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| Ethan (second from right) and Zac Holtzman (bearded) recruited a singer from Cambodia. - Photo by Lauren-Dukoff |
Singing in Khmer and English, Dengue Fever channel retro Cambodian pop music
Wednesday, Apr 27, 2011
By AnnaMaria Stephen
San Deigo City Beat (California, USA)
When
Cambodian singer Chhom Nimol first met brothers Zac and Ethan
Holtzman, she must have wondered if she was making the smartest move
joining their new band, Dengue Fever.
“Her
sister told her not to do it,” laughs guitarist / vocalist Zac
Holtzman—the one with the epic facial hair. “It was right after 9/11,
and there I was with my crazy beard.”
What
the Holtzmans had in mind was a fusion like the music that ignited
Cambodia in the late ’60s and early ’70s, a riff on the Nuggets-era
rock that reached Cambodian airwaves as it was broadcast from U.S.
troops stationed in neighboring Vietnam. Ethan, who plays the Farfisa
organ in the band, had returned from a trip to Cambodia with a cache of
cassettes.
“The
music had two things going for it,” Zac explains. “It’s familiar—you
recognize the surf and garage and psychedelic elements that I tend to
like—and it’s also exotic with the Cambodian style of singing and
they’d mix in some of their traditional instruments, too.
“The
female singers do a lot of this technique that they call ghost voice,”
he continues. “It’s like a Cambodian yodeling: They crack into a
higher register and touch on notes an octave or two higher and then
drop down to wherever they were singing before.”
The
Holtzmans, based in L.A., decided to recruit a singer from Long
Beach’s vibrant Cambodian community. Chhom Nimol—a wedding singer who’d
performed before the king and queen in her native country—hailed from
Battambang, a town that produced some of Cambodia’s most legendary
singers and composers, including Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea.
Like most artists with Western influences, they perished under Pol
Pot’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime in the mid-’70s.
“It’s
kind of like they’re living on through Nimol,” says Zac. “We always
show respect to [their legacy]. In one sense, we feel like we’re
carrying the torch, but we also like adding to [the music] in whatever
ways we want and growing it.”
Dengue Fever’s self-titled 2003 debut, which featured covers sung in Khmer, was an instant sensation in indie land.
“We
never thought of ourselves as a cover band, though,” Zac points out.
“It was just easiest for Nimol, who didn’t speak any English.”
Since
then, the band has focused almost exclusively on originals, with
lyrics written in both Khmer and English, sung by Nimol and Zac. At
first, they used translators but now rely on dictionaries and friends.
“Something’s
going to be lost [in translation], but something else is added,” Zac
says of the process. “A typical phrase that has eight to 10 syllables
in English ends up having 20 to 22 syllables in Khmer. You have this
perfect thing and you have to hack it apart to translate it. You get
rid of all the extraneous words and get it down to the essence of
what’s needed. It’s like a haiku.”
Members
of Dengue Fever—a sextet that includes bassist Senon Williams, drummer
Paul Smith and saxophonist David Ralicke—hate being pigeonholed. They
picture themselves as “an indie-rock band with a Cambodian singer,” Zac
says, but their influences don’t stop there.
The
band just released its fourth full-length, Cannibal Courtship. “I
think Cannibal Courtship has all the original elements we’ve had since
the beginning, but it’s taken those trails and gone really far and
gotten lost in the forest,” Zac says. “We’ve gone deeper and figured
out things that work.”
The
song “Uku”? “We just let the trippy Cambodian psychedelicness happen,”
he says, while “the more poprock songs get more focused and
concentrated.”
And African music—always a component of Dengue Fever’s sound—takes prominence in the track “Only a Friend.”
“We
joke around that it’s ‘Afro-Beatles,’” Zac laughs. “It has Afrobeat
influences, and the choruses are kind of Beatles-esque, with Ringo
drumming.”
But
their hearts will always belong to Cambodia, where they are active
with various charities, including Cambodian Living Arts, which teaches
traditions to kids. In 2005, Dengue Fever’s first Cambodian tour was
captured in the documentary film Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, and
the band recently returned to play a show for the U.S. Embassy as part
of its 40th anniversary of good relations with the country.
“There were 10,000 Cambodians filling the plaza,” Zac says. “As far as the eye could see. It was pretty incredible.”
Dengue Fever play with Maus Haus and DJ Claire at The Casbah on Friday, April 29
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