Non-Stop New Year

We’d driven twelve hours from Phnom Penh, northwest through Siem Reap and Angkor. Stopped a few times and played for people. Chapei mostly, because Sarath makes up funny Khmei rap on the fly and everyone has a good time.

The Khmei Magic Music Bus was in Uddar Meanchey province, a little chunk of forest, with one town, a few villages, and Thailand on the other side of the mountains.

Khmer New Year starts a few days earlier out there.

It’s a long way to hear some Thon drummers, unique to that region, and maybe perform with them. I’m not totally sure why we were doing it.

Things got even fuzzier when we showed up at night for the big Khmer New Year’s concert we were expecting. We had already put on a very well-received Traditional Instruments Show in the morning as families gathered in temporary set-ups around the Temple, settling in for a few days of chanting, celebrating and mostly just hanging out.

But when we returned hours later, hundreds of people had become thousands of people, young people. Their scooters leaning in long rows. Their music pulsating through the heavy dark night air off in a corner of the Temple property not usually part of the Khmer New Year’s events.

The EDM was unexpected. Some K-Pop, some Trance. You could hear different threads — you couldn’t Not Hear.