiers looked at me very differently: they respected me… but they thought I was crazy.”

The UN left soon after, but Woodford stayed behind, enamoured with the Kingdom and its edgy, post-war disorder. He began teaching English at The American School, where he stayed for more than a decade. His reputation grew with each major news event, which, when at all possible, Woodford preferred to witness from the most dangerous vantage point available.

During the violent clashes of July 1997, Woodford and a few crazy-brave friends grabbed cold ones and roamed the streets searching for the ‘bang bang’. In the aftermath of national elections a year later, Woodford, cold beer in hand, ducked around trees and dived behind corners following the sounds of machine-gun-fire down Street 63.

“Whether it was about Islamic militants who were scouting the capital a decade ago or the constant political machinations of his commune, Snow’s knowledge and advice was as sound as it was welcomed, more so after a hot day with a cold beer,” said Luke Hunt, another long-time friend. “But what always struck me was the diversity in his character, a doting father who dabbled in the arts and ran one of the most celebrated bars in the country. Fleet footed, Snow also had the hands of a prize fighter, the soul of an artist and the heart of a lion: qualities which are often in short supply in this country.”

It was in 1997 Woodford rediscovered a childhood love of art, and in the small apartment he shared with his girlfriend Annie, he began drawing then painting in earnest. His only child, a daughter named Maxine, was born soon after in December 1999. Fatherhood turned Woodford from a fast-living thrill-seeker into a proud papa. As Maxine began to walk then run, the two left the capital for a quieter place on the Chroy Changvar peninsula, where Maxine could learn the joys of grass and trees.

In 2001, Woodford landed a small part in Matt Dillon’s City Of Ghosts. He played a drunk and belligerent foreigner in a red-light brothel. Roland Neveu, the film’s official photographer, captured the scene and a copy of the image still hangs in Cantina, one of Woodford’s regular watering holes. As Maxine reached school age, Woodford began to think better of Cambodia and in 2004 the pair returned to Australia, but neither one of them liked it much and they were back after only a few weeks.

In late 2005 Woodford opened Maxine’s Bar in a large, blue wooden house on the east side of the Tonle Sap River. It was as casual and quirky as he was. A table made from decommissioned AK-47s occupied centre room for a while. A thousand bells hung from the ceiling and when the wind blew they made beautiful music. More than one person thought it the best bar in Southeast Asia, maybe even the world. Dengue Fever played one of their earliest Cambodian shows there. National Geographic and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain both used it for production settings.

Woodford worked Maxine’s at night and followed his passion of painting during the daytime. He worked in an aboriginal style of dot painting and filled the bar with his art: first portraits, then vases, masks and tables. Before long his art was fetching impressive sums and he finally gave up the day job. “I’ve always been decorative,” he told Sloan in 2008. “Even at school I always used to draw, but art was extra-curricular so I used to cop a lot of stick from the lads, teasing me and calling me a girl for wanting to paint. A lot of stick. But I have always loved things to be bright and vibrant and beautiful in any home I’ve ever had. This elephant lights up the room, doesn’t it?”

Just as things were starting to take off, a health crisis threw Woodford for a spinner. “I was sold some fake medicine [in 2007] by a clinic and before I knew it, it was touch and go whether I would make it or not. It took out my liver and part of my lungs.” He tried to continue painting, but the acrylic fumes were just too damaging to his lungs. In 2011 authorities told him he had to close the bar; the land was needed for drainage and road projects. Then the lung problems came roaring back and he and Maxine made a permanent move to Sydney.

Woodford endured two more major thoracic surgeries, he told friends over beers during what would be his final time in Phnom Penh late last year. Each time under the knife could have been his last, he said. They cut him open from the hip to the armpit. Twice. And he made it through both times, if just barely. Now he was back, if not 100%, at least well enough for some rest and relaxation. “The doctors cut me loose. They told me: ‘Take a vacation, mate. After all you’ve been through you deserve it.’”

“Excellent,” Snow replied. “I know right where I’m facking going, too.”

A local memorial service is planned for 9am Sunday June 1 at Wat Saravan.

(Photo: Bill Irwin)

Byline: Robert Starkweather