Cambodia's rich musical heritage is to receive another historic tribute with the planned installation of a statue dedicated to Sinn Sisamouth, the legendary ‘singer with the golden voice’. The statue, to be erected along the picturesque Sekong River in the town of Stung Treng, will honour one of Cambodia's most influential musicians.
A look back at an exceptional career.
Sinn Sisamouth and his singing partner, Ros Serey Sothea, drew on a wide range of Western and local influences. They disappeared after the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975.
Before he disappeared, singer-songwriter Sinn Sisamouth had already become a fixture on radio shows and in nightclubs in Cambodia and elsewhere. For more than two decades, from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, his fans praised his smooth voice and evocative lyrics about love and the Cambodian landscape.
The artist and his bandmates - notably singer Ros Serey Sothea - distinguished themselves with their versatile repertoire of jazz, rock and roll and Khmer folk ballads, among others. Sometimes they would use the melody of a Western song - ‘Hey Jude’ by the Beatles, for example - while adding orchestration and writing original lyrics in Khmer. They played a major role in defining the sound of Cambodia's popular music industry, with Sinn Sisamouth quickly becoming one of the country's most revered stars.
A tragic end
Then, in 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power, launching a four-year campaign of executions, forced labour, disease and starvation that killed at least 1.7 million people. The work of artists and intellectuals was brutally repressed, and Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea were among the many Cambodians who disappeared in the violence and chaos. To this day, the circumstances of their deaths remain unclear.
Sinn Sisamouth's granddaughter, Sin Setsochhata, said that, based on her father's research, her family believes that Sinn Sisamouth disappeared in Kandal province. Some believe he died in a labour camp. The Guardian newspaper reported in 2007 that he had been shot. According to some accounts, before his execution in 1976, he begged to sing one last song.
Profound influence
Many of Sinn Sisamouth's recordings have survived, however, and they still exert a profound influence on Cambodian culture. ‘He was a pioneer,’ exclaims Cambodian musician Mol Kamach in “Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll”, a 2014 documentary film by John Pirozzi about Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Serey Sothea and other musicians.
“He was an example to other professional singers because of his avant-garde approach”.
Sinn Sisamouth was born on 23 August 1933 in the province of Stung Treng, in the north-east of the country. According to a 1995 article in the Phnom Penh Post, his father, Sinn Leang, was a prison guard and his mother, Sib Bunloeu, a housewife. At the age of 7 or 8, Sinn Sisamouth moved to the western province of Battambang, where his uncle helped him develop an interest in traditional Khmer music on stringed instruments such as the tro khmer, a type of violin, and the chapei, a lute.
Sinn Sisamouth arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital, at the age of 17 and enrolled in medical school in the hope of becoming a nurse, but he retained his passionate love of music.
According to his granddaughter, he used to play for sick patients to soothe them and spent his breaks playing the mandolin under a tree. Later, he began performing live at the headquarters of Cambodia's brand new national radio station, and his fame grew considerably.
‘When it came to singing technique, Sinn Sisamouth was the king,’ says Prince Panara Sirivudh, a member of the Cambodian royal family, in the documentary.
“His voice was so beautiful, and he wrote such sweet songs”.
Popular Western music was brought to Cambodia in the 1940s by the royal palace and by Cambodians who could afford to travel to Europe. And the country's rock and roll scene really began in the 1950s, according to a study by LinDa Saphan, associate producer of the documentary and professor of sociology at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York.
This sound blended high-pitched opera songs with distorted electric guitar solos, which were very popular in American music at the time.
Sinn Sisamouth became representative of this new style, as he was able to write both ballads and upbeat rock songs, writes Saphan, but the voices of Ros Serey Sothea and other female singers on his recordings were:
“the final touch that made this Cambodian mix so seductive”.
Early in his career, Sinn Sisamouth was invited to perform with the Royal Cambodian Ballet, appearing in elegant suits and bow ties, with his hair combed back.
He also travelled abroad - to India, Hong Kong and beyond - with a traditional band formed by the Queen's son, Norodom Sihanouk, a composer and saxophonist (and future king) who played a major role in the development of the country's cultural industries in the post-colonial era.
It was a hopeful time in Cambodia's history: the country had gained independence from France in 1953 and was beginning to shape its identity and culture. As Sinn Sisamouth's popularity grew, his former neighbours in the countryside marvelled at hearing his songs on the radio.
Sin Sisamouth is said to have met Ros Serey Sothea at the age of 17 at the national radio station and recorded with her for over ten years. Although they never had a romantic relationship, ‘their musical conversations were love stories filled with a sense of longing and despair, of palpable loss, but with the possibility of reconciliation’, writes Saphan, a student fan of the late singer.
In the early 1970s, amid a scene of go-go bands, big hairdos and youthful exuberance, the duo produced several hit songs, including some for Cambodian films.
Sinn Sisamouth also wrote and directed the 1974 film Unexpected Song, which featured some of his original music and a performance by Ros Serey Sothea. The duo's music then enjoyed a revival. Sinn Sisamouth is the subject of a documentary, ‘Elvis of Cambodia’, and Ros Serey Sothea is the subject of a graphic novel, ‘The Golden Voice’.
Sinn Sisamouth married one of his cousins, Khao Thang Nhoth, and they had three sons and a daughter. One of his sons, Sin Chanchhaya, also became a musician.
Despite all Sinn Sisamouth's achievements, he remained an introvert, spending most of his time alone. Often, after dinner with his family, he would retire to his studio to compose.
“All the emotions, the spirit, the complicity and the inner feelings were expressed in his music,” confides his granddaughter.
References:
Phnom Penh Post
New York Times – ‘Overlooked’
The Guardian
LinDa Saphan — Documentaire « Don’t think I’ve forgotten »
Socheata Vong
Saphan
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