Music Review: Dengue Fever Presents Electric Cambodia - Page 2

Ros Serey Sothea was Cambodia’s most famous, prolific singer of the time and the albums features her songs “Flowers in the Pond” and “Shave Your Beard” among others.  Pan Ron’s “Don’t Speak” is a fine example of Sixties rock and roll music and you can imagine leagues of young Cambodians doing the twist to songs like this.  Her song “Snaeha” is a remake of the massive Cher hit “Bang Bang” and deserves mention too. 

The collection has been compiled by Los Angeles rock band Dengue Fever as a way of preserving the music and introducing their fans to the original versions of some of the songs that they had covered.  Proceeds from the sales of the album will benefit Cambodian Living Arts, which is a project of the non-profit Massachusetts-based Marion Institute devoted to supporting the revival of traditional Khmer performing arts and inspiring contemporary artistic expression.

*The Khmer Rouge was a communist, Maoist party that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 under the leadership of Pol Pot. They set up a radical form of agrarian communism where city dwellers were forced to leave cities and work on farms. Their murderous regime resulted in genocide - between 850 000 and 1.5 million people died from execution, torture, forced work or starvation, representing between 20 to 25% of the total population.

Article Author: Emm

Mandy Southgate is a South African expat living and working in London. She finds it hard to concentrate on any one thing for any length of time and so runs three very different blogs on life in London and travel from there,

Visit Emm's author page — Emm's Blog