Voices raised in song

For Mari Jennai, the beauty is tying it all together—bringing 45 voices into perfect harmony—that’s what it’s all about. Jennai, a vocal coach, is also the director of the Bella Voce choir, which is performing its spring concert at the Intercontinental Hotel on May 5. “I’m a singer, so I can perform pieces on my own,” she said. “But with this choir, once we do the hard work of practicing each line and putting it all together, it’s incredible – something on a totally different level.”

It was 12 years ago when a group of 10 expat women who liked to sing first came together. And since Jennai was the only professional among them, it was natural she take a leading role. Bella Voce was born. Over the years, they practiced and improved, but pretty much did it for fun—and through word of mouth their numbers grew. By 2009, they decided they were ready for prime time and went about preparing for a concert. The night of the show, they expected around 200 people; 500 showed up. Since then, Bella Voce has been putting on two shows a year, the spring concert coming up, and a Christmas performance every December.

The choir is still made up predominantly of expats, although a few Cambodian singers have been among their ranks at times. Very few have been professional singers; most are just people who love belting it out in a group. They come from myriad countries and range in age from 20-something to nearly 70.

This year, the spring concert rundown is as eclectic as the choir itself. There will be everything from Broadway show tunes to 17th century British music, Zulu traditional harmonies to Disney. Variety is the name of the game and there’s a little bit of something for everybody – even though, Jennai admits, there are some prosaic reasons behind all the stylistic diversity. “We use the music that our members have since it can be hard to get music here in Phnom Penh,” she says. “So when our members go back to Europe or wherever they’re from to visit, they’ll bring back this fantastic sheet music. The system works really well.”

Tickets are $5 for individuals or $20 for a family, no matter how many members. They are available at Jars of Clay Coffee Shop on Street 155, near the Russian Market, or direct from choir members. All the proceeds go to charities serving the capital’s needy. Bella Voce has a few of its own needs, Jennai says, namely, men. The choir is short of tenor and bass voices, so you men out there who’ve up to now just been singing in the shower, step up. It’s time to let those voices soar beyond the bathroom.

For those who can’t make this show, the Christmas concert already has a date: December 8. Mark your calendars.

WHO: Bella Voce choir
WHAT: Spring concert
WHEN: 6pm May 5
WHERE: InterContinental Hotel Phnom Penh, Grand Ballroom
WHY: A whole lotta joyful noise

 

Ghetto blasters

Mention Philips, the Dutch appliance maker, and it’s hard to image a more unexciting corporate conglomerate. The company makes electric leg shavers, low-wattage LED light bulbs and a whole glossy catalogue of workaday consumer goods.

Few would place it among the world’s greatest contributors to global hip-hop culture. But there it most certainly stands.

The story begins at the 1963 Berlin Audio Show, when Philips introduced what at the time appeared to be a shockingly innocuous new medium of audio storage – the compact cassette.

By 1966, with technology on the march, the company released the Norelco Carry-Corder 150, a portable audio device that could not only play compact cassettes but also record them. In 1969, Philips married its recorder to the radio and released the ‘radiorecorder’, a dull grey and matte black plastic audio box with an extendable chrome antenna for the radio and chunky mechanical buttons to record, play, stop, fast-forward and rewind.

The boombox was born.

Sound quality improved throughout the 1970s. Dual cassette decks were added, which made copying cassette tapes push-button easy. And by the 1980s, just as hip-hop legend DJ Kool Herc was redefining the term ‘house party’, the humble radio recorder was ready to become epic.

“I remember getting my first ghetto blaster as a kid, and using the dual cassette decks to try to make my own mix tapes,” says the Bangkok-based American rapper known as Hydro Phonics, a card-carrying medical marijuana smoker from North Carolina, in a soft southern drawl.

The portable boombox moved the party from the living room to the street corner, where rappers and b-boys traded dance moves and beats. It provided the artillery for a generation of freestyle street battles. “Nothing can ever replace that box sitting in the middle of the party and everyone dancing.”

These days, Hydro Phonics works out of Bangkok pushing hip-hop throughout the Asia region. He performs a two-man show under the rubric Ghetto Blasters with regional DJ powerhouse Tech 12. The Ghetto Blasters perform with Akil the MC, previously of Jurassic 5, under the name Four Dub.

