Dengue Fever: "Sni Bong" (2004)

Dengue Fever is based in Los Angeles but is fronted by Cambodian popular singer Nimol Ch’hom, who sings in Khmer and English. Nimol was born in Cambodia to a musical family and grew up partially in a refugee camp in Thailand. Her sister Chorvin and brother Bunyong are both well known singers in Cambodia. Nimol won a national singing competition in 1997 and came to the U.S. a few years later.

Dengue Fever was started by Ethan and Zac Holtzman in the early 2000s. Ethan Holtzman had been traveling in Cambodia and had heard some of the Cambodian music of the 1960s and early 70s. In that era, Cambodian artists were combining traditional Cambodian singing with the blues and psychedelic rock that was arriving via both the radio and American soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Sin Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea were great stars of this kind of music. Both of these perished in the genocide that the Khmer Rouge enacted in Cambodia in the late 1970s. The Holtzman brothers wanted to recreate and expand this kind of music. They brought Nimol into the band after auditioning numerous Cambodian singers in the LA area. Originally, they recorded covers of 1960s Cambodian songs but later expanded their repertoire to include their own songs (written in English and then partially translated into Khmer) and other world music genres. 

Below you'll find Sni Bong, the song played in class, another Dengue Fever song, and then a couple of original 1960s Cambodian tracks.

 

 

You may not know anything of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide. In 1975, the radical Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge dreamed of creating the perfect communist state. They believed that this could only be done by people who were peasants and were free from Western influence. Intellectuals of all kinds, as well as merchants, artisans, and many others, were irredeemably contaminated either by their contact with the West or their class position. The Khmer Rouge believed that they could only be killed. Further, they enforced a "root and branch" policy. Anyone considered an enemy, would be murdered along with their entire family. In all, it is estimated that more than 2 million, about one quarter of the Cambodian population at that time, was murdered by the regime. Cambodian artists of all kinds were murdered. Singers such as Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea were particular targets. No one knows what happened to either of them or, for that matter, most of those who died in the genocide. One story claims that Sinn Sisamouth begged to sing a last song before being shot, but was murdered before he could finish it.

Below the tracks you'll find a photo of Choeung Ek, one of the execution grounds outside of Phnom Penh. At least 9,000 died there. The pagoda holds the skulls of 5,000 of them.

And here's a track from Sinn Sisamouth

And another from Ros Sereysothea

Choeung Ek Stupa

It's hard to read the sign in the bottom picture but it tells you that these are the skulls of young people, aged 15-20.