Before
the Khmer Rouge take-over, Phnom Penh was a happening city, particularly if you
were a musician. Once their reign of terror commenced, the city was the worst
possible place to be from, especially for musicians. The few surviving veterans
of the Phnom Penh music scene reflect on the lives and culture lost during the
period of Maoist mass murder in John Pirozzi’s Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll (trailer here), which opens
tomorrow at Film Forum.
Frankly,
it is a revelation just what a swinging good time it was in the capitol city
during the 1950s, 1960s, and even into the early 1970s. There was a healthy
nightlife, creating beaucoup jobs for musicians and singers. There was Pen Ran,
who specialized in the sort of cute pop stylings you could also find on the
American charts in the early sixties. Everyone loved Ros Serey Sothea, because
she was the country girl that made good. Actually, the early stages of her
career were a little rocky, but everything fell into place when she joined forces
with popular bandleader Sinn Sisamouth.
Stylistically,
Cambodian rock and pop followed a similar development pattern as it did in the
west, except maybe not quite as heavy. Regardless, Pou Vannary made her name
with hit covers of western songs, incorporating both the original English
lyrics and Khmer translations. The scene rocked, but it looks and sounds like
star vocalists often still fronted full bands, which was cool. Of course, we
know it will end in incomprehensible tragedy and death.
DTIF is at its best
surveying the Cambodian rock scene, giving viewers a good sense of each artist’s
personal sound. Unfortunately, Pirozzi’s devotes a lot of time to an overly
simplistic rehashing of early 1970s history. It is problematically reductive to
say America bombed Viet Cong in Cambodia, therefore Pol Pot necessarily killed
two million people. After all, a Communist conquest was exactly what the
American government wanted to avoid.
Regardless,
when Pirozzi sticks with the music and the oral history of survivors, DTIF is on rock-solid ground. Especially
moving is the sequence chronicling Cheam Chansovannary’s radio performance of “Oh!
Phnom Penh” when the city was finally recolonized after the fall of the Khmer
Rouge regime.