Originally from Bristol, in the UK, Tech 12 claims residencies at two legendary Bangkok night clubs: the Bed Supper Club and Q-Bar. He’s also the resident Wednesday night DJ at Seduction Phuket, and he’s worked alongside such musical heavy weights as The Black Eyed Peas, Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash, Cash Money, Massive Attack, Portishead and others.

Akil was a founding member of the Los Angeles-based alternative rap act Jurassic 5, which came of age during the late 1990s heyday of West coast rap. Powered by the prodigal turntablism of DJ Cut Chemist, the group’s eponymous 1997 album was hailed by many critics as a legitimate contender for hip-hop album of the decade.

Cut Chemist left the group in 2006, and the rest of the members parted ways soon after. Akil, a Los Angeles native, headed east. He met Hydro in Bangkok through mutual friends, and the two bonded over big fatties and old school beats. Musical collaboration came naturally. And for a DJ, Tech 12 was the only real choice. “He’s the best,” Hydro says.

Working together, the trio has in recent years established themselves as among the region’s leading hip-hop acts. “In three years, we turned it from a one-show gig to a 20-city tour,” Tech 12 says.

The three leave for China this weekend, where they will do the first of 20-dates on the Revenge of the Boombox tour, an old-school hip-hop tribute to the movement’s earliest battery-powered boxes. The tour includes stops in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. “Not bad for a couple of white boys,” Hydro muses.

They still do the original gig, too: Gin and Juice, aka Sucka Free Sundays, at the legendary Q-Bar in Bangkok, and their regular dates now include more than a dozen cities in the region. “We got like a billion points on Bangkok Airways,” Hydro laughs.

In addition to the music, the group is working on a television show called The Real Houselives of Potheads, with Akil and Hydro as the stars. There are also plans afoot for a movie, called Hemp Hop, and tentative ideas for a musical.

A year ago, the trio collaborated with people from MTV Exit to write a song for one of the show’s anti-human-trafficking campaigns. For Hydro, the subject is more than just the hot-topic du jour.

“My girlfriend was part of a human-trafficking attempt,” he says. “She was led to a place that was supposed to be a modelling dinner, and they tried to kidnap her.” Her story became part of the MTV Exit documentary Enslaved. The music was a natural contribution.

“We did a song called Not For Sale and a remix of the same song called Enough, and we’re basically promoting the song before we release it on tour. The song is basically anti-human trafficking. We’re just trying to bring some sort of awareness to that,” Hydro says.

No strangers to Phnom Penh, the group made its first local appearance in 2007. Local b-boy crew Tiny Toons danced while Akil sang. When the power went out – as it did, and often still does – people in the crowd used mobile phones to light up the dance floor, and the Tiny Toons kids kept breaking.

It was an introduction to Cambodia that Akil remembers most fondly. “Definitely one of my best memories as an artist,” he says. “Period.”

WHO: Akil the MC, Hydro Phonics, DJ Tech 12
WHAT: Revenge of the Boom Box Tour
WHEN: 8pm 5 May
WHERE: Pontoon
WHY: Old-school hip-hop resurrected

Tearing down paradise

“I feel really disappointed,” says Kim Hak. “Really upset; really angry.” The Phnom Penh-based photographer is talking about the destruction of old buildings in Cambodia to make way for profit-driven construction. He’s not unhappy that the nation’s economy has made room for high-rises, but keenly aware that “when the new buildings arrive, the old buildings start to be lost.” It’s an issue he addresses in his solo exhibition ON, which opens next week at Hazy Gallery in Le Poulinguen, France.

Kim began work for ON in 2008, thinking through the issues, and then in 2009 began undertaking detailed research both on site and in books. The exhibited images date from 2010. The project grew, says the artist, “from my worry about the destruction of the old buildings.” Like many contemporary artists in Cambodia, Kim’s practice is stridently documentary in approach and extensively researched. “I want to document them as memories,” he says of the old buildings, “in case they will be destroyed.”

Indeed, one building featured in the exhibition is no longer standing. “At the beginning of the work, I went to a building called Ecole Professional, just behind Chinese House,” Kim says. It was a grand French colonial structure, in a lovely riverside location. Although used as a warehouse to store medicine and rice since 1980, in 2009 the building became an exhibition space for the Phnom Penh Photo Festival.

