Category: Night & Day

THURSDAY 7 | It’s called ‘classical music’. It’s called ‘art music’. Snobbishly, it’s sometimes called ‘serious music’. It’s hard to define, but we know it when we hear it: it’s piano sonatas and chamber music and string sections and choirs and conductors with flying batons and hair in disarray. And since 2004, the International Music Festival Phnom Penh (IMFPP) has been encouraging its development in Cambodia. Over the weekend of November 7–11, the Artplus Foundation is presenting the 10th IMFPP, featuring all of the above and more. Anton Isselhardt, director of the festival, is quick to point out that this isn’t just an event for expatriates longing for the concert halls of home. “Who is our audience?  Every motodop; every cyclo driver, even the prime minister and the king: we want them all!” The title of this year’s festival is Journey; the theme is the development of music through the tumultuous changes of the 20th century, dominated by two major wars, astonishing artistic, political and social change, and shifts in the global cultural centre of gravity. The formal music world was being augmented by outside influences, from the revolutions in visual arts to the incorporation of traditional melodies and jazz. The programme focuses on the first half of the century, particularly the convulsions of European music: reaching from the neo-classical Czech composer Bohuslav Martin, through the impressionism of Maurice Ravel to culminate in the vigorous folkloric injections of Bela Bartok. “That’s why we call it Journey: it is a trip to the Old World,” says Anton. European music, however, is also where we find the origins of the 20th century American innovation of the Broadway musical, a form that is celebrated by the Friday night concert by the Bella Voce choir, formed in Phnom Penh in 2000. Acknowledging Broadway’s debt to Europe, the programme features works by the German Kurt Weill (selections from The Threepenny Opera) and two Americans who drew heavily on their ancestral roots: George Gershwin (including selections from Porgy & Bess) and Leonard Bernstein (including selections from West Side Story). Undoubtedly, the highlights of the festival are where, as Anton says, Cambodian musicians are playing Cambodian music for Cambodian people. For this we move forward in time to the later 20th century, with works scattered through the programme by Cambodian composers working in the Western traditions, dominated by Norodom Sihanouk, of course, but also rising teenage star Bosba Panh and more established names Chinary Ung and Him Sophy.

WHO: A range of international musicians
WHAT:  Journey: European Art Music Development in the 20th Century international music festival
WHERE: InterContinental Hotel, Mao Tse Tung Blvd and Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: November 7–11 (see music-festival-phnom-penh.org for details)
WHY: Introduce your favourite motodop to Bartok

 

WEDNESDAY 6 | Three decades have passed since the Cambodian government converted a block of civil servants’ apartments into artist flats; a place for dancers, painters, sculptors, writers and other artisans who survived the Khmer Rouge to live and work, to create a community. Since then, Ma Deng (‘The White Building’)’s occupants have turned from hundreds into thousands, the structure falling into ever more deplorable disrepair. Today, it continues to hold international interest. Find out why.

WHO: Architects and the culturally inquisitive
WHAT: Screening of three documentaries on ‘The White Building’
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 4pm November 6
WHY: An icon investigated

 

MONDAY  4 | Inspired by legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, whose finest album reviews were compiled into the anthology Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung by his contemporary Greil Marcus, Psychotic Reactions are a band of four lunatics who cover everything from L7 to Nirvana, but punked up beyond all recognition.

WHO: Psychotic Reactions
WHAT: Punk meets grunge, with menace
WHERE: Equinox, #3 Street 278
WHEN: 9pm November 4
WHY: They’re hard, fast and nasty

 

SATURDAY 2 | Guitarist Diego Dimarques is perched on a barrelhouse stool, sipping bottles of Angkor and playing Spanish jazz at the finest music room in Phnom Penh. Clean-shaven with greying, shoulder-length hair, the 50-ish-year-old guitar player could easily pass for a son of Jose Reyes, the world-famous flamenco guitarist whose five sons – Nicolas, Canut, Paul, Patchai and Andre – comprise a majority of the Gipsy Kings. “There are rumours that I was part of the band, the one with the white hair,” Dimarques says, dispelling any notion that he might be a long-haired Nicolas Reyes in disguise. “I am not part of their family in the sense that we have no common blood.” But Dimarques is a fellow traveller on the same circuit, a compadre in heart and spirit, and considers Gipsy Kings co-founder Jalloul ‘Chico’ Bouchikhi both a friend and inspiration. “I met Chico when I was playing a hotel in Paris in 2006 or 2007 and he was there to promote his new album Freedom. I was surprised to see him and I went to him to apologise for not playing his songs very well, but he told me: ‘The more they are played, the less we forget the culture.’ We talked together around a Pastis and he told me there was no problem if people thought I was part of the band!”

