‘Elephants’ Music Composer Looks Ahead

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
29 July 2009

Following the success of the Cambodian rock opera “Where Elephants Weep,” composer Him Sophy is back to work on new music.

“Where Elephants Weep” was a contemporary show unlike anything Cambodians had seen, and Him Sophy spent seven years producing it. Now, the composer told VOA Khmer in an interview, he is creating new musical performances, including traditional music, to bring more visitors to Cambodia.

“I am composing music for Cambodian tourism called, ‘Cambodia Is a Kingdom of Wonder,” he said.

The idea is to introduce would-be visitors to Cambodia through song and video.

“This music will make the tourists in the world interested and want to visit our Cambodia,” he said.

Him Sophy said he would also like to write music to commemorate Cambodians who died under the Khmer Rouge and will produce a soundtrack for a film produced by the Women’s Media Center.

The US Embassy has asked him to write music for a concert “to remember the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cambodia and America,” he said. “I will write some rock music and a lot of pop music.”

Him Sophy earned a doctorate degree in music composition after 13 years in Moscow. He then studied three more years and received a doctorate in Arts and Science. He also took a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation to study in New York and California.

The composer has future plans for “Where Elephants Weep,” hoping to bring it to a wider audience, including a performance in Long Beach, Calif., home to the largest US population of Cambodians.

“The economic crisis has delayed us a little bit, but we will try to go there,” he said. “The Cambodians in America want to see Khmer rock opera.”

Him Sophy is working in an environment where rock and pop music are gaining popularity. There are many concerts across Cambodia, and several music companies have been able to make it in the industry.

However, Cambodia’s musicians are still weak in playing Western-style music or instruments, such as the piano, violin, trumpet, saxophone or trombone.

Meanwhile, there are few composers or songwriters who can create original Cambodian rock, choosing instead to mimic foreign songs and adding Khmer lyrics.

Him Sophy said that not many people want to create original music because Cambodia does not have a copyright law to protect their compositions. A stronger law would see more original creations, he said.

Him Sophy was scheduled to discuss his activities at a lecture on Wednesday at the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture in Phnom Penh.

Cambodia's first rock opera hopes its stage will be a bridge

The lead male character, Sam, rehearses in a Phnom Penh studio in early November.

Friday, November 28, 2008
By Miranda Leitsinger

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (CNN) -- A man strums an electric guitar while another musician blows on a buffalo horn converted into an instrument. A boy performs the traditional Cambodian monkey dance spliced in with breakdancing beats while a singer raps to the moves.

The artists are rehearsing for Cambodia's first known contemporary rock opera, "Where Elephants Weep," which makes its world debut Friday in Phnom Penh.

The production, loosely based on a classical Cambodian love story and performed in both English and Cambodian, is part of a bid to revive the arts in the Southeast Asian country, where most artists died under the Khmer Rouge, an ultra-Maoist movement bent on building an agrarian utopia.

"I think when any culture is interrupted by the tragedy of war, it's particularly important to go back and visit those (ancient) traditions, but we are in the 21st century and it's also important to bring those traditions forward," said John Burt, the show's executive producer and founding chair emeritus of Cambodian Living Arts, which commissioned the production.

"Where Elephants Weep" is the tale of two Cambodian-American men who return home after surviving the 1970s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime to reconnect with their roots but are confronted by the tragic past as well as an unfamiliar modern Cambodian society. One of them ends up in a pagoda and ultimately dead, while another falls into a doomed love affair with a leading local pop singer.

"There are many, many twists and turns in the love story that we have created that bring together the marriage of east and west and also address very specifically the clashes between east and west, between modernity and ancient life," Burt said.

Those worlds can be seen in the dance, where American and Cambodian choreographers fused traditional Cambodian dance, including using shadow puppets cut into the shape of elephants, with the back spins and handstands of breakdancing.

The music also parallels the east-west journey of the two male protagonists.

Composer Him Sophy, who studied in Russia for 13 years after surviving the Khmer Rouge labor camps, has blended rap, religious chanting, rock, his country's ancient music, operatic styles, pop and even added a Khmer Rouge propaganda song as a cell phone ringtone in the production.

Two musical ensembles will perform on the stage: a traditional Cambodian one that includes some 37 instruments such as the long-neck guitar and a one-stringed instrument; and a Western rock band outfitted with drums, an electric bass, piano and synthesizer.

"I knew before that it would be so difficult for me as a composer because traditional musical instruments are never played in big performances, Cambodian musicians never read (musical) notes, they don't work with a conductor and especially related to the tune -- the pitch of traditional instruments -- it's not enough tune to perform with the rock band," Him Sophy said.

