Cambodia & Archive: San Yoeun, a successful singer who survived the Khmer Rouge
- Partenaire Presse
- 20 hours ago
- 5 min read
Life under the Khmer Rouge regime was brutal for many, and every Cambodian who lived through it has a unique story to tell about how they survived the massacres, purges, famines, and upheavals that characterised those years.
One of these survivors is San Yoeun, one of the country's most famous singers, even during those dark years. Many singers know what it's like to have to fight to keep their music career alive, but in her case, it was her career that kept the singer alive.
San Yoeun, 67, her skin dark and wrinkled from the sun, sits under her half-tiled, half-zinc roofed house and rocks a baby in a hammock until he stops crying and falls asleep.
‘Oh my dear children, listen please, I'm going to tell you a story... your father reminds you of it every day... You all live peacefully under the new flag of Cambodia...’ These are the words of a song she remembers from the Khmer Rouge era.
Today, Yoeun lives in Village 6 of Prek Tanong commune, in the Koh Sotin district of Kampong Cham province, where she often sings to her 20-month-old grandson while his parents work in Phnom Penh.
The song Yoeun whispers to her grandson clearly shows her communist inspiration with the title ‘Please, children, don't forget the freshly spilled blood of our comrades!’ It was recorded as a duet with a male singer.
It is one of more than 300 songs recorded and published by the state media under Pol Pot between 17 April 1975 and 7 January 1979. These songs were compiled and produced on cassettes for broadcast on loudspeaker systems in canals, dams and rice fields throughout Cambodia, at a time when most people — young and old, men and women — were forced to work endlessly against their will, like animals.
Today, very few Cambodians acknowledge having heard these songs or seen the singers perform them. The names of the singers have mostly been forgotten.
Those who are familiar with the music of the Khmer Rouge era have often heard about it through a documentary on life in Democratic Kampuchea produced by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-CAM), while others have discovered this music on YouTube or heard it in certain cafés in Phnom Penh.
In an interview with our partners at The Post, Yoeun talks about her life during the Khmer Rouge era, a period in Cambodian history so dark for its brutality, torture and killings. Up to a quarter of the population was killed — some were simply eliminated by the Khmer Rouge, while many others died of starvation.
‘At the end of 1973, I was recruited by the leaders of the Khmer National Liberation Movement (Khmer Rouge) to begin artistic training, when I was only 17 years old,’ she says.
According to Yoeun, by the end of 1973, her hometown, the district and commune of Koh Sotin, were under the control of the Khmer Rouge, who at the time were fighting the government of General Lon Nol.
About a month after her selection, Yoeun was sent to Sithor Kandal district in Prey Veng province to study with a group of other artists selected from eastern Cambodia. She was given a new nickname, ‘Sim.’ In fact, everyone was given a new name upon arrival — more than 100 Cambodians, including about 30 women.
‘I don't know why they changed our names like that,’ says Yoeun, although it can be assumed that it was a gesture in favour of Pol Pot's “Year Zero” project and his belief that the old civilisation had to be destroyed to make way for the construction of a new one.
After the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power and she was reunited with her parents, they told her that in 1975 they had asked Khmer Rouge officials for news of her, but no one had ever known who she was.
‘In fact, our names were changed so that our parents and relatives could not find us or discover the terrible situation we were facing at the time. Because in addition to learning to sing during the day, we were responsible for delivering ammunition to the Khmer National Liberation Movement at night,’ she says.
After the overthrow of the Lon Nol government on 17 April 1975, her group was split up and sent to different regions. Fortunately, she was not displaced and continued to practise her craft and sing traditional and contemporary songs.
In 1977, she was sent by Khmer Rouge officials to perform in Cheung Prey district, Kampong Cham province, where she met her uncle. He was a theatre teacher and a renowned illustrator in the Koh Sotin district during the Sangkum Reastr Niyum, the government of the People's Socialist Community of Norodom Sihanouk, which was overthrown by Lon Nol.
‘When I saw my uncle for the first time, I ran towards him. But before I could reach him, some guards knocked him down and beat him until he bled from his mouth. Then they threw him onto a cart and took him away.
‘At the time, I was shocked because I had never seen the revolutionaries do anything like that to anyone during the four years I had spent with them,’ she says.
After witnessing her uncle's beating, she tried to find a way to escape the group of artists she had been assigned to and return to her parents and siblings.
Finally, one night, while it was raining heavily, she fled their camp and made her way to her home village in the Koh Sotin district of Kampong Cham province, disguised as a farmer.
‘I walked for three days and arrived at my parents’ house in the evening. They were very happy to see me, but they told me I couldn't go anywhere, not even outside. They said my uncle and his family had been taken away and killed,’ she says.
From that day on, Yoeun hid in the house with her grandmother until liberation day on 7 January 1979, when she was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.
That same year, she married a soldier named Sok Mao, who was from Phnom Kravanh district in Pursat province, and together they started a large family of nine children—three boys and six girls.
In 2003, Yoeun and Sok Mao divorced, and she continued to care for her young children on her own, farming the land or working as a massage therapist.
Despite the divorce, she ensured that her children remained in contact with their father, and today, eight of her nine children are married with families of their own. None of them ever considered a career on stage.
According to Yoeun, during the Khmer Rouge years, she recorded no fewer than 200 songs for them, all commissioned by the Ministry of Propaganda and Arts.
She sang some of them alone, others in duets with male singers, such as in ‘Please Children, Do Not Forget the Freshly-Shed Blood of Our Comrades!’.
In addition to recording all these songs, she also gave around 300 concerts in eastern Cambodia, and sometimes performed in Yike and Ayai.
‘I felt happy at that time on stage. There was applause and encouragement from those who came to see my shows and who seemed excited and moved by my songs.’
‘But today, I think bitterly about their applause because they had no choice and their lives were very difficult, as they didn't have enough to eat, unlike us, the artists on stage. We were always well fed,’ she says.
‘It's better to be a farmer than a singer if the only songs allowed are blind praise for these crazy revolutionaries,’ she concludes.
Khouth Sophak Chakrya with our partner The Phnom Penh Post
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