Spacey guitar chords rise and fall like a gently cresting sonic wave. A man clad inexplicably in white open-face crash helmet picks tenderly at individual strings, vibrations mingling in mid-air with the slow rhythmic roll of the drums. Centre stage, long upward slashes of black eyeliner accentuating her exotic looks, a young woman in silver and blue snakes her arms from fingertip to shoulder in a physical prayer to invisible gods. Rising high above the Khmer lyrics, a single whispered phrase penetrates English ears: ‘Whiskey CambOOOOdiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh…’
Chanthy Kak, also known as Srey Thy and DJ Cuppa Tea, flaps her hands in delight. The long black tresses that tumbled over her shoulders during a performance at Equinox are today swept upwards and tucked neatly under a towel. The front woman of Cambodian Space Project slides off her seat in the salon and ducks back into neighbouring art store Sticky Fingers, a tiny shrine to the swinging ’60s deep in the bowels of Golden Sorya Mall. Kaleidoscopic album covers adorn the walls, a line-up of guitars standing proudly beneath a black and white drip painting of this engaging chanteuse, which, she gently points out, isn’t for sale.
And neither is she, although in the past that hasn’t prevented people from trying. Promised a job as a masseuse when she moved from rural Prey Veng to Phnom Penh at the age of 19, she instead found herself lashed to a brothel bed with electric cable. “I had stayed with this girl for three months and then one day she said to me: ‘Do you want to change jobs? You will make more money.’” Thy’s face darkens. “She said she knew my village and lived there when she was young, so I thought she was a good person. She said if I got a job in massage I could make good money. I thought she meant a nice place, like this [gestures to neighbouring salon], but no. She meant sex.”
It was a horror she hasn’t been shy in reliving, if only for the sake of other Cambodian women. “Some people, when they read my story on the internet, they ask me: ‘Why do you tell everyone about this? Are you stupid?’ Why? If you are too scared to tell anyone, nothing will ever change. I’m not shy. I want to tell everyone! I want to tell mothers and fathers too, so that they know what could happen if they send their daughters to Phnom Penh. I am not ashamed; I am not bad. This has made me strong. I was playing at Equinox and a Cambodian girl, who had a similar experience but is now married, said: ‘I love your story. Thank you so much for showing everyone. I want everyone to know. I work hard as a cleaner now so that I can go to school and learn. It’s so hard when you try to tell people what happened because they don’t want to hear.’ So long as you bring money to the people back home, they’re happy. They don’t want to hear how you got it.”
Now 33, the Space Project’s cosmic vocalist today has two albums to her name – 2011: A Space Odyssey and Not Easy Rock ‘n’ Roll – plus a third in the making; is lauded internationally as ‘the voice of free Cambodia’ and is the subject of a forthcoming BBC documentary by locally based director Marc Eberle. Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly says Thy’s voice is “one of those that give you the shivers”; Nick Cave, who she met at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in Bali last year (Mick Harvey produced the band’s second album), describes her cross-cultural performances with the Space Project as “very affecting”.