To resolve the tune issue, the composer said he and his team "reinvented" some of the Cambodian instruments, such as the buffalo horn -- believed to be used for some 1,000 years to call elephants.

"The commission of this opera ... was to inspire and invite him (composer Him Sophy) to bring his own voice of the ancient Khmer sound into his own score that married his traditions with western pop and rock tradition," Burt said.

Most of Cambodia's artistic traditions had been passed down orally, from teacher to student, up through the 1970s. But a majority of the country's artists were some of the at least 1.7 million people -- nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population -- who died under the Khmer Rouge from execution, disease, starvation and overwork, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

Five of the regime's former leaders are awaiting trial before a U.N.-backed tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The loss of Cambodia's artists spurred efforts to find survivors who could instruct future generations about the country's ancient arts, some of the instruments of which can be seen carved on the temples of Angkor Wat, which are up to 1,200 years old, in Siem Reap.

Cambodian Living Arts now has 20 master artists teaching nearly 400 students, plus an archive sound studio. The group is expanding its efforts to include commissions of new work, such as the rock opera.

Him Sophy lost two brothers to the Khmer Rouge.

One of the songs he composed for the production, "No Mother," is about those who lost their parents under the Khmer Rouge, and the main character, Sam, has suppressed many of his painful memories of being a child soldier during that era.

"Of course, the tragedy for Cambodian people, I cannot explain it all, but I would like to show it through the opera," he said.

The story is not just a reprisal of the country's tragic past, but a look at it today: there are scenes of beer girls and nightclubs, Buddhist religious ceremonies and a planned traditional arranged marriage, and the newly rich living in freshly-acquired luxury homes.

Burt said a Cambodian-American friend inspired him to bring forward the story of those refugees who go back and "land in this very betwixt and between place, where they are not really American, they are not really Cambodian."

The cast includes Cambodian-Americans, one who said the experience has been a homecoming of sorts for her.

When Amara Chhin-Lawrence, 27, came to Cambodia for the project in 2003, "it was very much a feeling of being at home ... because there wasn't this dual nature anymore."

"This is where I feel like my yearning for my homeland will rest," she added.

Burt, who had to have a theater renovated to accommodate the size and scope of the show since there was no suitable venue in the country, aims to take it to other cities around the world but believed it was important to have the world premiere in Cambodia.

"Cambodia soon will and should have the stages that can welcome international touring shows, that can welcome the shows of their own people, and our hope is that this show really raises the possibility for that to occur," he said.

The creative team also hopes audiences will view Cambodia differently after seeing the show.

The production presents "Cambodia in the light that it so urgently needs to be shown in," Filloux said. "And that is not in terms of the Khmer Rouge regime, not in terms of looking in the rearview mirror, but in looking towards the resilience of spirit of Cambodian people, at the enormous challenges that they have faced and how their art and their sensibility and their spirituality can utterly transform them."

"Where Elephants Weep" runs through December 7.

‘Elephants’ Composer Sought Culture Push

Him Sophy, composer of “Where Elephants Weep”

By Nuch Sarita, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
11 November 2008

Click here to listen to the Khmer audio program

Cambodian-born and Russian-educated, Him Sophy is the composer behind “Where Elephants Weep,” a modern rock opera that has its roots in both Cambodia and the West and is coming soon to Phnom Penh.

The story is a modern version of the “Tum Teav” fable, where a man named Sam returns to post-holocaust Cambodia and becomes a monk before falling into a tragic love affair.

Him Sophy, a professor of music at Phnom Penh’s Royal University of Fine Arts and the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said he wanted to incorporate rock-and-roll both conceptually and artistically. He typically has not written for rock or traditional Cambodian music, but the show, which debuts in Phnom Penh later this month, incorporates both.

“We played together with the rock band, sometimes separately,” he said Monday, as a guest on “Hello VOA.” “Sometimes the solo is only rock, sometimes only Cambodian traditional, and then they come together and have another sound that you never heard before.”

The hope was to blend the styles and push contemporary Cambodian culture forward, Him Sophy said.

“Where Elephants Weep” showed in the US last year.

“It was a journey of both tragedy and hope, and one that involved cross-cultural collaboration among many people behind the scenes,” Samkhan Khoeun, co-chairman for Rock Opera Khmer, in Lowell, Mass., who was also a guest on “Hello VOA” Monday.

The rock opera, which was started six years ago, is the latest undertaking of Cambodian Living Arts, a project of World Education, he said.

Cambodian Living Arts was founded in 1998 by John Burt, the show’s executive producer, with Arn Chorn-Pond, a Cambodian refugee who was adopted by Americans and lived for a time in Lowell.

The goal of the organization is to revive and support Cambodian arts, which were nearly eradicated under the regime of the Khmer Rouge.

