Catching on: Dengue Fever makes its Hub debut on Wednesday
By Brett Milano
Boston Herald (Mass., USA)
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Call it an unintended side effect of the Vietnam War. Forty years ago, some Cambodian musicians latched onto American psychedelic rock, added their own cultural spin and came up with something quirkier. Now, a group known as Dengue Fever is out to update and revitalize that sound.
Formed in Los Angeles five years ago, Dengue Fever began as a straight-up homage to late-’60s Cambodian rock. But it has evolved into a wilder mix of girl-group pop, psychedelic jamming, soundtrack exotica and general weirdness.
Frontwoman Ch’hom Nimol, who sings in her native Khmer, was once a pop star at home; and the lineup includes a keyboardist who specializes in vintage Farfisa organ and a sax player who toured with Beck. The result is hardly typical world-music fare, but the same ears that opened to mavericks such as Tom Ze and Os Mutantes should feel at home when Dengue Fever makes its Boston debut at T.T. the Bear’s Place next week.
“When we brought the war to Vietnam, we also brought radio to the troops,” bassist and Dengue Fever founder Senon Williams said. “And whatever the Army DJs were spinning at the time, the Vietnamese and the Thai people were listening to as well. That spawned this odd hybrid of music.
“Our version isn’t exactly like the original - for one thing, they had funky recording techniques that we couldn’t even begin to mimic unless we used boom boxes and a code-a-phone mike. It was quirky in tone, the instruments were unrecognizable. Instead of emulating that, we’re trying to take it into the future.”
Los Angeles and Cambodia are closer in spirit than one might think.
“There’s a huge community in Long Beach that they call Little Phnom Penh, which has the largest number of Cambodians living outside of Cambodia,” Williams said. “I’d already been to Cambodia in ’95, and then I’d gotten into a compilation called ‘Cambodia Rocks’ that came out a few years later.
“So I started hanging out in (L.A.’s Cambodian) clubs, where the old music got played. I thought we might get one of those singers to work with us.”
Nimol’s family is something of a Cambodian pop dynasty: Both her siblings won the equivalent of a Grammy at home. Nimol was hitting stardom when she emigrated.
“She basically came to visit (the United States) and didn’t want to go home,” Williams said. “And for a while she was making better money singing at weddings. We had to use a translator when she joined the band because she spoke almost no English, but it’s become more like a family.”
Despite the music’s celebratory sound, Williams points out that many of the original Cambodian rockers were executed under Pol Pot’s regime.
“That’s what happened to the most prolific songwriters who wrote some of the songs we cover,” he said. “When the Khmer Rouge came in, you could hear an optimism at first. There was a new economy and architecture, people were celebrating the fact that they were alive. But then things went south fast. So what we’re doing is partly an homage to all those philosophers, educators and artists.”
Dengue Fever, with Okay Thursday, at TT the Bear’s Place, Cambridge, on Wednesday. Tickets: $10; 617-492-2327.
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