Category: Features

One was a short Prussian monarch who wore a tricorn and walked with a cane; the other a thin, bewigged writer who had decided that, on the whole, it would be best not to live in France. The intertwining of these momentous lives, Frederick the Great and French philosopher François-Marie Arouet (better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire) would inspire more than just New York pop artist Andy Warhol. Centuries after their passing, theirs has proven one of the most celebrated unions in history.

After brutal executions and abuses had been carried out for thousands of years in the name of Church and State, intellectuals in 18th century Europe finally began to tire of the Middle Ages. Stretching limbs and burning miscreants at the stake had its place, they mused, but that place belonged firmly in the past.

Voltaire was perhaps the greatest thinker of the French Enlightenment, and as a boy Frederick pored over his philosophies with his Huguenot tutors. It was these lessons in enlightened absolutism, along with music, which piqued the young prince’s interest (much to the disgust of his authoritarian father King Frederick William I, Frederick displayed no passion for the art of war and called military uniform “the gown of death”).

The French philosopher was 42 and already one of the most famous men of the day when, in August 1736, he received a letter from the Crown Prince of Prussia – the first in a succession of exchanges that would ultimately span more than four decades. Frederick wrote breathlessly of his admiration for the author of Zaïre. Voltaire took up his pen and responded: “un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux” (‘a philosopher prince who will make men happy’). For was it not Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius who once declared: “How happy peoples will be when kings are philosophers or when philosophers are kings!”?

Frederick was just 28 when he found himself seated on the Prussian throne in 1740. He immediately set about writing his own book, Anti-Machiavel, arguing that Italian humanist Niccolò Machiavelli’s remorselessly pragmatic maxims had no place in a more enlightened, civilised age. Declaring himself “a king by duty and a philosopher by inclination”, Voltaire’s protégé then proceeded to wage war, browbeat his neighbours, exploit diplomatic opportunities, and forge Prussia relentlessly into a great power. And yet, in many other ways, Frederick the Great – as he was by this time known – proved himself rather progressive.

He played the flute, composed four symphonies and 100 sonatas, and surrounded himself with artists and writers. He directed the planting of potato crops, personally led his troops into battle and was host of the most distinguished salon in Europe. To his palace of Sans Souci in Potsdam, Frederick brought ballet, symphonic assemblies and opera companies. He also promoted mass inoculation against smallpox; a more understanding attitude towards unmarried mothers (outside Prussia, committing infanticide would get you publicly executed), and religious open-mindedness. Old Fritz, in short, was the very model of an enlightened despot.

“You suppose that I think that the people need the curb of religion in order to be controlled,” the king wrote in 1766 in one of his many letters to Voltaire. “I assure you these are not my sentiments. On the contrary… a society could not exist without laws, but it could certainly exist without religion, provided that there is a power which, by punitive sanctions, can compel the masses to obey these laws.

“I see the present work of the philosophers as very useful, because men ought to be made to feel ashamed of fanaticism and intolerance, and because it is a service to humanity to fight these cruel and atrocious follies… To destroy fanaticism is to dry up the most deadly source of division and hatred in European memory, the bloody traces of which are found among all its peoples.”

Enlightenment swept the rest of Europe before hopping the Atlantic and taking root in the European colonies. There, it became a reference tool for Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and the foundation for the American Declaration of Independence, the US Bill of Rights, and the French Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

“Frederick the Great developed music, but aside from that he played an important role in the development of what we call civil society,” says the avuncular Anton Isselhardt, accomplished German flautist and director of the Art Plus Foundation in Phnom Penh, which this month launches a week-long series of classical concerts to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Frederick’s birth. “Frederick was one of the first who was going for Enlightened Absolutism. It’s a very interesting European movement which paved the way, finally, to the Age of Enlightenment and to democracy.

“This is the other side of Frederick – he was one of the greatest minds of all time. So, what is the relevance for Cambodia? The first thing, of course, is the music. The modern age transparency of the courts gives us access to their various art forms which have a continuous relevance for our cultural life. We can listen to what kings and their court composers have to say through their music. Frederick composed, King Father Norodom Sihanouk composed – and this is part of what we call the transparency of the courts.”

Mention court transparency in certain Cambodian circles and you can expect much indignant huffing, says Anton, but the Occidental concept of enlightened absolutism – which holds that power comes not from divine right, but from a social contract whereby the ruler has a duty to govern wisely – is one worth exporting via soft diplomacy.

“There is a very important figure in English history, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and he was the first – this was during the outgoing Middle Ages – who woke us up to the fact we need a civil society structure. Say you have a little farm with a few chickens. Now someone is coming and stealing your chickens, and stealing your land and your food. Who protects you? We need some sort of civil society structure.