“I went back one or two weeks after, and when I came back the guard said that I cannot go inside. And then it was destroyed less than one month later.” The site is now used as a garage.

Another building to disappear during Kim’s preparation was the Monivong Hospital. Sadly, it cannot be included in ON. “It was the plan to photograph it, but it was destroyed during my work before I could.” This is a particularly distressing loss for Kim, for two reasons.

Firstly, the building, which was near Sorya mall, used to be the state hospital and, as such, government property. But then the government sold Monivong Hospital to a private company, which was free to demolish it. The government is able to regulate and control development only on property that it owns. Through the Urban Heritage Mission working with the Ministry of Culture, Kim explains, public buildings can be preserved, but private property cannot, since “they don’t have the rule to control this.”

Since demolition, the site has lain empty  –  a second grave disappointment for Kim. “They just leave the land empty and not active,” he says, while they “wait until the price increases.” In a property market as pressured as Phnom Penh’s, there are significant profits to be made by investors willing to wait while land lies idle. Meanwhile, former residents – and in the case of the Monivong Hospital, patients – must fend for themselves in finding alternative accommodation. As the artist plainly states, “It’s a waste; a real waste.”

Kim’s focus is divided between colonial buildings and examples of the modernist New Khmer Architecture from the 1950s and 1960s. Both styles are widely appreciated, yet the artist has some important original insights to offer.

In France, where ON will be exhibited (and where Kim was awarded a prestigious prize in the 2011 Photo Quai contest), people “feel real pity” at the loss of this connection between France and its former colony. But for Kim, the stories that dwell in these buildings are emphatically Cambodian. “Even from the colonial time, it’s not built by colonial people; it’s built by local people.”

Similarly, New Khmer Architecture is celebrated because these buildings are “modern but still get inspiration from typical Khmer houses.” Cambodian architects such as Vann Molyvann – who trained with the French modernist master Le Corbusier – were a source of national pride and enjoyed international respect.

Kim is particularly interested in their environmental sensitivity. He observes that buildings made by Molyvann and his contemporaries “think about the way of the wind, the way of the light.” By contrast, new skyscraper constructions with their glass walls “don’t really adapt to the situation here…it’s hot outside.” The artist doesn’t mind development, “because people have different taste,” but when he sees windowless high-rises, he’s not happy.

ON is an exhibition as much about people as it is about buildings. Each image depicts an individual within a space, and Kim carefully selects these subjects. “They all have something to do with the building. Sometimes they lived in the building, or used to be a student or work there.” Others, such as the woman in the image from Central Market during its renovation, are architecture students from various Cambodian universities.

The artist takes inspiration from the people in his photographs. Channe, the woman shown in front of the lovely shutters of Preah Sisowath High School, was a former student in this 1933 structure. Now, she works in the tourism industry. “She wants old buildings to be cared [for] as much as possible,” Kim says, because they can be “attractive sites for tourists to visit” and perhaps even function as museums.

“Destroying old buildings is like killing groups of old people,” the artist powerfully declares. “When I think about the Khmer Rouge, when they kill people, they tied them… so they cannot fight against them, they just die.” The buildings are the same. They cannot talk. The people that own them should preserve them because the buildings cannot talk.”

With this exhibition, the artist captures and celebrates the generations of memories that live in Phnom Penh’s unique architecture. In his photographs, old buildings and their occupants are given a chance to speak. “Each building tells us different stories,” Kim says. Now, we’re paying attention.

WHO: Phnom Penh artist photographer Kim Hak
WHAT: ON
WHERE: Hazy Gallery, France, and at www.kimhak.com/on
WHEN: Exhibition opens 5 May
WHY: Because buildings can’t talk – or can they?

 

Welcome to the Jungle

Noor Mahmood almost achieved the unthinkable not so long ago: about to fly first-class to Dubai, the 36-year-old United Arab Emirates national calmly deposited his hand luggage on an x-ray scanner at Bangkok Airport. As the case trundled past security, no one noticed the marmoset, gibbon, Asiatic black bear and four leopards – all drugged and less than two months old – packed tightly inside.

