Songwriter Mai Vathana has roots that are appropriately humble given his nickname of the “Rural Poet”, which he earned by writing popular songs with a lyrical focus on melodramatic tales of romance ...

Eli Carlton-Pearson, 18, sits cross-legged on a kgray, the wooden- slat bed common in Cambodia, and wails out an improvised blues tune on his homemade guitar, fingers flashing like sparks across the ...

When Bay Area singer-songwriter Laura Mam asked her mother to translate lyrics into Khmer, it was as if she had laid a bridge between worlds. Mam knew her parents had fled the Khmer Rouge — a ...

Unless one is visiting a place with a large expat Cambodian population – such as Long Beach, California – it is almost unheard of to hear a Khmer language song played during large festivals and ...

Many of the old images in Bochan Huy's "Chnam Oun 16" music video are haunting — fleeting, grainy footage of workers in rural Cambodian labor camps and Phnom Penh's crumbling shops and streets, ...

He and his singing partner, Ros Serey Sothea, drew from a wide range of Western and local influences. They disappeared after the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975. By Mike Ives This article is part of ...