Past Dark

Khmer Rouge Part One: The Golden Age

Episode Summary

April 17th, 1975. Phomh Penh, known as the “Pearl of Asia”, considered at one time one of the world’s loveliest cities with its grand boulevards, striking modernist architecture and thriving nightlife, the bustling and now bursting-at-the-seams capitol of the nation of Cambodia, is about to disappear. It will happen within 72 hours. Cambodia was still a developing nation with an immense history. The Khmer Empire, which had encompassed most of Southeast Asia, had flourished for six centuries, and left behind a highly developed culture epitomized in the Buddhist temple complex of Angor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world. In the 20th century, the nation saw a Golden Age under the reign of King Sianouk, a saxophone-playing ladies man who starred in his own films , championed the arts and spoke three languages. A thriving pop scene fed by influences from Booker T and the MGS to Afro-Cuban pop to French yeye gave birth to a number of stars, such as Sinn Sisamouth, known as the Elvis of Cambodia, and Ros Sereysotea,, “the Queen with the Golden Voice”. But Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would draw a black veil over the country for the next four years. They ground down the nation of 7 million to a pre-industrial year zero, forcing the population into agrarian collectives that were little more than prison camps, where stone age methods of cultivation led to crop failure and mass starvation. Doctors and engineers, intellectuals, writers, artists of every kind, ethnic and religious minorities and Cambodians who complained- or wore glasses, or showed emotion, or talked too often, among other infractions-were herded into the torture chamber, or a mass grave. 25 percent of the nation would be lost in just four years, in what has been called one of the fastest genocides in human history. What drives a man to send so many of his own countrymen to their deaths? How do nations all around the world blithely turn away from the horror? How do you survive a life under gunpoint? How do you heal an atrocity? This is a story of genocide and smiling dictators, pop stars and killing fields, new people and year zero. This is the story of the Khmer Rouge. And its Past Dark.

Episode Notes

Music Used in this Episode (In Order of Appearance)

Blacksona: Day One (from the LP “The Silver Door”)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://blacksona.bandcamp.com/

Alexander Nakarada: Hor Hor

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

http://alexandernakarada.bandcamp.com

Kevin Macleod: Lost Frontier/Night on the Docks/Backed Vibes Clean

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

*Sinn Sisamouth: Season of Bloom (duet with Ros Sereysotea)/

Just Love Me

from the compilation “Cambodian Rocks” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Cambodian_Rocks)

Under Fair Use

*Pen Ron: Jom Nor Trocheak

from the LP “Pebbles Volume 6: Cambodia Part One”

Under Fair Use

Audio from “Royal Ballet of Cambodia”, 1965

National Archives and Records Administration

In the Public Domain

*Yol Aulorong: Don’t Be Upset

from the compilation “Cambodian Rocks” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Cambodian_Rocks)

Under Fair Use

*Sinn Sisamouth: Beloved Girlfriend/ Apart from Beloved Lover

Sromol Neang Akara/Under the Sound of Rain

Under Fair Use

*Baksey Cham Krom: B.C.K./ Pleine Lune (Full Moon)

Under Fair Use

*Chum Ken: Kampuchea Twist (Twist! Twist! Khnyom)

Under Fair Use

*Liev Tuk: Dance Soul Soul (Rom Sue Sue)

from the compilation “Cambodian Rocks” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Cambodian_Rocks)

Under Fair Use

*Mao Sareth: Thporl Khuoch

Under Fair Use

*Pen Ron: No Need to Be Ashamed/I’m Unsatisfied (Knyom Mun Sok Jet Te)

from the compilation “Cambodian Rocks” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Cambodian_Rocks)

Under Fair Use

*Ros Sereysotea:Title Unknown/ ផ្ការីកលើមេឃ រស់ សេរីសុទ្(Flowers in the Sky)/I’m 16/Wicked Husband/Haircut/Hand Tied
Rice

All but “Flowers in the Sky” and "Hand Tied Rice" from the compilation “Cambodian

Rocks” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian\_Rocks)

Under Fair Use

*Note on Cambodian copyright: Cambodia did not have a copyright law until 2003. The fact that the country underwent a genocide meant that personnel, label info, recording dates etc were lost. Therefore specific information about the Golden Age of Cambodian pop and rock is, more often than not, missing.