“Cambodia had absolutely feudal structures before the French moved in; Thailand even more so. Even in Indonesia, the same thing is happening. The process from aristocracy through Enlightenment into civil society, this is something European. It has never happened in Asia; it’s a uniquely Western notion. This is what I used to call the arrogance of the West: ‘You see what we did?’ We don’t want to do that. But what we can offer, using such an approach as music and its side-effects, is an example of the development of society.

“If you go to the market and see the lady selling bananas, this is something Cambodian. Everything else – TVs, mobile phones, laptops – it’s Western, Western, Western. That’s why we can’t just promote democracy, we should promote the arts. The Western world is not just a world of economics; not just a world of technology. We are a world of values. People forget that.”

As Dirk Gieseke, a freemason just like Frederick, told the New York Times from beneath the rim of his three-cornered hat during a recent ceremony in Potsdam to mark the anniversary: “In politics we are looking for new role models. In times of great change you have a search for values.”

The Meta House event starts on July 30 with the opening of an exhibition, King, Court, Muse. On July 31, the Galant Trio will perform works by Bach, Quantz and Graun. A further concert on August 1 covers the development of music from the late baroque to Haydn’s Vienna Classic. That’s followed on August 2 with several flute sonatas, and on August 3 compositions by King Father Norodom Sihanouk will be given the Gabi Faja Trio jazz treatment.  The final concert, on August 4, resurrects recitals by Frederick’s Royal Prussian Court Orchestra. On the last night, August 5, the film My Name Is Bach, about the historic meeting between Frederick and Johann Sebastian Bach, will be screened.

WHO: Frederick the Great
WHAT: King, Court, Muse: 300th anniversary concert series
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.WHEN: 8pm July 30 – August 5
WHY: Revered and reviled, he’s the ultimate enlightened despot

 

The lobby of the mid-west American hotel, normally crowded, had all but emptied in a few minutes flat – requests for the ear-splitting “noise” blaring from the portable cassette player to be turned down, repeatedly ignored. Only when the manager threatened to call the police did the offending guest return to his room. Two minutes later, he re-emerged – followed almost immediately by a devastating dynamite explosion coming from the bathroom. Keith Moon turned to the horrified innkeeper and calmly explained: “That, my friend, is noise.” He turned on the cassette player again. “This, on the other hand, is The Who.”

The antics of ‘Moon the loon’, The Who’s legendary drummer and resident crazy, have for decades been considered the benchmark for rock ‘n’ roll eccentricity. Of his penchant for toilet pyrotechnics, rock’s premier hellraiser once told biographer Tony Fletcher: “All that porcelain flying through the air was quite unforgettable. I never realised dynamite was so powerful.” Long after his death in 1978 at the age of 32, Moon – permanently enshrined on Holiday Inn’s Ten Most Wanted list – was described by Allmusic.com thus: “Moon, with his manic, lunatic side, and his life of excessive drinking, partying, and other indulgences, probably represented the youthful, zany side of rock & roll, as well as its self-destructive side, better than anyone else on the planet.”

Almost as famous as Moon’s off-stage excesses were his on-stage machine-gun-like drum outbursts. Flying bass pedals; wild cymbal crashes; savage licks tearing drum skins from their supports – all were hallmarks of his exuberant kit-smashing style. Some 40 years later, more than 8,300 miles from where Moon drew his last breath in the same London flat Cass Elliot had died in four years earlier, a dilapidated practice kit creaks and groans under an equally ferocious attack. Perched atop the wobbly stool in The Shark Cage, the rehearsal space at Sharky Bar on Street 130, is the two-tone-haired drummer with Cambodia’s ‘original’ all-Khmer rock band. Above the thunder, preternatural screams.

Cartoon Emo, currently working on their second alternative/heavy metal/rock album, signed with Svang Dara Entertainment in 2010. The band’s commitment to writing original material is a rare thing in the local music market, and their debut album, Shadow, sold in the region of 1,000 copies – “but we don’t need the money,” says manager Vuth, 22. “We just want to promote our music on the internet so that everybody understands us.”

Music graduates from the Royal University of Fine Arts, this band of 20-somethings – Boy (vocals), Tom (lead guitar), Din (bass guitar), Dan (guitar), and La (drums) – cite Iowan heavy metal icons Slipknot, and Massachusetts-based metalcore group Killswitch Engage as among their influences. But they’re not altogether unaware of their English forefathers. Mention The Who, The Sex Pistols or The Rolling Stones, and five heavily stylised heads – all crowned with spiky technicolour hair – nod in approval. Mention K-Pop, and they explode in derisory snorts.