Just as he was about to board, Mahmood felt a hand on his shoulder. He bragged to the arresting wildlife taskforce police officers about having connections with a former Thai prime minister in the hope of being released, but the officers refused to budge and a conviction seemed certain – until, that is, he was released on bail and fled the country.

The scenario is all too familiar to those who work to combat Southeast Asia’s illegal trade in wildlife. Prosecutions are rare; prison sentences even more so. The trade in endangered species is believed to be worth up to $30 billion a year, 25% of which passes through Southeast Asia. And the volume is increasing, according to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature’s regional office, but so are efforts to stop it.

Among those making such efforts is Phnom Tamao Wildlife Sanctuary just outside Phnom Penh, a sprawling 2,500-acre safe house for exotic creatures rescued from the clutches of such would-be smugglers. The sanctuary is run by Wildlife Alliance within a protected forest, and is home to a spectacular array of fauna, including the world’s largest captive collections of pileated gibbons and Malayan sun bears. Other rarities include the delightfully named hairy-nosed otter, the slow loris and the knobbly kneed greater adjutant stork, a feathered oddity if ever there was one.

Here, more than 1,200 creatures representing 93 endangered or threatened species preen, posture and play in the safety of leafy enclosures, peered at by 20,000 curious onlookers every year. The most vulnerable are babies which have lost their mothers or been separated from their family groups – and it’s to this end that Sharky Bar is hosting a two-day rockfest this weekend to raise funds for a much-needed nursery.

Chouk the elephant is a case in point: found with his foot torn off by a hunter’s trap, today he romps through Phnom Tamao forest propped up by a prosthetic limb. “Chouk is now on his fourth prosthesis,” says Wildlife Rescue Director Nick Marx. “It’s changed his life radically. Before he had a prosthetic limb, he used to walk in the forest with his big sister and he was getting tired very quickly. He’d stop frequently for a rest and a sleep. As soon as we gave him his first prosthesis, he just took off straight away. He was fine.

“This is exactly why we need money to build a nursery: to keep our animals nicely, with all the love and attention that they need, and the proper care. We do a good job of that at the moment, but we don’t have a specific place for it. We don’t have money to throw away, so we have to use an existing facility, but put it to better use for baby animals, with easy-to-clean tiles and simple utilities such as running water and solar panels to provide electricity. If we don’t get the funds to do this, we won’t stop looking after baby animals, it’s just that we could be doing it better.”

Rolling Stones cover band Stoned Again will headline throughout, with all-girl punk group The Herding Cats making a special appearance on Friday. On Saturday, Stoned Again will be joined by regional rhythm and blues maestro Curtis King and local indie pin-ups the Teaner Turners. Up for grabs via raffle tickets and an auction are everything from stays at Independence Hotel in Sihanoukville and Sokha Angkor Resort in Siem Reap to a Cambodian Country Club membership and jewellery from some of New York’s hottest designers. Rarrrrrgh.

WHO: Stoned Again, Herding Cats, Curtis King, Teaner Turners
WHAT: Wildlife Alliance fundraiser
WHERE: Sharky Bar, St. 130
WHEN: 7pm April 27 and 28
WHY: Because inside you there’s a baby beastie just waiting to get out

 

Reggae riddims arise

When bassist Sébastien Adnot first played reggae in front of Jamaican friends, they proved a tough crowd. “When I started learning, they told me they couldn’t dance to what I was playing,” says the founder of Cambodia’s first and only ragamuffin dub band, Dub Addiction. “’Try to dance with your fingers,’ they said. That’s how they taught me. They don’t know the names of chords or music theory, it’s all about feeling.” Sébastien taps two fingers lightly on his heart and then his head.

After ten years of being tutored by his hecklers, Sébastien, originally from France, arrived on Cambodian soil in 2011 to begin a stint as resident bass player at the now-defunct Studio 182. “I came here, and everywhere I go I hear reggae music, but there were no reggae bands or musicians, so I had to teach people to play reggae the same way I had been taught.”

