In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge had waged devastation on music, culture, and education in Cambodia, to make way for their tyrannical ideology. The shimmering 1960s era of Khmer rock’n’roll (so great!) had been all but eliminated, and almost every musician killed.
Kong Nay was spared. As the superstar of the moment, the Angkar leaders had let him keep his instrument, and his life, on the condition that he sang only songs about the greatness of the Khmer Rouge to his fellow prisoners.
Eventually they took away his chapei, separated him from his wife and children, and he joined his fellow millions in bonded labour on the rice fields, starving and destroyed – the trauma intensified by his blindness.
Chapei Dang Weng, a long neck 2-stringed guitar. This instrument is played in traditional songs as well as in improvised pieces with satirical, rhyming verses.
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