As Svang Dara’s executive director Meng Sok Vireak noted at the album launch for Shadow, “Rock music is not popular in Cambodia nowadays, so our company is introducing this original Khmer-style rock music to the people of the country.” Chiu Seila, director of Sabay, chimed: “The formation of the band shows that our arts scene is developing, even if a little slowly.”

Today, Cartoon Emo are regular staples on Khmer TV and make their living exclusively by playing in the country’s nightclubs – although they save their own music for the rowdier foreign-owned bars. “With rock music, it’s usually high-class rich people who listen to it,” says Vuth (during the interview, he intercepts every question – occasionally rewording the band’s Khmer-language answers in favour of his own). “We’re not poor and we’re not rich, we just have enough of everything – time and money, our own studio. We want to be famous rock stars in Cambodia and help people to understand rock music.”

During more than an hour spent backstage, the band barely drains one pitcher of beer – hardly the stuff of rock ‘n’ roll hellraisers. In the West, screeching guitars and deafening drum rolls have long been synonymous with sex and drugs, but what of Cartoon Emo’s self-penned lyrics? “When we do something bad or wrong to our parents, like a shadow that follows us, we try to think about how bad the experience feels,” volunteers Vuth. “So we try to do something good, to make a balance. We also sing about lovers, about women, about drugs, but everything is a lesson; education. We try to teach people to be good. Many people in Cambodia are gangsters, or playboys. You see how we are dressed: we may look like them, but we are not gangsters or playboys in our hearts.”

Quite how true this is may be a matter of debate (when Boy appeared with his manicured blue Mohawk and stretched ear lobes in the mosh pit at Equinox during last month’s Anti-Fate/Sliten6ix gig, rumour had it he’d given his manager the slip for a rare unchaperoned night out), but on stage Cartoon Emo are one of the rowdiest ass-kicking bands in the country – something Roger Daltrey’s band of degenerates would surely have appreciated. And though Cartoon Emo may not share Moon’s terminal lust for the wild life, they’re a damn sight more likely to survive their thirties.

WHO: Cartoon Emo
WHAT: Cambodia’s original rock band
WHERE: Sharky Bar, St. 130
WHEN: 9pm June 29
WHY: They’re going to be HUGE

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Nothing remains of the original texts which might have demystified the meanings and gestures of dance in the ancient temples of Ankgor. What is known about these elaborate rituals is that they were performed not for mere mortals, but as offerings to the gods. One seventh-century inscription, as reported by Boreth Ly on AsiaSociety.org, details in Sanskrit how dancers were ‘donated’ to temples by patrons and devotees. King Jayavarman VII was among the most generous, gifting thousands during his 37-year reign.

As part of the annual buong suong ceremony, it would fall to the monarch to ask the heavens for help on behalf of the nation. The plea was duly conveyed by classical dancers, who, legend has it, became possessed by divine spirits until the dance was complete. These highly stylised vehicles of worship, known in Khmer as robam kbech boraan, finally took their rightful place on Unesco’s world heritage list of intangible and oral treasures in November 2003. The journey had not been a smooth one.

Guggenheim Fellow Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, Cambodia’s most celebrated choreographer, was eight years old when in 1975 most performers went into hiding for fear they’d be executed by the Khmer Rouge. Almost overnight, the art of classical dance was reduced to a vessel for Maoist rhetoric. By 1981, when the School of Fine Arts finally reopened, only a handful of classical dancers had survived. Among the first 111 students to enrol was Sophiline.

In the years that immediately followed, classical dance was once more repurposed as a political tool. A tale about two gods fighting over a crystal ball, originally intended to demonstrate the difference between ignorance and enlightenment, was transformed by the state into one of communism versus capitalism (ironically, the lofty references to Leninism and Marxism were lost on most of the audience, who craved cultural stimulation after years of violence).

Today, this centuries-old dance form is evolving at an unprecedented rate courtesy of Sophiline and her husband John Shapiro, who co-founded Khmer Arts here in 2002. From an exotic Takhmao theatre originally built by Okhna Chheng Phon, minister of culture from 1982 to 1989 and one of the chief architects of the revival of the traditional Khmer arts, their professional dance troupe has become the first to usher classical dance into the 21st century.

On April 7, Khmer Arts will lift the lid on their revolutionary approach to ancient dance forms in a jungle extravaganza marking the organisation’s tenth anniversary and Cambodia’s New Year. The theatre’s setting is suitably dignified: five smiling Bayonesque faces watch performances unfold from the top of a towering Angkorian backdrop. The Advisor joined Khmer Arts during a recent rehearsal to talk hand gestures, gods, and time travel.

Sophiline: “People consider classical dance a symbol of cultural pride, because it’s such a unique art form to Cambodia, but war and poverty and the lack of outreach programmes – these make people think art is the least important. But culture is an element in our lives that identifies who we are. Classical dance plays that role.

