Daniel Nelson

There have been many ways of looking at the secret US mass-bombing of Cambodia and of the Khmer Rouge’s subsequent reign of terror – both among the greatest political crimes of the 20th century – but rock ‘n’ roll hasn’t been one of them.

Until now.
Dont Think Ive Forgotten: Cambodias Lost Rock and Roll

Dont Think Ive Forgotten: Cambodias Lost Rock and Roll

Image by Dont Think Ive Forgotten

Don’t Think I’ve forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll is a documentary about post-independence changes in the country’s popular music scene.

Starting in the 1950s, newsreel shots show a reasonably prosperous Phnom Penh, with delightful clips of a cultured supreme ruler, King Sihanouk, who ordered a ministries to have orchestras: “An explosion, a complete opening to Western culture.”

Musician Stanley Hong remembers a friend in France bringing back a modern record, and pop music really taking off: “When we were young we loved being modern.” It was the exact counterpart of British youngsters in the 1950s and ‘60s discovering US “race music”.

In Cambodia, initially it was mostly French pop, but Cuban and Latin influences were also powerful. Then Cliff Richard and the Shadows made their presence felt (“It created such an echo inside us”) and a succession of guitar bands. Most modern music, though, was suffused with a Cambodian grace and restraint.  In London, at the same time, I hated the bland pop music which provided the background to my boyhood and despised Cliff Richard as an anaemic pastiche of the real deal. But it was part of change, just as was the equally vanilla Johnny Hallyday in Cambodia.

There were some differences, however: “At 2am we were still in the clubs,” recalls a member of Cambodia’s popular Bayon Band. “Then we would go and have rice porridge.”

But electric guitars and a throbbing base were not the only sounds affecting life in the country: from over the border came another, even more disruptive sound – of bombs and bullets in neighbouring Vietnam.

With US troops came, finally, hard rock. And when a military coup followed, “It opened the faucet of American money”, and American vinyl.

Then came the 200 days of carpet bombing of Cambodia – the days the music died, and “suddenly it was all gone.” Love songs gave way to patriotic messages (“Don’t be afraid to kill, chase and slaughter.”) The chaos unleashed by US firepower facilitated the Khmer Rouge takeover – the days the musicians died.

Simply but effectively, the film showcases Cambodian pop, proves a newsreel history lesson in geopolitical shifts and shows how the music followed the politics, as the surviving musicians and fans tell the story from plaintive love ditties to mass murder. The music is entertaining, the politics shocking.

It’s good to remember both.

·         Don’t Think I’ve forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll is showing at the London Film Festival, at 8.50pm on 14 October at BFI Southbank and at 12.45pm on 17 October at Rich Mix

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