Voices of a New Generation by Christine M Su

Author:Christine M Su
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Southeast Asia Research & Cultural Heritage C
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figures 53 and 54. Laura Tevary Mam.

Photos courtesy of Baramey Production

New bands were forming, writing, and singing their own songs, and they were not only developing, but tackling contemporary issues as well: the generation gap, domestic violence, depression, materialism, and other challenging topics. I soon realized that the industry involved in copying and selling karaoke music did not want original music to become popular as it really threatened their business model.

However, this gave me the passion I needed to disrupt a system that I felt was not working anymore. It motivated me to write more songs and collaborate more closely with my mom on the lyrics.

And so with this goal in mind, in 2016 my mom and I founded Baramey, a production company dedicated to promoting original artists. We help with financing, event production, marketing and most importantly, brand partnership. We’re also working on building a legal framework for copyrighting music and protecting intellectual property, something that didn’t exist in the music industry in Cambodia. We are helping Cambodian artists to create a new narrative, based on original compositions and designs rather than illegal imitations, which we knew were a source of shame.

We are selective about who we represent because we want to support creativity and ingenuity. We want artists who can sing, of course, but we also want artists who can create (i.e., write their own music and lyrics and choreograph their own dances, and conceptualize their own videos) and are willing to try new things, including partnerships with other artists. Baramey represents a continuum of genres and sounds, from R & B to pop to hip-hop.

The first band we signed was Kmeng Khmer (Khmer Youth), a pop/rap group that now has more than 600,000 followers on YouTube. We also signed a pioneering rap artist named VannDa, who later would completely revolutionize the Cambodian market with his production abilities.

Coming Full Circle

In 2018, I gave a TEDx talk about the “revolution” of the original music movement in Cambodia. I talked about the necessity of moving away from reproduction or imitation of others’ work toward creating original music. Today, in 2021, I can say that there is no longer a need to push for a movement. The music being produced in Cambodia now is original--we artists are the movement! We have changed the narrative.

In addition to creating original music, we have changed its structure, encouraging collaboration and combining ancient and modern. When rap first became popular, for example, artists used sampling; that is, they took existing audio recordings and repurposed them in their work. There is absolutely nothing wrong with sampling. When artists wanted to use traditional Khmer music played on traditional Khmer instruments, sampling was necessary because there were no post-Khmer Rouge recordings of these works. For the most part, neither the instruments nor the players were available.

However, now we know there are survivors--masters like Kong Nay--and these survivors are not only playing again, but they have inspired a new generation of Khmer youth to learn. We have young Cambodians studying traditional instruments and song forms.

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