WHO: Diego Dimarques
WHAT: Gipsy and Latin music
WHERE: The Groove, Terrazza, Street 282
WHEN: 9pm November 2
WHY: Our very own Gipsy King

 

SATURDAY 2  |  A bicycle bell tinkles above muffled chatter and the distant swoosh of street noise. A single note rings out, slowly reverberating into silence. A second note, lower this time. The pitch drops again, followed by… the rush of wind? The splash of waves, perhaps? A lone voice with sing-song lilt echoes the same tonal arc: ‘Heat… Light… Weight… I am woken by the amber chants of bald men… and ecstatic squeals of children… and the mysterious banging and grinding that will miraculously turn into a new storey on a house across the street… or a new building on the next street down the block… once I have the energy to walk past it…’ So begins Triptych, the first album poised for release by WASH – an eclectic group of four sound wizards who between them span spoken word, electronica and live instrumentation. Triptych is no ordinary album, but then WASH is no ordinary group. Flyers promoting WASH’s second live performance, The Next Horizon, frame it thus: ‘Electronic music meets poetry and they get along pretty well.’ Let us turn for a moment to Hal FX (the ‘H’ in WASH): “WASH is basically comprised of one poet and three music producers, so our attitude to putting the music together is probably quite different from most groups. It’s more about considering the overall sound, thinking about what we can introduce to the vibe and how the audience is going to find the experience. Maybe I drew the short straw with playing the actual instruments: I don’t really consider myself a guitarist or keyboard player. First and foremost I’m a music producer, so this gives me quite a different approach to playing those instruments live. For me it’s about adding tones and textures to the rhythms and sounds that Warren and Alex put together. The guitar and piano melodies form a counterpoint to Scott’s voice and join the electronic world with the more natural.”

WHO: WASH
WHAT: The Next Horizon performance plus Triptych album release
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm November 2
WHY: “I surf on what they’re serving up. There are times when I’m thinking: ‘How does this start?’ Then the sound rises and I know where I am. I get to walk through this jungle they’ve created. It’s wonderful.” – Scott Bywater

 

SATURDAY 2 | In the shtetl (‘villages’ or ‘ghettoes’) of Eastern Europe, itinerant Jewish troubadours once roamed, expressing through klezmer music the full gamut of human emotions from joy to despair, from devotion to revolt, from meditation to drunkenness – all served up with a generous dose of Yiddish humour. Inspired by secular melodies, popular dances, and the wordless melodies used by orthodox Jews for approaching God in ecstatic communion, klezmer’s evolution was spurred by contact with Slavic, Greek, Ottoman, gypsy and, later, jazz musicians. Using typical scales, tempo and rhythm changes, slight dissonance and a touch of improvisation, today’s klezmorim include Sam Day, a young mandolin player from the US who, before returning home recently, was instrumental in founding the Klezbodians. The band includes members of Grass Snake Union and the Phnom Penh Hippie Orchestra, featuring Bun Hong on clarinet, Giacomo Butte on accordion, Jose Encinas on guitar and Ali Benderdouche on dumbek. When not peddling Yiddish tunes to Cambodian audiences, Sam is to be found recording with the US-based and magnificently named Shtetlblasters. “There’s something danceable about klezmer music,” he says. “There’s a very clear rhythm; it’s driving, propulsive music. And the scales used are sort of major and minor at the same time, so there’s something melancholy about it. It’s very vocal, too; the melodies are played on the clarinet or violin in ways that attempt to emulate the human voice, the sound of a cantor – in a synagogue, the person who’s singing the Jewish prayers…” [Erupts in song] And what can we expect of the Klezbodians? “Mostly fast-paced klezmer instrumental music – similar to gypsy music – along with some Yiddish vocal tunes. It will be feisty!”

