Nation in Grief: Kong Nai and "Kamara Rongkaam"

Today's random song is born out of war and revolution. The singer, the blind Cambodian lute player Kong Nai, is known as the "Ray Charles" of Cambodian music and was once a very celebrated Cambodian musician whose appeal abroad eclipses the little regard he now gets in his home country as his style of music, which once entertained kings, dies in the face of an onslaught of Chinese and Thai-style popular music. Kong Nai was blinded by smallpox at the age of four, but was enchanted one evening hearing the sound of the Cambodian lute across the fields. He fully picked up the instrument at age 15. By the 60's he had become a superstar and a very wealthy man. Then came the communist Khmer Rouge insurgency, and support for the traditional music dried up. Kong Nai was forced to sing songs of the suffering of farmers under the previous ruler of Cambodia, and was sent to work on a communal farm in rural Cambodia. After his family was accused of being American spies, he fled to Vietnam and became a refugee. Many of the old masters of his tradition were killed by the Khmer Rouge, and he made his way as a roving musician playing the old songs. In the 1980s and 1990s, his music began to pick up admirers outside Cambodia, and in 2007 he played at the Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Festival, and took part in the 25th anniversary of the WOMAD Festival, where he began to believe that perhaps his music might just survive. This song, Kamara Rongkaam, can be found on the 2016 various artists compilation Khmer Rouge Survivors: They Will Kill You, If You Cry.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Source: http://thingsasian.com/story/kong-nai-ray-charles-cambodia