Today, Dub Addiction – now recording their second album – count among their vocalists DJ Khla, ‘Cambodia’s tightest ragga MC’ and a staple of the local music scene. “One day, I saw this Khmer guy playing keyboard reggae. I said: That’s fantastic! You play reggae. That’s my music. He said: ‘What’s reggae?’ You’ve never heard of Bob Marley? ‘Who’s Bob Marley?’ Never mind. Can you sing? ‘Yeah, sure…’

“So he starts to play a song for me – and I swear it’s pure, 100% ragamuffin. I found out months later that he was an orphan, raised in a pagoda, and he took his ‘reggae’ from the monks’ chanting. And he’s a star here: he’s on TV every few weeks. All the Khmer people know him. I have a star in my band, which is a gift.”

Along with Sonpore, MC Curly, and Professor Kinski, DJ Khla lays an uplifting veneer of Khmer vocals over the bombastic basslines (Seb) and drums (Toma Willen) of Dub Addiction, booked to play the Sometimes A Great Notion Festival in Oregon, the US, in July. Kae Lhassen adds spooky, spaced-out backing vocals to Sylvie’s keys, and the sound is pinned together by guitar rhythms from Benoit Carre.

“Reggae music is low frequency. We play bass very loud; bass drum very loud, but the guitar is a very small sound so that it doesn’t eat the medium frequencies – the sound of the singer – at all. “That’s why I’m so glad we have these lovely Khmer ladies singing. My music is massive, but if it’s just massive, your spirit will stay on the floor. But with this kind of singing, high frequencies, then your spirit goes into another world. And music is all about telling stories and communicating emotions. If you play reggae, you have to be wicked.”

Not stoned? “No! Exactly the opposite: that’s what I learned from Jamaican people. The first time I performed with a Jamaican, on the day of the concert he didn’t smoke or drink, he went for a swim. He wouldn’t even speak. Before you play reggae, you have to be a warrior.”

WHO: Dub Addiction
WHAT: Reggae riddims
WHERE: Equinox, #3a St. 278
WHEN: 9pm April 7
WHY: Bob Marley would be proud

 

Angkorian textiles meet 21st century couture

THURDAY 29 |The ancient Khmer art of ikat, which translates as ‘to tie’ or ‘bind’ and is synonymous with Takeo province, is perhaps one of the most painstaking ways of declaring a fabric fetish. It’s believed to be one of the world’s oldest methods of textile decoration, and villagers begin by resist-dyeing the threads before weaving the fabric by hand on narrowv looms. Tiny bits of plastic are tied around each thread; they’re then dropped into pots of lively coloured dye. The end results are vast, elaborately patterned cottons and silks, on which village life and local beliefs are depicted in glorious technicolour. Patterns are traditionally passed verbally from generation to generation, but local design house Push Pull Cambodia is fusing ikat’s ‘historic handmade techniques with modern design aesthetics’. Designer Hor Sokbol’s debut 2012 spring collection, Nautical by Nature, will be the highlight of this month’s Fashion Connections night.

WHO: Push Pull Cambodia
WHAT: Fashion Connections
WHERE: Queen Boutique Hotel, #49a Street 214
WHEN: 6pm March 29
WHY: 11th century fabric meets 21st century couture

 

Green night: eco-festival

FRIDAY 30  |The deceptively doe-eyed pygmy slow loris possesses a defensive bite so toxic that it can induce anaphylactic shock in its victims. You might think this would be enough to put most predators off, but this tiny mammal is being hunted to the point of extinction. And it is not alone. Cambodia’s flora and fauna – and, by extension, its environment – are today coming under ever-increasing pressure from the twin forces of climate change and rapid development. Discover some of the innovative methods being used to combat the threats at Meta House’s Green Night. Eco-friendly products, talks, and organic DJ sets are the order of the evening.

WHO: Eco-warriors
WHAT: A night out for environmentalists
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 6pm March 29
WHY: The planet can’t save itself, can it?

 

Jass in the garden

SATURDAY  31  |The ancient Khmer art of ikat, which translates as ‘to tie’ or ‘bind’ and is synonymous with Takeo province, is perhaps one of the most painstaking ways of declaring a fabric fetish. It’s believed to be one of the world’s oldest methods of textile decoration, and villagers begin by resist-dyeing the threads before weaving the fabric by hand on narrowv looms. Tiny bits of plastic are tied around each thread; they’re then dropped into pots of lively coloured dye. The end results are vast, elaborately patterned cottons and silks, on which village life and local beliefs are depicted in glorious technicolour. Patterns are traditionally passed verbally from generation to generation, but local design house Push Pull Cambodia is fusing ikat’s ‘historic handmade techniques with modern design aesthetics’. Designer Hor Sokbol’s debut 2012 spring collection, Nautical by Nature, will be the highlight of this month’s Fashion Connections night.