“The way people sit, the way people pose, the way people offer greetings: these are all manifestations of classical dance in the simplest way. Look at social dances, the circle dance: the rhythm is kind of slow; the hand gestures resemble those of classical dance. To create work like ours – using the classical form but addressing contemporary issues – is also important. And the more people know about hand gestures and the meanings behind the dance, the more they can appreciate it.”

John: “If you come to it knowing nothing, all you can do is appreciate the surface aesthetic. For example, Sophiline was commissioned to create a piece for a Vienna festival based on Mozart’s The Magic Flute. She said: ‘I’m supposed to do something with this? What the hell is it?!’ Then she read a book about symbolism in the Magic Flute, a book about the history of the Freemasons (the Magic Flute is about Masonic beliefs), and a book about the last year of Mozart’s life, when he composed the piece. Through deciphering the opera, she was able to make a parallel between that and the Khmer Rouge – the dangers of extreme rhetoric and how that leaves no room for compassion and no room to change policy. She used Cambodian characters and mythology to express the dangers of using and adhering to extreme ideology. That’s the deciphering process.

“The only complaints we hear is that people are tired of seeing the same five to seven classical dances over and over and over again. Just as if you’re a ballet fan, you don’t want to see The Nutcracker or Swan Lake every week. What people say – and this is young and old – is that they’re very appreciative of seeing something new – and in classical dance, we’re the only ones doing this in Cambodia.”

Sophiline: “Seasons of Migration, which I choreographed in 2005, is the first piece, in my knowledge, to attempt to address a contemporary issue – and that issue is culture shock, including identity crisis. Culture shock is a modern concept, especially with people who migrate from place to place, but it can also apply to people who move from the countryside to the city, or back. People such as myself, who moved to the US and then came back.

“It’s a contemporary creation, but the form is classical. When I was at the School of Fine Arts in 1981, my teachers thought classical dance should look back to the past and excavate historic knowledge. We only choreographed new work that related to mythology, but not looking forward and dealing with contemporary issues. But this work is based on a concept coming out of everyday life.”

John: “Seasons of Migration is about gods and goddesses coming to Earth to live among humans and how they experience culture shock.”

Sophiline: “One of the goddesses is a serpent and she has problems with her tail. She doesn’t like it. She wants to tear it off.”

John: “That’s because none of the humans have tails, so she feels out of place.”

Sophiline: “That was our attempt to bring the classical form into the present time and make it relevant to us, to our lives, today.”

John: “Classical dance comes out of that ritual prayer tradition, so the oldest dances – with one or two exceptions – are really, really slow. They weren’t meant for an audience. Nobody was watching except the gods. If you watch them now, they can be a little boring because not much happens. They’re so slow and so balanced. It’s a different kind of beauty.”

Sophiline: “Most of the time they stay in one place. Cambodia is not the way it used to be after the Khmer Rouge, when the country was completely destroyed. Now, people have some sophistication, so the art has to match the level the audience demands. Even if the dance is simple, it has to be as sophisticated, as elegant, as it can be.

“Our work isn’t changing classical dance, it’s adding to it. It’s the beginning of a new path, a new form, being created. We’re using new music, different costumes, and experimenting with the way it looks. I call it robam boran chnnaiy – neo-classical, or contemporary classical, dance.”

John: “Another thing that’s new is that, typically, classical dance features gods and goddesses, kings, princess, giants, animals. It’s about mythology. But one of our pieces is a dance with a man and a woman, who could be anybody, even though the male part is played by a female dancer.

Sophiline: “Stained is a piece about the trial by fire in the Ramayana, but in this piece I give the female character a chance to speak, to question, because most of the time we see her as a very modest, ideal woman. She doesn’t talk much and there’s something inside her that’s not revealed, particularly intellectually. Stained is focusing on what she thinks, what she says, what she wants to know. Why do things happen like this? Is it fair? She questions her husband. Usually, the male character is the one who decides things.”

Four pieces will be performed during the evening (“Don’t forget your mosquito repellent,” cautions John). Ream Eyso & Moni Mekhala is an ancient fertility dance that describes the origin of rain and for centuries has been used in ceremonies at the height of the dry season, and Seasons of Migration explores the four stages of culture shock first described by anthropologist Kalvero Oberg. Munkul Lokey is performed to New York composer John Zorn’s lush musical setting of the Song of Songs, perhaps the world’s first erotic verse, and Stained is Sophiline’s interpretation of Neang Seda’s trial by fire from the Reamker epic.

WHO: Khmer Arts
WHAT: 10th anniversary contemporary classical dance performance
WHERE: Khmer Arts Theatre, Street 115, Takhmao
WHEN: 7pm April 7
WHY: Classical dance forms with 21st century edge