ទំនួញអប្សារា ច្រៀងដោយ យឹងយន
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Tvo5TzUk0
បងស្រណោះវាលស្រែ ច្រៀងដោយ យឹងយន
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnzQrcl7LO8
រាត្រីថ្នមស្នេហ៏ ច្រៀងដោយ យឹងយន
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPox9wVacHw
Showing posts with label Cambodian traditional music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cambodian traditional music. Show all posts
Saturday, February 11, 2012
The difference between "Breun" and "Kantrim" music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkN8i2R0Yn8
តាមរក ប្រពន្ឋ ៤ឆ្នាំ (បទកន្ទ្រឹម)
Looking for a wife for 4 years already (Kantrem)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHgqv25ePfg
ស្រណោះផ្លូវវែង
បទ កន្ទ្រឹម បូរាណ្យ ច្រៀង ដោយ យឹង យន និង ទ្រ ដោយ អុំ លន់
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIWdYwWTTS4
ចំរៀងគែន ឬ ប្រឺណ ដោយ មត ហៃ គង្គារ និង រ៉ាប់ បាន់
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YmuKp-W8Rs
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Arts Festival Review: O Cambodia
 |
| Singer Him Savy (centre) and the Tre So Band are core figures in O Cambodia, a response to the brutality of Pol Pot's regime. Photo / Supplied |
By William Dart
NZHerald.co.nz (New Zealand)
Music
What: O Cambodia
Where: Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber
There was no questioning the sincerity of this project, a response by two Cambodian and two New Zealand composers to the appalling abuses of the Pol Pot regime. Alas, the deeply moving message of O Cambodia fell upon far fewer ears in Thursday's concert than it should have.
The programme, played without the interruption of applause, opened with Chinary Ung's In Memoriam for vocalising piano trio.
It was technically testing for NZTrio, but cellist Ashley Brown was totally at ease with singing and playing simultaneously.
The strenuousness and utter concentration conveyed by the musicians assisted a certain sense of catharsis, with momentum provided by Ung's textural and harmonic ingenuities.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
‘Compagnie’ Seeks Balance for Tradition, Innovation
Bosba Panh practices singing with her band. (Photo: Courtesy of La Compagnie BosbaPanh)Nuch Sarita, VOA Khmer
Washington, D.C Tuesday, 25 May 2010
“It doesn’t mean we’ve diminished our culture. We’re actually preserving it. But we play in a way that makes the songs evolve. We want to create new work that puts contemporary and traditional instruments playing together—which gives significance to a culture, to blossom and progress.”Today’s artists are trying to find a way to balance the conservation and the evolution of traditional Cambodian music and dance. Among them are the artists of the La Compagnie Bosbapanh, which recently released two DVDs of a 2009 concert.
The DVD, “Neak Me, or “Our Mothers,” interprets a repertoire of songs, images and dance and features the talent of 12-year-old Panh Bosba and 100 other accomplished Cambodian musicians.
Bosba Panh’s father and artistic director, Panh Meng Heang, told “Hello VOA” on Monday it had been a challenge to bring so many performers to work with a much younger singer.
“It doesn’t mean we’ve diminished our culture,” he said. “We’re actually preserving it. But we play in a way that makes the songs evolve. We want to create new work that puts contemporary and traditional instruments playing together—which gives significance to a culture, to blossom and progress.”
Panh Meng Heang said that in “Neak Me” the traditional song “Boung Soung,” he used a traditional Khmer dance troupe and five different orchestras that mixed traditional music with popular, Western classical and brass band. This ensemble also performed “Concierto de Aranjuez,” “Ave Maria,” La Vie en Rose,” “Summer Time,” traditional Khmer “Mohori” and the songs of former king Norodom Sihanouk and 1960s sensation Sin Sisamouth.
Master Em Theay, who also joined “Hello VOA” on Monday, was a teacher of traditional Khmer singing and dancing at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. At age 7 she was chosen by the queen at the time, Sisowath Kossomak, to dance at the Royal Palace. She danced and sang for the monarchs for many years until the Khmer Rouge took over the country.
“Art and dance have been very important for Khmer life from ancient times until now,” she said. “Every time I teach the youth the art of dancing, I feel hope for Cambodia’s future. I feel that Khmer choreography is alive and that it will last and continue to develop from this generation to the next.”
She remembered the time she sang for the king and queen at the Royal Palace and taught Sin Sisamouth and Sos Matt, two national icons, to sing “Mohori” for the King.
“The three children of Meng Heang are very talented,” she said. “I didn’t put much effort into teaching any one of them. They learned fast and worked very hard. They are the best students among my students. Khmer arts and culture will not be diminished as long as Cambodia exists on this planet.”