WHO: Push Pull Cambodia
WHAT: Fashion Connections
WHERE: Queen Boutique Hotel, #49a Street 214
WHEN: 6pm March 29
WHY: 11th century fabric meets 21st century couture

 

Dish: Khmer coffee highs

There’s no denying it: Phnom Penhites just want to get high. At this very moment in the city’s most salubrious neighbourhoods people are clamouring for hits from the bong faster than the poor bongs can keep up, and the only high worth chasing is of the caffeinated variety. With the approximately two square miles of BKK1 now overloaded with ‘Western-style’ coffee shops, most coffee drinkers, Cambodian as well as expat, seem to be eschewing the traditional brew in favour of frappuccinos, free wifi and, God save us all, endless Michael Buble ear-assaults. The real Cambodian cup of coffee seems in danger of disappearing into this vortex of naff.

For although it can in no way claim the fame of its drippy Vietnamese neighbour, nor indeed the notoriety of that same nation’s ‘weasel coffee’, Cambodia does indeed have a national brew, grown on the red earth of the North Eastern provinces, roasted and enjoyed in its own unique fashion throughout the Kingdom.

Introduced during the French era alongside those two other Cs, croissants and colonialism, the coffee grown in Cambodia is mainly of the ‘Robusta’ variety, which is in flavour somewhat robuster (ba-boom! I’m here all week, folks) than the more highly prized Arabica. These days, according to Phnom Penh-based roasters Three Corner Coffee, around 70%  of beans grown on Cambodian soil end up in the hands of Vietnamese middle-men, whence they are sold across the border and used to bulk up Vietnamese produce.

Luckily, some coffee contrives to remain in-country, ensuring you can find the authentic cup of Khmer coffee if you’re willing to try hard enough. Keep your eyes peeled as dawn breaks and you’ll see tin drums full of steadily blackening beans lining the roadside, with the occasional lump of pig fat bobbling merrily in the mix. Once charred, the beans are hand-ground into fine dust and then poured into the glamorously named ‘coffee sock’, a muslin bag through which boiled water is poured up to three times. The coffee is then ready to pour over the requisite spoonage of condensed milk. For Cambodian coffee can be taken hot or iced, but only a madman takes it without a dollop of My Boy milk; no questions asked, it’s just the way it is.

Curiously, in that very heartland of pseudo-European coffee-shops, BKK1, there exist two mom and pop places defiantly roasting and boiling their own coffee. You have to get up early to catch Mr Dol on Street 51 and 322, whose blue plastic chairs and floral tables unfold with the dawn and whose roasting is done while most of us are still abed. His syrupy 2,000 riel shots come with free Chinese tea and your choice of pork and rice or, well, pork and rice. A little further south working the corners of BKK market there’s Mrs Nuon, who runs a one-woman mobile operation that roasts, grinds, boils and serves all at once, with never a cessation in conversation from clientele or proprietress.

Further afield, a morning cruise round the streets south of Toul Tom Pong market allows you to follow your nose to places that are roasting their own. Should this fail-safe method fail, head for the hole-in-the-wall cafe at the intersection of streets 432 and 163, where roasting pig fat and free-flow condensed milk never smelled so good. And if you’re not an early-riser there’s always Mr Bounnareth’s coffee stall inside the market itself, identifiable by its inexplicable Brazilian flags and jovial owner. While Mr Bounnareth undeniably serves up a deliciously thick and strong double shot for only a dollar, be warned: he and his establishment are teetering on the brink of self-parody. Catch him and his coffee before tradition becomes farce and you have to contend with hordes of snap-happy tourists just to get your iced coffee.

Mr Dol, Street 51 (cnr Street 322)
Mrs Nuon, mobile coffee cart, BKK Market
Cafe, Street 432 (cnr Street 163)
Mrs Bounnareth’s stall, Russian Market