Cambodian surf rock artist Ros SereysotheaWhen a friend invited me to a “Cambodian surf party” in his run-down apartment in Sheffield, England, I figured he was just being a pretentious idiot. It’s a retro novelty, I thought. The kind of thing people who collect surrealist-noise vinyl lose their minds over because it’s kitsch and obscure.Upon arrival in Sheffield—where there was a distinct lack of anything Cambodian—my drunk friend rushed straight over to his laptop and loaded a song up on YouTube. “Listen to this,” he said. “It’ll blow your mind.” The song was "Jam 10 Kai Theit" by Ros Sereysothea and it sounded like all the best bits of Jefferson Airplane, a barbershop quartet, and the soundtrack to a Tarantino film squeezed into three minutes of distorted wonder.
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"Penh Jet Thai Bong Mouy (Ago Go)" by Ros SereysotheaSereysothea herself was last seen in Phnom Penh before it fell to the encircling Khmer Rouge forces. One account has her leaving the city under the protection of a small band of remaining government forces. Another has her put in charge of feeding pigs in a Khmer work camp. It’s also rumored she was executed for unknown reasons in 1977.However, none of these accounts have been confirmed. All that’s certain is that, after the genocide, she was never heard from again.Sin Sisamuth on the front cover of a Cambodian compilation CD. Scan viaIf Ros Sereysothea was the Cambodian Janis Joplin, then Sin Sisamuth was the country's Frank Sinatra and John Lennon packed into one.Like Sereysothea, he became famous singing traditional Cambodian pop songs and ballads, but it was the introduction of a rock 'n’ roll backing band—and Sisamuth’s playful meddling with Western melodies and musical tropes—that led to the creation of his most memorable work.You only have to scroll through YouTube comments on uploads of his songs to see the kind of adoration he garnered as a musician; many young Cambodians refer to him as “grand master Sisamuth” to this day.“Sin Sisamuth in particular has, as far as I can tell, never lost his place as an idol, an incarnation of a specifically Khmer modernity by which artistic perfection took innovative yet recognizably culturally specific turns,” said Professor Thompson.
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Two hours of Sin Sisamuth songsPart of what makes some music timeless is the story behind it. Just as listening to Daniel Johnston’s erratic outsider folk becomes a wholly different experience upon learning of his schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, knowing the grim fate of the Cambodian rockers is sure to influence the way their music sounds.But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If the stories of Sin Sisamuth, Ros Sereysothea, and the countless other musicians who perished on the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields can help bring their music to a wider audience, then they need to keep being told.Follow Daniel Woolfson on Twitter.