Episode Transcription

April 17th, 1975. Phomh Penh, known as the “pearl of Asia”, considered at one time one of the world’s loveliest cities with its grand boulevards, striking modernist architecture and thriving nightlife, the bustling and now bursting-at-the-seams capitol of the nation of Cambodia, is about to disappear.
It will happen within 72 hours.
2 million city dwellers will be marched into the countryside en masse, by the black clad forces of the Khmer Rouge. Led by Pol Phot the head of the Cambodian Communist Party, the new regime promised to bring peace to a nation riven by the horrors of war. Their own civil war, between the Khmer Rouge and the established Cambodian government, had begun in 1968 and had led to the deaths of over 300,000. There was the invasion by the US in 1969, prompted by Nixon’s belief that the avowedly neutral nation was aiding and abetting the communist North Vietnamese, providing the rationale for four years of catastrophic bombing which killed at least 200,000 Cambodian civilians and forced a million more to flee into the capitol. They were traumatized, weary of war, yet eager to believe the new regime’s promises of peace. They met their future executioners as liberators, Within hours, they would be herded by gunpoint out of the city, and into the killing fields.
Cambodia was still a developing nation with an immense history. The Khmer Empire, which had encompassed most of Southeast Asia, had flourished for six centuries, and left behind a highly developed culture epitomized in the Buddhist Temple complex of Angor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world. In the 20th century, the nation saw a Golden Age under the reign of King Sianouk, a saxophone-playing ladies man who starred in his own films , championed the arts and spoke three languages. A thriving pop scene fed by influences from Booker t and the MGS to Afro-Cuban pop to French yeye gave birth to a number of stars, such as Sinn Sissamouth, known as the Elvis of Cambodia, and Ros Serysato,, “the queen with the golden voice”.
But Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would draw a black veil over the country for the next four years. They ground down the nation of 7 million to a pre-industrial year zero, forcing the population into agrarian collectives that were little more than prison camps, where stone age methods of cultivation led to crop failure and mass starvation. doctors and engineers, intellectuals, writers, artists of every kind, ethnic and religious minorities and Cambodians who complained- or wore glasses, or showed emotion, or talked too often, among other infractions-were herded into the torture chamber, or a mass grave. 25 percent of the nation would be lost in just four years, in what has been called one of the fastest genocides in human history.
What drives a man to send so many of his own countrymen to their deaths? How do nations all around the world blithely turn away from the horror? How do you survive a life under gunpoint? How do you heal an atrocity?
This is a story of genocide and smiling dictators, pop stars and killing fields, new people and year zero. This is the story of the Khmer Rouge. And its Past Dark.
In 2007, a team of researchers, using land surveys combined with aerial mapping techniques developed by Nasa, assessed the area known as Angkor, which includes the temple Angor Wat, and concluded that it was the largest known pre-industrial city in history. At its 11th century peak, it was a city the size of Berlin which could have supported a million people, a testament to the might and grandeur of the Khmer Empire, which dominated Southeast Asia for centuries. New discoveries, such as that of the legendary lost city of Mahendraparvata in 2012, 25 miles north of Angkor, further illustrate the glory of the vanished empire, and suggests the tantalizing likelihood that there are many more archeological wonders throughout Cambodia, waiting to be discovered.
The Khmer Empire collapsed in the 15th century, a victim of its own affluence and its constant wars with neighboring kingdoms. Angkor Wat was abandoned for centuries, its towers gradually overgrown by jungle. If monuments are a testament to the greatness of a culture, the Khmer must be counted among the greatest. And it would be this idea of a past glory, a lost grandeur, which would become an obsession for the young Saloth Sar, who would come to be known as Pol Pot.
He was born on May 19th, 1925, into relative affluence as the son of a landowning farmer. His sister was a concubine to the King, and so he spent much of his youth as a guest at the Royal Palace. His formal education began in a Buddhist monastery, followed by a French Catholic school in Phnomn Penh, where he was eventually awarded a scholarship to study electrical engineering in Paris.. Here he became involved with the French Communist Party, who were among the few in France who supported the independence of the colonies of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, who had been under French rule and taxation since the late 19th century. France, as all colonists do, exploited Southeast Asia to the utmost, whose lands produced exportable rice, coffee, and tea, whose profits were enjoyed almost entirely by the French. Michelin, manufacturer of tires, would become an industrial giant due to the vast quantities of rubber provided by the colonies. The influence of France extended to the architecture, whose distinctive balconies and steeply pitched roofs are found in great profusion in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Phnom Penh. Upper class Cambodians and Vietnamese were educated in french, and it was the language of trade, business, and government throughout southeast asia., though its prominence today has somewhat faded.