Where Elephants Weep [-Transcript of NPR interview with the show producers]

By Andrea Shea
wbur.org (Boston's NPR News Source, Mass., USA)

"Where Elephants Weep" is previewing in Lowell from tonight through Sunday.

LOWELL, Mass. - April 27, 2007 - Two million Cambodians died during Pol Pot's genocide campaign in the 1970s, including 90 percent of the country's artists.

Since then, Cambodia's artistic culture has suffered. But this weekend the first known contemporary Cambodian opera previews in Lowell, home to the United States' second- largest Cambodian population.

The love story, which fuses traditional Cambodian music with rock and roll, will eventually head to Phnom Penh next year. WBUR's Andrea Shea dropped in on a rehearsal at Lowell High School and has this story.

TEXT OF STORY

ANDREA SHEA: The new opera is called 'Where Elephants Weep.' It opens with the bleating of an ancient elephant horn. On stage right a raised platform supports 5 Cambodian musicians. They wield a variety of exotic, ancient-looking instruments: wood winds, gongs, drums, a long-necked lute. The show's Executive Producer John Burt says he jumped through hoops to get this ensemble into America for the performance. And, he says, it was tough to track them down in Cambodia.

JOHN BURT: Everything is on the grass roots level in Cambodia and there's extraordinary talent living right underneath the surface.

SHEA: Burt is also co-founder of the Lowell based preservation organization 'Cambodian Living Arts.' He says he started the group with Arn Chorn-Pond, a well-known human rights activist and flute player who survived Pol Pot's rampage.

BURT: One of the things that happens with the devastation of a genocide period when so many people perish who hold the history of those traditions is that it diminishes the possibility of new ideas to emerge.

SHEA: And what could be newer than a Cambodian opera hybrid that fuses traditional music with the most Western of music forms: rock and roll. A Cambodian rock band warms up stage left. At this recent rehearsal American Librettist Catherin Filloux goes over some changes to the script. Sam is the main character in the opera. He was raised in the United States after his family fled Pol Pot, but Burt says he goes back to Cambodia to seek his cultural identity, his roots, and his soul.

BURT: And in his return he is confronted not only with not only the ancient traditional world of Cambodia but the modern world that he is in conflict with.

SHEA: Once home Sam falls in love with a pop singer name Bopah. Burt says the Romeo and Juliet-style plot line represents the conflict between East and West. And the musical mashup does, too. For the opera's composer, Him Sophy, incorporating rock and roll works conceptually and artistically.

HIM SOPHY: Because Sam he grew up in US he got big influence from American culture, especially rock music, I think the best in the world is American rock music...important that you need to compose good music for rock for traditional, for classical, western whatever that's no problem.

SHEA: Him Sophy one of 3 classically trained composers in all of Cambodia. He usually writes for Western-style orchestras, not rock bands or traditional Cambodian musicians.

SOPHY: They play together with the rock band sometime separately sometimes soloists only rock sometimes only traditional, and then they come together and they have a different sound that you never heard before.

SHEA: But it's also risky to make something new by marrying musics from two very different cultures, according to Mark Rossi. Rossi is a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He's a composer, Jazz pianist and world musician with an expertise in Indian-Jazz fusion.

MARK ROSSI: It's got to work on it's own terms and that it's got to say something new in a way that's never been said before. And it's very doable in the hands of a good composer with a good imagination and a good sense of balancing the musical forces and helping to find the differences and helping to find common ground to unify them.

SHEA: Composer Him Sophy is thrilled to have a chance to work on a synthesis such as 'Where Elephants Weep' because he says there are noopportunities to create something like this at home in Cambodia. The artistic environment there is grim and hasn't recovered since the time of the Killing Fields. Sophy himself almost died in a labor camp in the mid-1970's.

SOPHY: I was only a teenager but I worked so hard to survive myself my body looked as skeleton and no energy. After the genocidal regime I thought I was a person who lost very much, I lost my youth, I lost my time but I think my brain still worked very well so I needed to work very hard in my studies.

SHEA: He continued his musical studies in Russia. And now...years later...Sophy is working with electric guitars and Cambodian-American rap artists...such as Lowell-based Tony Real. Real plays a guard in the opera and says as a second-generation refugee he's deeply connected to his homeland.

TONY REAL: We want Cambodia to be known for its arts and culture, not just for the killing fields, and now its beginning.

SHEA: And with 'Where Elephants Weep' composer Sophy hopes to push Cambodian culture forward.

SOPHY: Because Rock and Roll is music right now, not long time ago, and traditional ensemble in Cambodia exists a very long time ago...you can say 100 years ago or 1000 years ago and now we combine with the Rock and roll because we live for the future.

SHEA: But, Him Sophy adds, we should never forget the past. For WBUR I'm Andrea Shea.