Panh Bosba is now 13 this year. She was raised by her Cambodian father, Panh Meng Heang, and Laotian mother, Lili Sisombath, and educated at a French school. She speaks Khmer, French, and English, but she sings many foreign languages. She plays guitar, violin and piano during her songs. Her uncle is the filmmaker Panh Rithy.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Blind master the last link to Cambodia's classical musical legacy
Cambodian Chapey Dorng Veng (Khmer guitar) Kong Nai plays music as his wife listens at his house in Phnom Penh, in this May 11, 2007, photo. Over the blast of an electric guitar shuddering out of a karaoke machine nearby, Kong Nai was trying to speak of a time when Cambodian music could reach back through the millennia. AFPBy Ros Sothea
PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Over the blast of an electric guitar blaring out of a karaoke machine nearby, Kong Nai is trying to make himself heard as he talks of a time when Cambodian music reached back through millennia.
It could channel those things that defined his country, both simple and ornate, he says - from the shimmer of a green rice field to the gilded royal courts of the great builder kings.
But he stops his story, perhaps unable to think over the howl of the karaoke's tortured speakers.
Or perhaps he is simply unwilling to contemplate the future of his older, gentler craft, under assault from modern tastes with little consideration for old men and their music.
For many younger people, fed with a steady diet of glossy Thai and Chinese-style pop, Kong Nai is an anachronism and his chapey - a boxy instrument with a long, graceful neck that is strummed like a banjo to create a repetitive, droning counterpoint to chanted poems or improvised songs - is uncool.
"I have no hope," he finally said, sitting on the porch of his tumbledown one-room house in one of the capital's slums.
"The chapey cannot compare to this hip-hop," Kong Nai adds, gesturing towards the nearby house from which the karaoke accompanying dancing at a young people's party is blaring.
"Only a few of the old masters are still alive to play the ancient music - what of it when we pass away?" he said. "I am sure the music could easily die."
Officials acknowledge that Cambodia is in danger of losing a piece of its rich artistic legacy.
"People don't understand the value" of the old master musicians, of Cambodia's brightly costumed morality tales and epic dramas, played out through complicated dances and heavily nuanced songs, said Hang Suth, director of the culture ministry's art department.
Kong Nai, like the other few survivors of Cambodia's cultural upheavals, are the last links to a quickly fading past, say officials who also warn that when they die Cambodia will lose part of its soul
Blinded by smallpox at the age of four, Kong Nai had, by the time he was seven, allowed the darkness that defined his world to also poison his heart.
His disability kept him from school and for years made him the constant victim of small cruelties inflicted by the other children in his village in Kampot province, in southern Cambodia.
"I found life meaningless and wanted to kill myself sometimes. I worried for my future, how I would survive because I couldn't even walk without someone helping me," he said. "I felt useless."
But one evening, as he prepared to sleep, an unfamiliar sound pierced Kong Nai's gloom, carried across the fields from a nearby village where itinerant minstrels had been hired to perform at a ceremony. It was the sound of the chapey.
"I immediately called my mother to take me there," he said, recalling that inspirational flash that would change his life.
For the next several years he memorised poetry at a nearby Buddhist temple, and spent weeks during Cambodian holiday seasons traveling through villages chanting poems in return for small amounts of rice or money.
He first picked up the chapey when he was 13 years old, after struggling to make his voice sound like the instrument.
Surrounded by a musical family - Kong Nai's relatives were masters of traditional Cambodian instruments, as well as chanting Buddhist texts and composing poetry - he quickly excelled.
By 15, Kong Nai had taken up the chapey professionally. His reputation spread among the villages in his province and other parts of the country, where he was invited to sing. His popularity earned him the nickname "Handsome Kong Nai".
"I would never have expected that a blind man like me could earn so much money," he said, a broad, toothy smile spreading across his face beneath the dark glasses that, almost as much as his music, have become a trademark.
The 1960s passed for Kong Nai in a blur of celebrity, wealth and romantic intrigue.
He courted and then married a young woman, Tat Chen, whom he had last set eyes on 14 years earlier when they were both four years old.
She sang beautifully, he said, and her voice helped him visualise what she might look like as an 18-year-old.
"I thought I'd be alone forever - I never expected that she would marry me," he said.
But his relationship was not without drama - a rival for her affections threatened to kill Kong Nai, but by 1963 the couple had settled into an easy domestic routine as his fame grew.
As the war in neighbouring Vietnam escalated, Cambodia enjoyed unprecedented peace and underwent a cultural renaissance, with the chapey's popularity reaching its height in the late 1960s and early 1970s as newly-minted recordings of famous musicians spread across Cambodia.