So it is interesting that Pol Pot’s radicalization began in the country of the colonizers, and that one of the main inspirations behind his later actions was the French Revolution. The idea of an exalted peasantry who managed to overthrow a king romanced and radicalized him. He also studied the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Mao, Stalin, and Marx, though he admitted that he found Marx difficult to read and skipped most of it. He was popular among the students, with an angelic smile and easygoing manner. But His increasing involvement with French Communists, and lack of interest in his courses, led to the withdrawal of his scholarship, and he was sent back to Cambodia in Januray 1953. As a symbol of his own radicalization, he abandoned the name Saloth Sar, and renamed himself Pol Pot.
Cambodia in 1953 was a nation clamoring for change. King Norodom Sihanouk was placed into power by the French after the death of his grand father, and they assumed that of all the available sons of the monarch, he would be the easiest to manipulate. This would prove to be a fatal decision for French rule in Cambodia.
King Sihanouk was in many ways the typical disinterested monarch, whose main fascinations were leisure, women, and the arts. His maternal grandfather placed him at the head of his own soccer team as well as his own performing troup before he even graduated high school. He would later famously star in a number of his own self-prodiuced films, and was a great fan of Western music, especially jazz. He could play the sax, the clarinet, the accordion and the piano, writing a number of songs he would happily perform for visiting diplomats. The playboy king appeared to be a man that no one needed to take very seriously.
But Siahnouk was quite serious about an independent Cambodia. He stressed the need for renogotian of the Franco-Khmer Treaty, which in 1949 was altered to grant some measure of self-rule to Cambodia, but which still counted it as a member of the French Union. Siahnouk pressed on, traveling to the US and Canada, where he gave a number of interviews arguing his case for independence. His persistence would pay off, and total self-rule would be granted Cambodia on November 9, 1953.
It must be said that this is not to paint Siahnouk in too heroic of a light. Corruption, exploitation and the murders of dissidents happened on his watch, and under his command, just as they had under regimes past, and he reveled in the trappings of a grandiose lifestyle alien to most of his struggling countrymen. But there was a decidedly pro-Cambodian and pro-arts sentiment in Siahnouk that fostered an emergent and long-overdue sense of national pride, regardless of his failings as a leader. For example, He had ended a decree that insisted upon the Romanization fo the characters of the Khmer alphabet, a seemingly small gesture that spoke volumes about his refusal to allow his own culture to be subsumed by the West. The final granting of independence, and the prosperity that followed, meant the Siahnouk became revered as a beloved national hero.
Not only was Siounouk a proud Cambodian, he was also a modernist. He believed that his country was poised to take its place among the developed nations of the world, and he set in motion sweeping changes that would lead the country into what many refer to now as “the golden age” It was a time of explosive creativity, prosperity, and peace. From tourism, health care, industry, education, infrastructure, even leisure, Sianouk sought to utilize the best of Western ideas while building upon a foundation that was avowedly, and proudly, Cambodian.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Siahnouk’s passionate embrace and support of the arts. This embrace began in earnest when Siahnouk unexpectedly stepped down from the throne in 1955, abdicating in favor of his father Norodom Siahnouk, and dropping his elevation to a mere prince once again. He did this, he said, to have more time to devote himself to political causes, finding the intrigues of royal life uninspiring. Instead, he began building what would be known as the Sangkum, or the Community of the Common People. This was a movement and political organization centered upon Prince Siahnouk himself, without a clear political stance, but combining elements of monarchism and Buddhism, conservatism and socialism. Good works, self respect, and labor were prized, and Siahnouk was often to be found digging in the dirt, sleeves rolled up, for photo-ops at building sites. Politically he demonstrated an unusual sense of diplomacy with his critics, with whom he debated publicly and then often absorbed into his own cabinet, which was a deft way of both keeping the peace, and giving different viewpoints a place at the table- but only on the condition that, in the end, they would pledge allegiance to the monarchy. Early in his own rule, he had given women the right to vote, believing in social equality as a necessary facet of a peaceful modern society, though he was known for his hatred of dissidents and Communists. Internationally, he made a point of underlining Cambodia’s neutrality, and he would do so ever more sharply as the war in Vietnam began to take shape. Cambodia’s fate, he insisted, is its own, a nation that belongs to itself, with no time for infighting or foreign wars. He wanted the world to see Cambodia as a nation on the move, a modernist Utopia that was not merely Europe grafted onto a Asian canvas, but a new place entirely, a young, swinging, vibrant, Cambodia.