WHO: Klezbodians
WHAT: Itinerant Jewish troubadours
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 9:30pm November 2
WHY: “It will be feisty!” – Sam Day Harmet

 

SATURDAY  2 | Wedged between guitar cases in a windowless room, thunderous drums and battering thrash guitar riffs soar piercing vocals and experimental guitar melodies – or what Splitter call ‘Squeedleedees’. “Squeedleedees should be a proper music term,” says Doug, the experimental guitarist. Vocalist Sean nods solemnly and then giggles: “Pentatonic squeedledees!” Classically trained Norwegian jazz drummer Henrik, grinning from beneath a hefty ginger beard, slaps his palms on his thighs in a complex rhythm: “Drum moves have names like that: paradiddle and parama flimflam…” The others shriek in unison: “SQUEEDLEEDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Pressed to define Splitter’s sound during a rare moment when he’s not pogoing up and down in a sweat, Sean shrugs. “The short answer I give is that it’s metal for stoners but that’s not sufficient. It’s progressive but driven, I guess. Progressive in that we’ll use weird time signatures, play outside the major key, have weird instrumental breaks. Stuff you’d expect from bands like Tool and The Mars Volta, but with a more gut-level punk rock kind of force about it.” Thrash guitarist Ryan, from the neck up nothing but beard, teeth and baseball cap, leans back against the roof terrace railings and takes a slow drag on his hand-rolled smoke. “You’ve got barang bands doing covers and Khmer bands doing stuff that’s brutal as fuck. It’s nothing but pop-rock or deathcore. We offer something in between: a sound that’s heavy, but you can still groove to it.”

WHO: Splitter
WHAT: All-original heavy metal
WHERE: Slur, Street 172
WHEN: 7pm November 2
WHY: They’re heavy, but you can still groove to them

 

SATURDAY 2 | The thought of endorsing roots reggae groups founded by Frenchmen can trigger apprehension in reggae snobs, especially when such groups have never set foot on Jamaican soil. But what Vibratone lack in geographical legitimacy they more than make up for with enthusiasm, as evidenced by their recent performance at Doors’ Vibe Music Festival. Between them, Ben and Leonard (guitar), Julien (bass), Vibol (keys), Luis (drums) and Maia (vocals) boast an eclectic background, with musical roots from Brazil to France to the Philippines, yet their all-original reggae genuinely rocks. Keep your ears peeled for Dreams, of which Maia says: “Dreams talks about just that: dreams. The wants, needs and desires that we all have. When I wrote it, it began on a really materialistic note – be it money, a house, a car – then Julien and I spoke and I realised it needed more substance, so there is this transition between the first and second verses.  It talks about being at peace with oneself and gaining happiness through fulfilment. We have another song called Who Are You Fooling? and it’s very political; it criticises the status quo and speaks about injustices.”

WHO: Vibratone
WHAT: All-original reggae
WHERE: Equinox, #3a Street 278
WHEN: 9pm November 2
WHY: See ‘what’

 

FRIDAY  1 |  Moi Tiet, quite literally ‘one more’ in Khmer, was originally conceived in 2012 by Scott Bywater, a Tasmanian drifter turned Phnom Penh local. Moi Tiet was the result of years of solo and group performances spread across four continents. Along with burly bassist Andre Stuart (South Africa), smooth saxist Marian Gommard (France), lead guitarist and pedal addict Chuck Villar (Philippines), percussionist Greg Lavender (Australia) and songstress Jenna Holliday (UK) this sextet boasts musical influences that range from Bob Dylan to Aretha Franklin. According to Scott, who has the trademark lead-singer characteristic of being first to answer: “If you are going to try to fly together, everyone has to believe you’re going to fly in the first place.” Even in light of the differences in gender, age and nationality, Moi Tiet leave you wondering why the UN has so much trouble cooperating. Their creative process is quite democratic: everyone gets a say in how the band plays. Currently, Scott writes many of their melodies which range anywhere from the bluesy feel of Flyin’ Into Pochentong, or Sunday Child, to the riffy tunes of Every Colour But One, but that’s changing. As Marian explains, it’s really hard to shine on a tenor sax in the key of A.

WHO: Moi Tiet
WHAT: All-original blues and stuff
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 9:30pm November 1
WHY: They could teach the UN a thing or two about international cooperation

 

SATURDAY 26  | Established jazz hands Sebastien Adnot, Gabi Faja, Toma Willen and Euan Gray have joined forces to form Kin. Their forays include pop, rhythm, soul and funky stuff such as Stevie Wonder. Faja, the group’s lone Italian, notes: “We are all from very different backgrounds: classical, gypsy, jazz, reggae. In fact our music is a hybrid of all.” Original music scores are in the pipeline, professional photo and video shoots are underway and the four are working with a professional graphic designer to polish the quartet’s branding. “Having a new band is like having a baptism,” Adnot says. “It’s a rebirth.”

WHO: Kin
WHAT: Jazz quartet
WHERE: Doors, Streets 84 & 47
WHEN: 9:30pm October 26
WHY: Soul, pop, blues, gypsy and reggae meet jazz like long-lost relations