There’s a great confluence of tones and influence in “Chnam Oun Dop Pram Muoy.” It is an excellent representative of the rich convergence of styles derived from historical and geopolitical factors from that 60s/70s era of Cambodian pop rock.
All the joy and artistry of the era was soon recontextualized into the brutal routing of history, undermining that expression and largely, if temporarily, extinguishing it. With greed, paranoia and might of crushing external empires coming up against a ruthless warlord’s genocidal backlash that rose to greet it, innumerable innocents were caught in between and the artist Ros Serey Sothea appears to have been among the victims.
Hegel wrote that “history is a slaughterhouse.” Gibbon that “History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes.” But there remains a great soundtrack in between or even during the running of the gauntlet, some record of a vision for an alternative future.
Plainly & Painfully 