One of the most visible signs of this new Age was in architecture.The style now known as New Khmer combined the ancient lines of Angkor Wat with the modernism of Corbusier, and the result was an entirely distinctive, futuristic architecture that resembles almost nothing else in the world. As the style began to develop through the late 1950’s and early 60s, what had begun as mere repetition of foreign influence began to take on distinctive Khmer elements that demonstrated their designer’s growing confidence. Incredibly, there were no qualified Cambodian architects in the country at the time of independence in 1953, but in a few short years, the newly built technical schools began producing graduates, and others returned from studying abroad, and Cambodia caught up fast. Vann Molyvann, the most famous Khmer architect, had trained in Paris in 1946, , and was appointed State Architect and Head of Public Works by Sianouk, who oversaw every design, and encouraged Molyvann and his team of technicians with an enthusiasm that was genuine, and contagious. Molyvann designed schools, official buildings, national theatres, and the National Sports Complex, still the largest venue in Cambodia, and oversaw the design and construction of entire towns. But it was Phnomn Penh that became the center of this new esthetic, a cosmopolitan, neon lit city known as “the pearl of the east”.
But it wasn’t only the urbanites who were enjoying the fruits of the new modernity. Rural Cambodians were now afforded the opportunity to spend an evening at the cinema. 300 new theatres were built all over the country in these years, and Siahnouk made sure that ticket prices were kept well within reach of the average Cambodian- a not entirely altruistic move, as it gave the Prince a captive audience for own forays into film production. In many of his movies he served not only as producer, but director, writer, and even actor. His first color film, Aspara, released in 1966, was made in response to the American film Lord Jim, which depicted Cambodia as a savage backwater. Many Cambodians were deeply offended by the film, which was roundly panned by the critics and attacked by the Prince himself. An official spokesperson later issued a statement on behalf of an angry Siahnouk, which read-
For a film producer, even one of real talent, what is Cambodia? The ruins of Angkor… and that is all. So, a run-of-the-mill script is hurriedly written, one or two flashy stars are hired, one adds a mixture of eroticism and violence, advance promotion dwells on the same hold hackneyed themes (…scorpions lurking in boots… the poverty of the people… etc.) and the whole plot is put in motion. That is the image of Cambodia current in the four corners of the globe.
Siahnouk’s own films were largely vanity projects, often starring his wife and family, with inoffensive romantic and nationalistic themes. In the main, Cambodian cinema favored retellings of classic Khmer legends, such as the wildly popular Snake King’s Wife, which spawned a number of sequels and is heralded as the first Cambodian horror film. There were roughly 30 theatres in Phnom Penh alone, and new production facilities churned out over 400 films between 1960 and 1975.
But the explosion was not all centered on new artforms. Cambodia’s own traditional Khmer classical dance enjoyed a resurgence, and Sianohuk's mother the Queen directed the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, which entertained visiting dignitaries and provided a cultural touchstone that remains the nation’s most revered artform. This 1000 year old dance has its roots in the Khmer Empire, and its stunning fluidity and intricate costumes were traditionally a part of any royal event, including weddings, funerals and coronations. In 2003 it would be added to UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
But the most happening sign that Cambodians were really beginning to get up, and get down, was the music.
Phomh Penh would be the center of the action, and the royal family would again be a driving force. Hundreds of performers would emerge before the Khmer Rouge, and thousands upon thousands of singles would be released. While the older generation preferred traditional Cambodian music or romantic, melancholy ballads, the young people would clamor for an increasingly kaleidoscopic sound, with colors taken from American soul, r & b and garage, French yeye, and Latin American rhythms. Singles from overseas flooded the country, and as America’s involvement in the war in neighboring Vietnam began to heat up, the US Military’s Armed Forces Radio would provide a constant stream of new influences. Cambodia’s own state-sponsored National Radio was another major force, and was home to DJ huoy Meas, a pop star in her own right, and she also served as a judge in wildly popular song contest called Samach Cheat, established by Prince Siahnouk, which launched its own share of stars.