Kong Nai was among the tradition's superstars and by far the richest in his home province, renowned for his free-style improvisational skills that helped the art form evolve beyond simple poetic recitals.
But Cambodia's drift into the inferno that was consuming the region was inevitable. In 1970 Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the country's leader and a patron of the arts, was ousted in a coup by his top military advisor, General Lon Nol.
"We weren't happy for long after that," Kong Nai said. The country was collapsing in on itself, its corrupt disorganised government battling an increasingly emboldened communist insurgency.
Kong Nai could still work, walking between villages that remained untouched by war, but the crowds were evaporating, and with them the money.
"The country had changed - people didn't care about good music. They cared only for their security," he said.
"What I earned from the chapey was just enough to feed myself from day-to-day."
Like tens of thousands of rural Cambodians, Kong Nai was quickly absorbed into the "liberated zones" controlled by the communist guerillas, known by then as the Khmer Rouge.
Under their rule, he was ordered to only perform songs that described the suffering of farmers under Lon Nol.
"I couldn't sing what I wanted or I would be killed," he said, but Cambodia's misery, and his own, were only to deepen.
Kong Nai was, miraculously, allowed to keep his chapey after the Khmer Rouge wrestled control of the country from Lon Nol and began implementing their draconian vision of an agrarian utopia in 1975.
The arts, music included, had no role in the revolution and like the educated classes performers were slaughtered by the hundreds. An entire cultural legacy was being extinguished.
Kong Nai's role in this new Cambodia was to inspire those toiling on a vast collective farm in southern Cambodia with a brief recital of revolutionary songs once a day to which, he says, "people were forced to listen".
Within a few months it was decided that "there will be no more chapey", the musician recalled, and he was assigned first to harvest corn and beans, and then to making palm rope.
"I worked as hard as the others, but was not given the same amount of food because the Khmer Rouge felt that a blind man could not do the same amount of labour," he said. "A scoop of porridge was my food."
His family was assigned to a remote area of the country, and Kong Nai, alone and without his music, was more isolated and vulnerable than most. "No song, no music and no chapey. We only heard the voice of Khmer Rouge soldiers," he said.
In its final years, the regime's paranoid leadership had begun to turn on itself and increasing numbers of people were disappearing in purges.
Kong Nai's family came under suspicion after being accused by another villager of being American spies and he was imprisoned for three months.
Later, he said, he was sure to be marked for death when a regime cadre ordered the disabled and elderly to prepare to leave for somewhere else.
"I knew my family and I would die," he said.
Instead, he was left overnight in the forest after one of his children was wounded in a landmine blast. The following day, invading Vietnamese troops overran the area.
It was early 1979 and Kong Nai, and his long-suffering country, were free of the Khmer Rouge.
It could channel those things that defined his country, both simple and ornate, he says - from the shimmer of a green rice field to the gilded royal courts of the great builder kings.
But he stops his story, perhaps unable to think over the howl of the karaoke's tortured speakers.
Or perhaps he is simply unwilling to contemplate the future of his older, gentler craft, under assault from modern tastes with little consideration for old men and their music.
For many younger people, fed with a steady diet of glossy Thai and Chinese-style pop, Kong Nai is an anachronism and his chapey - a boxy instrument with a long, graceful neck that is strummed like a banjo to create a repetitive, droning counterpoint to chanted poems or improvised songs - is uncool.
"I have no hope," he finally said, sitting on the porch of his tumbledown one-room house in one of the capital's slums.
"The chapey cannot compare to this hip-hop," Kong Nai adds, gesturing towards the nearby house from which the karaoke accompanying dancing at a young people's party is blaring.
"Only a few of the old masters are still alive to play the ancient music - what of it when we pass away?" he said. "I am sure the music could easily die."
Officials acknowledge that Cambodia is in danger of losing a piece of its rich artistic legacy.
"People don't understand the value" of the old master musicians, of Cambodia's brightly costumed morality tales and epic dramas, played out through complicated dances and heavily nuanced songs, said Hang Suth, director of the culture ministry's art department.
Kong Nai, like the other few survivors of Cambodia's cultural upheavals, are the last links to a quickly fading past, say officials who also warn that when they die Cambodia will lose part of its soul
Blinded by smallpox at the age of four, Kong Nai had, by the time he was seven, allowed the darkness that defined his world to also poison his heart.
His disability kept him from school and for years made him the constant victim of small cruelties inflicted by the other children in his village in Kampot province, in southern Cambodia.
"I found life meaningless and wanted to kill myself sometimes. I worried for my future, how I would survive because I couldn't even walk without someone helping me," he said. "I felt useless."
