Artists Prepare for Major Festival in New York

Say Mony, VOA Khmer
Sunday, 17 March 2013

Four years in the making, the “Season of Cambodia” festival will include 125 artists and take place at some of the most prominent venues in the city of New York

Cambodian Living Arts screen shot website

PHNOM PENH - Cambodian artists are preparing for a major festival to be held in the US in April and May. Four years in the making, the “Season of Cambodia” festival will include 125 artists and take place at some of the most prominent venues in the city of New York.

‘Monster’ Band Digitizes Traditional Sound

Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Thursday, 03 June 2010 

A group of young Cambodian and foreign musicians have begun playing contemporary forms of Cambodian music. Krom Monster uses five traditional instruments combined with digital manipulation to create music that appeals to younger Cambodians. The band, made up of five Cambodians and one Briton, is part of a trend in collaboration between modern and classic artists underway in Cambodia.

Struggling Writers Emerging, Book by Book

Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Friday, 26 September 2008

The novel sat, unpurchased, on a stand outside O’Russey Market. On its cover, a young man carried a beautiful woman in his arms, through rain and lighting. The novel, “If a Heart Has Blood,” was one of the books coming out of Cambodia’s growing literary scene and, like other Cambodian novels, had a message.

“If a Heart Has Blood” tells the story of a singer who tricks her powerful, promiscuous father into sleeping with her. It is the second novel of 28-year-old author You Sophea, who said recently it was meant as an indictment of the practice of “okhnas,” businessmen of high standing, having sex with young girls.

“I’ve written the novel in hopes of getting rid of attempts by some singers to get other women’s husbands,” he said. “Meanwhile, okhnas should stop considering young female singers as sex objects, because if the singers were their own daughters or relatives, how would these okhnas feel?”