Cambodia already had a pop music scene before rock and roll came along. Traditional folk or mohori music, orchestras, Filipino marching bands, Latin cha chas and French chansons were especially popular. Filipino immigrants were a major source of American musical idioms, as their country had long been a territory of the US, and these musicians would have a profound influence on Cambodian players. All of these threads led to an unusual cultural diversity in early Cambodian popular music, but it would be the young people- and their music of choice- who would drive the musical revolution.
You cannot talk about Cambodian pop without Sinn Sisamouth. A collossal presence, considered to be the country’s own Elvis, Sinatra, and Nat King Cole rolled into one, his influence even today is paramount, and his songs are continually covered and revered by Cambodians. It is virtually impossible to overstate his legacy.
He was born in 1935, of a Cambodian father and a Chinese Laotian mother, in Batabang Province. He began playing the guitar at age 7, and played his first gig at his own elementary school. He went on to study medicine in Phomh Penh, but throughout his education he continued to perform and write his own songs. After independence in 1953, he became a regular on National Radio, and Siahnouk’s mother invited him to join the Royal Band, where he remained until 1970. It is said that he wrote thousands of songs, at least 500 of which were released in his lifetime. Hls lyrical prowess in particular endeared him to Khmer speakers, and it is often said that it is impossible to fully appreciate Sisamouth without understanding the language. He also produced hits in Chinese, French, and Thai, and recorded his own versions of Western Pop Tunes such as Whiter Shade of Pale, Hey Jude, and House of the Rising Son, writing new Khmer lyrics for the melodies. But his very first hit was a romantic self-penned ballad called “Violon Sneha”, which swept the nation and made him a star- but whose master tape would be destroyed by the Khmer Rouge.
While he began as crooner, Sisamouth had an astounding capacity for adapting and absorbing new infliuences, a feat for any pop performer. And as the turn of the decade approached, teenagers were becoming restless with the same melancholic balladry that found wide approval among the more conservative older generation.
Enter Baksey Cham Krong, generally considered to be the country’s first rock band. Led by two brothers, Mol Kagnol and Mol Kamach (Cambodian names are written with the family name first, in this case, Mol) they started in 1959 as more of a vocal act, with Kamach singing saccharine pop songs in the vein of Pat Boone and Paul Anka. But Kagnol fell in love with surf music, built his own version of a Vox guitar, and persuaded Kamach to form a new kind of band. Focusing on rocking instrumentals and sweet ballads in French and Khmer, they could bring the dance, and the romance. Kagnol was a fresh-faced 14 when they started, but he would be nicknamed “Uncle Solo” by his adoring audience, though he has since mentioned that while he got all the guys after the show begging for guitar lessons, his brother got all the girls. Kamach would indeed be the Cliff Richard to his own Shadows, whose stage act the band unabashedly copied straight from the 1961 film, “The Young Ones”.Sporting skinny ties, matching suits, and choreographed poses, they were the height of early Cambodian cool, inspiring teenagers all over the country to form their own bands. They would even go on to influence Sinn Sisamouth, who began to incorporate a rocking rhythm section on his own tracks.
Despite the popularity of early rock in late 50’s Cambodia, it was still considered offensive to cover a Western rock song with Khmer lyrics, a violation of the cultural sanctity of the language. This wall would come tumbling down with the 1962 release of Kampuchea Twist, a track inspired by the Chubby Checker smash and written by a young Cambodian student named Chum Kem. While in Italy studying ceramics, Chum had won a singing contest, and went on to release several singles in Italian. Upon his return to Cambodia, his Twist became the first rock song broadcast on National Radio in the Khmer language. While it became a smash, and Prince Siahnouk himself praised the song, it scandalized the older folk, as unfamiliar forms always tend to. But the young people were twisting their way onto a whole new path in Cambodian music, where the advice of elders was drowned out in a din of groovy new sounds.
There was Cambodia’s own Wilson Picket, Liev Tuk, doing “Rom Sue Sue” aka Dance Soul Soul, a demented screamer over Booker T and the MGs Hip Hug Her. There was Mao Sareth, whose moody Wesetrn Style ballads and soundtrack work were prevalent until 1975, one of many young singers who benefited from Sisamouth’s help at the start of their careers. Pen Ran was one of the very earliest female rock singers in the country, known for her cheeky and somewhat risqué lyrics and quote “flirtatious dancing”, and one of Sissamouth’s earliest protégés. She scandalized conservatives with forthright lyrics criticizing traditional gender roles and courtship, and owned her own sexuality in songs like “Im Unsatisfied”. A prolific lyricist and performer, her live shows were raccous affairs. While most traditional singers, including Sisamouth himself, were rather inert on stage, Pen Ron was all over the place, interacting with the crowd, shimmying across the stage, turning the whole affair into a party.