But one evening, as he prepared to sleep, an unfamiliar sound pierced Kong Nai's gloom, carried across the fields from a nearby village where itinerant minstrels had been hired to perform at a ceremony. It was the sound of the chapey.
"I immediately called my mother to take me there," he said, recalling that inspirational flash that would change his life.
For the next several years he memorised poetry at a nearby Buddhist temple, and spent weeks during Cambodian holiday seasons traveling through villages chanting poems in return for small amounts of rice or money.
He first picked up the chapey when he was 13 years old, after struggling to make his voice sound like the instrument.
Surrounded by a musical family - Kong Nai's relatives were masters of traditional Cambodian instruments, as well as chanting Buddhist texts and composing poetry - he quickly excelled.
By 15, Kong Nai had taken up the chapey professionally. His reputation spread among the villages in his province and other parts of the country, where he was invited to sing. His popularity earned him the nickname "Handsome Kong Nai".
"I would never have expected that a blind man like me could earn so much money," he said, a broad, toothy smile spreading across his face beneath the dark glasses that, almost as much as his music, have become a trademark.
The 1960s passed for Kong Nai in a blur of celebrity, wealth and romantic intrigue.
He courted and then married a young woman, Tat Chen, whom he had last set eyes on 14 years earlier when they were both four years old.
She sang beautifully, he said, and her voice helped him visualise what she might look like as an 18-year-old.
"I thought I'd be alone forever - I never expected that she would marry me," he said.
But his relationship was not without drama - a rival for her affections threatened to kill Kong Nai, but by 1963 the couple had settled into an easy domestic routine as his fame grew.
As the war in neighbouring Vietnam escalated, Cambodia enjoyed unprecedented peace and underwent a cultural renaissance, with the chapey's popularity reaching its height in the late 1960s and early 1970s as newly-minted recordings of famous musicians spread across Cambodia.
Kong Nai was among the tradition's superstars and by far the richest in his home province, renowned for his free-style improvisational skills that helped the art form evolve beyond simple poetic recitals.
But Cambodia's drift into the inferno that was consuming the region was inevitable. In 1970 Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the country's leader and a patron of the arts, was ousted in a coup by his top military advisor, General Lon Nol.
"We weren't happy for long after that," Kong Nai said. The country was collapsing in on itself, its corrupt disorganised government battling an increasingly emboldened communist insurgency.
Kong Nai could still work, walking between villages that remained untouched by war, but the crowds were evaporating, and with them the money.
"The country had changed - people didn't care about good music. They cared only for their security," he said.
"What I earned from the chapey was just enough to feed myself from day-to-day."
Like tens of thousands of rural Cambodians, Kong Nai was quickly absorbed into the "liberated zones" controlled by the communist guerillas, known by then as the Khmer Rouge.
Under their rule, he was ordered to only perform songs that described the suffering of farmers under Lon Nol.
"I couldn't sing what I wanted or I would be killed," he said, but Cambodia's misery, and his own, were only to deepen.
Kong Nai was, miraculously, allowed to keep his chapey after the Khmer Rouge wrestled control of the country from Lon Nol and began implementing their draconian vision of an agrarian utopia in 1975.
The arts, music included, had no role in the revolution and like the educated classes performers were slaughtered by the hundreds. An entire cultural legacy was being extinguished.
Kong Nai's role in this new Cambodia was to inspire those toiling on a vast collective farm in southern Cambodia with a brief recital of revolutionary songs once a day to which, he says, "people were forced to listen".
Within a few months it was decided that "there will be no more chapey", the musician recalled, and he was assigned first to harvest corn and beans, and then to making palm rope.
"I worked as hard as the others, but was not given the same amount of food because the Khmer Rouge felt that a blind man could not do the same amount of labour," he said. "A scoop of porridge was my food."
His family was assigned to a remote area of the country, and Kong Nai, alone and without his music, was more isolated and vulnerable than most. "No song, no music and no chapey. We only heard the voice of Khmer Rouge soldiers," he said.
In its final years, the regime's paranoid leadership had begun to turn on itself and increasing numbers of people were disappearing in purges.
Kong Nai's family came under suspicion after being accused by another villager of being American spies and he was imprisoned for three months.
Later, he said, he was sure to be marked for death when a regime cadre ordered the disabled and elderly to prepare to leave for somewhere else.
"I knew my family and I would die," he said.
Instead, he was left overnight in the forest after one of his children was wounded in a landmine blast. The following day, invading Vietnamese troops overran the area.
It was early 1979 and Kong Nai, and his long-suffering country, were free of the Khmer Rouge.
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