Quizzed about her brush with the Bad Seeds front man, she giggles. “He likes my music very much! Some people told me: ‘Be careful. Nick Cave has four wives already! Maybe you’re number five!’ When everyone sat down, Nick looked at me and said: ‘Hey!’ I thought maybe he wanted to talk to someone behind me, so I turned around. Then he said: ‘You!’ I didn’t understand that Nick Cave was a big star. He came over and took my hand; he was very strong and I was laughing. People kept saying: ‘Careful! He has four wives already! You’ll be number five!’ Maybe… [Laughs]”
Other brushes with stardom have followed since, not least Motown musician Dennis Coffey. This Michigan master of distortion, Echoplex tape-loop delay and wah-wah hosted Thy last month in Detroit to produce the Space Project’s third album, on which one of the tracks is Whiskey Cambodia. “You want some now? I have!” Thy orders her younger brother out of the shop to fetch the necessary mixers and slams a pair of glass beer mugs on the table, grinning wickedly. “Don’t drink a lot! Three days ago I went back to my village and was drinking Cambodian whiskey and I got drunk! I don’t know what happened. In the song I talk about barangs; the first time a foreigner went to my house. I was so scared: I didn’t have pizza, didn’t have hamburgers, didn’t have red wine. I was very worried. I couldn’t really speak English and didn’t know what to say. I had Cambodian whiskey so we all drank together. Happy, happy…”
While she talks, Thy flips through the images on her iPad: a small rural house with woven bamboo walls; a line of ducks trailing a disinterested water buffalo; gaggles of nieces, nephews and neighbours. In one shot, a frail-looking woman with silver hair sits with her head bowed in smiling contemplation over a Cambodian Space Project album cover: Thy’s mother. Unable to read or write, she took great delight in the covers documenting her daughter’s stratospheric rise before tuberculosis cut life short in 2010. “I can still feel her,” says Thy. “I think she’s happy. When I’m in Cambodia I don’t miss her so much, because I can feel her close every day.”
Diluted Cambodian whiskey pours down parched throats, the bite of the alcohol prompting the sucking of breath through clenched teeth. The new album, says Thy, is inspired in part by traditional arts, as evidenced in the socially conscious track Mountain Dancing. “When I was young I lived in Kampong Cham province and some people who had money, good cars and good clothes would go to the mountain to dance. The poor people who live near the mountain don’t look like this but they want to go dancing too, altogether. Some people would say: ‘Oh, you’re no good. You don’t have a good smell; you don’t have good clothes. You don’t have good skin: you’re dark. Don’t stand too close to me because I look nice.’ But we are all one Cambodia; one people. We can be happy dancing altogether; don’t think about your skin or your clothes or whether you have money. Some people don’t have money but they are happy enough to dance. They have a good heart.”
Ten tracks were recorded in five days in Detroit, fitting considering the reverence with which Thy regards all things Motown. One of her favourite songs is Hit The Road Jack by “the guy with the glasses” [Ray Charles]; another is Summertime, George Gershwin’s 1935 aria from Porgy and Bess, and her nine-year-old son, Makara, has apparently developed quite the thing for Aretha Franklin. “I’m so happy!” she says of her time in Kid Rock’s motor city studio. “We had a big studio and old-style microphones, with an old-style piano. I want to make more music there.”
But who is her audience? “I think it’s mostly barangs. For Cambodians, it’s very hard when I show people what I’m doing now. People only like traditional music, like Sinn Sisamouth, or new music like K-Pop. They sing about broken hearts and fast cars and dying. I cannot listen to that. Sorry! It’s not bad, but it’s not for me.”
Much has been made of Thy’s voyage from brothel to world stage, but what of any return to her sun-baked home province? “Now I don’t want to go to Prey Veng because some people make me feel down. They just think that I have money. Sometimes I tell stories about going to Europe, about going to Australia, the US. There, money! Everyone just thinks: ‘What happened? Don’t talk. Shut up, because I can’t see anything.’ Everyone wants to see me have a good house, diamonds and cars. Some friends say: ‘Now you have money, please change your skin! You can cut your eyes to look like Michael Jackson.’
“I care about money too, but when I work I understand why I’m doing it. I learn a lot from going outside Cambodia: why people work; why people travel. To begin with I was thinking: ‘Wow! If I go to Europe, maybe I will have money too,’ but when I went there was none. The sun burnt my skin like this [gestures and wails] and it was very cold. ‘What do I do now? I’m so very cold! Where’s the rice? There’s no rice!’ But I hope to change people. I’ve changed a lot. Since I started going away on tour, I understand more and more. The more I see, the more I want to see. Before, I was shy, but now? I’m Chanthy Cuppa Tea!”
WHO: Srey Thy & Cambodian Space Project
WHAT: Tripped-out ’60s psychedelia
WHERE: The FCC, Sisowath Quay
WHEN: 9pm September 7
WHY: She’ll take you into orbit