But the larger Cambodian public still wanted their melancholy ballads, and most stars throughout the golden age would churn out their fair share of sudsy weepers. But even the most melodramatic tracks were distinguished by the traditional vocal techniques that so many Cambodian pop singers were steeped in, a high, keening style that jumped rapidly, and sometimes unexpectedly, between octaves. It is this perhaps more than any other quality which distinguishes classic Cambodian pop, and there is no greater example of this than the woman Prince Siahnouk honored with the title, the Queen with the Golden Voice, Ros Serey Sothoea.
She was born in 1948 in the rural province of Batambang, famous for its singers, including Sinn Sisamouth. Her family were poor farmers, and she sang with her brother in the rice fields, making up songs. She won a local talent contest in 1963, joined a band at the age of 15, and decamped with her brother to the capitol city two years later. Soon she was singing on National Radio, in its plywood studio with a single mic hanging from the ceiling.
She would go on to perform many duets with Sinn Sisamouth, who is often credited with her discovery, and collaborate with Pen Ran, the DJ and pop singer Huoy Meas, and her future husband, Sos Mat, among many others. Her songs, numbering in the hundreds, appeared in at least 250 films, and she herself starred in a few. She is most beloved for her traditional ballads and her command of what is known as a ghost-voice technique- where the voice shifts between the highest and lowest register with such rapidity it is almost as if two voices are present. But she also released a large number of wonderfully shambolic garage tracks like “Im 16” which prompted a response song from Pen Ran hilariously titled “Im 31”, or the wacked out guitar-driven “Wicked Husband”. Like so many of the most successful Cambodian singers, her adaptability meant that there was almost no style she wouldn’t tackle, sometimes in the same song. For example, “Haircut”, which starts off as a petulant ska-and-surf tinged number but then drops into a ballad somewhere in the middle.
Some of Seryeasotea’s more traditional tracks sound like Mekong River Delta blues, with minor keys and a palpable sense of tragedy and heartbreak. Songs saturated in longing and loss were always popular with the more mature, bread-and-butter audiences, and a noted feature of nearly all Cambodian music.
While stars like Sisamouth and Sereysotea were famous and beloved throughtout the nation, not even the scene’s biggest stars made much more than a decent living. Record players were not plentiful, and singles were passed around- and bootlegged- so often that profits from recording were minimal. Performance fees were an artist’s main source of income, and stars often spent the day doing weddings or banquets, and their nights singing in clubs. Western style rock and roll decadence was practically unknown, though backstage heartbreaks- Sisamouth’s infidelities and Sery Sothoa’s abusive marriage, for instance- were plentiful. That the rewards of fame were so sparse lends an authenticity, a clarity of purpose, to their music, a need to create simply for the sake of creation.
In such a hand-to-mouth artistic economy, the patronage and support of the royal family was particularly important, and it would be easy to mistake such patronage for bread and circuses- where entertainments are encouraged as pacifiers, a way to forget your woes. And woes, there were, as the war next door presented a growing threat to Cambodia’s neutrality, and constant instability, intrigues and challenges to Siahnouk’s rule and influence were beginning to rob his Sangkum, his ideal, of its steam. As the decade lurched towards its end, the golden age was beginning to dim. If art was merely a distraction for the people, it was even more so for Siahnouk himself. The laughable vanity and cringy nationalism of much of his creative output nontwithstanding, his embrace of the arts was genuine, and it is probable that without him, there would have been no golden age at all, no go-go or hot rod rock, no rural cinemas, no new Khmer.
But it would be precisely this embrace of the arts and modernity itself which later architects of the coming genocide would find most abominable. Pop records and weird buldings, women voting, decadent dancing, all were affronts to an imagined Khmer purity- a corruption. The smiling prince who hobnobbed with pop stars, wrote his own ballads and starred in his own films became a symbol of everything most reviled by the Khmer Rouge.
But by the mid sixties, it wasn’t only budding dictators who were getting over Siahnouk. The promises of prosperity were beginning to ring hollow. Unemployment and corruption were worsening. Uprisings in the provinces, aggravated by the ever-growing Communist threats from both the North Vietnamese and the nascent Khmer Rouge, eventually exploded into an all out Civil War in 1968. As if one war weren’t enough, a secret and abominably misguided bombing campaign launched by Nixon in 1969 would kill hundreds of thousands, further destabilizing the country and unwittingly- or perhaps knowingly- assuring the ascendance of mass murderers.
But there would be a few years left to cry in before the curtain fell. The music would get darker, hair would get longer, and the bands would keep playing literally as the bombs fell around them.
Next time- Yol Aulorong, a “certifiable maniac”, becomes Cambodia’s most beloved protopunk, Nixon commits atrocities, and Phnom Penh falls.
II