Weird, probably imaginary, very convulted coincidence involving to my great regret Wu-Tang, Cambodia, Akon and my idiotic imagination

Okay. Here are three videos.

This is a hip-hop classic.



This is a cambodian hit from last year produced by a man who is quite possibly named after the song above (and sampling The Game).



This is a worldwide hit from a few months later that takes it's lyrics (as acknowledged) from the first video but has a melody in the chorus that's very reminicent of the second video:



(Okay, that's not the official video but Wyclef wouldn't allow me to embed that.)

Yup. It's barely even qualifies as a coincidence. I just thought I'd mention it, maybe the melody is from somehwere else entirely...

Khmer rap: the next episode

(previous posts here and here.)

I just got off the phone with Helene Granqvist at the production company behind Papa's Kappsäck, Good World. She gave me another bunch of interesting evidence in the Khmer hip-hop puzzle but it's still far from complete - next I'm going to try emailing the man I suspect (and Helene confirmed) is the "spider in the web", Sok Visal/Cream.

One thing she did ask me to mention is that the show is currently up for renewal and that if there's to be a second season it would be great if they got as good ratings as possible. Us non-metered viewers are probably most helpful in that regard by watching the show streamed over the internet, early and often. Here's the next episode, about the Asian underground scene in London and India.

So, what is the verdict on the social position of hip-hop in Cambodia, which was our chief outstanding question? Well, Helene only saw a fraction of it (of course) and wasn't there as a researcher but as a filmmaker on a tight schedule, but she seems to be a fairly keen observer and gave me a bunch of input.

The hip-hop scene is fairly small and difficult to access (not being regularly available in record stores) and is indeed fairly "underground" in the sense that most Cambodians aren't immediately aware of it. That it's dynamic and growing is unquestionable, though, and there seem to be hip hop fans everywhere. Mostly, and this I thought was possibly the most interesting revelation, in the countryside - hip-hop is way bigger in small towns than in the capital. I think that promises very well for the future cultural attachment of the style in Cambodia.

As suspected, the majority of the hip-hop scene (both audience and artists) comes from a fairly well-educated upper-middle-class. Cream, for instance, works as an AD in advertising and is doing fairly well off it. He is not a deportee but a returnee, having returned with his family from France in 1994 after the country opened up. In conversation, he tends to come across as a very modern and well-spoken individual, which indeed is also the impression you get from his web presence.

The biggest star in the clique is Kdep, but one of the more fascinating characters is Aping, who doesn't conform to the standard pattern. He grew up extremely poor in the shanty towns around Phnom Penh, lost his father (and one eye) before he was eight and has managed to pull himself up and put his kids through school via his hip-hop career. To me he seems to be the one with the charisma to break through to a wider audience, and Helene definitely confirmed that view.

Despite the horrors of the Khmer Rouge dictatorship (where not least practically all of the country's musicians were killed) and the ill-functioning, corrupt civil society, Helene noticed a strong sense of optimism and belief in the future. It's remarkable, I think, how such a completely broken oral tradition as the Cambodian pop music one has led to such remarkable new developments yet with such an interest in the past and the artists who are no longer present.

Well, the picture is clarifying a bit but short of a proper ethnomusicological research trip the best thing I can do next, I think, is to send Cream an e-mail. Let's see what he has to say...

Khmer, Mon, an update for you

Well, the show about Cambodian hip-hop that was suggested to me after my last post has finally aired. Papa's Kappsäck turned out to be an interesting show and well worth watching, even if a lot of airtime was wasted on silly stunts. (There's a link to a podcast above. Probably watchable even for an international audience, especially the last half hour - love the bit where Papa Dee spontaneously finds harmonic similarities between sixties Cambodian material and The Temptations.)
Unfortunately, the show really didn't provide the answers I was looking for. It featured the same artist and producer I'd already linked to (and even the same street dance teacher), explained the beginnings of the style with returnee refugees and confirmed my impression of the scene as fairly small but dynamic and growing.

As for the two main questions I had in my last post, there was little information on offer. I still have no idea how most cambodians (and the cambodian elites, and the middle class in the countryside) view the music. As for the class and social position of the participants, they're obviously not of the absolutely poorest cadre of the population, but I got the impression that they're not in the richest quadrant either - the environments and clothing were a bit contradictory, as were the statements made. I've had some experience of third world country living standards (used to live in Tanzania) but what do you make of a man in a worn-out t-shirt who lives in a fairly big but ill-maintained house and who speaks about "underground culture"?

There was one piece of new information that very much interested me: that deportees, former Khmer Rouge refugees convicted of crimes and deported from the US, played such a significant role in the scene. This involuntary injection of a culturally detached group of american urban poor makes for a very interesting and dynamic process in the creation of new culture - I wonder how other deportee groups, like those in central america, have faired in this respect?

I obviously didn't quite get the answers I wanted from Papas Kappsäck, but they might have during the filming. I'll send off an e-mail to the production company and see if they might be able to help me...