How Dengue Fever found itself in CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND
Psychedelic rock band Dengue Fever lends its Khmer-inspired music to Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band. Photo by Marc Walker.
Dengue Fever’s psychedelic rock sounds and ethereal vocals don’t just emphasize the play Cambodian Rock Band. They helped inspire it.
Flash back to 2011, when playwright Lauren Yee was a University of California San Diego grad student who went to an outdoor musical festival. “I think we almost missed their set," Yee told Playbill in 2020, "but as soon as I heard them play, I just fell in love with their sound. And it really opened me up to, like, who is this band? What are their influences? It just sounded like something I hadn't really heard before. And that was the thing that started me down the path of creating Cambodian Rock Band."
The result was part historical play, part rock concert, following one man’s return to Cambodia after fleeing the Khmer Rouge’s genocide 30 years earlier. There, he must confront the secrets he tried to hide from his daughter, who is there to help prosecute one of the most notorious war criminals of the political party.
“The beautiful thing about this play is that Lauren has taken the tragedy of the Cambodian genocide and paired it with the beauty of art and music,” says Mu artistic director Lily Tung Crystal, who is directing its Twin Cities premiere through Jul 31 in a co-production with the Jungle Theater. “There’s tragedy and grief, but there’s also joy and resilience of the human spirit that happens through the embracing of art, music and theater, and the human experience of survival.”
A Sound Meant To Be Shared
Just as Cambodian Rock Band was sparked by Dengue Fever, Dengue Fever’s beginning was sparked by the original ‘60s and ‘70s Khmer music. Band founders and brothers Zac and Ethan Holtzman stumbled upon Cambodian’s Golden Era of Music during a six-month trek through Southeast Asia and a stint at a San Francisco record store, respectively. They, too, fell in love with its unique sound, and the Los Angeles band’s first album in 2003 was almost all covers of Cambodian classics, such as Ros Serey Sothea’s “I’m Sixteen,” which is also featured in Cambodian Rock Band.
“Our intention was always to write and create original music using the Cambodian music as a springboard into new territory,” says bass player Senon Williams. “[Lead singer Chhom] Nimol had never been in a band that created original materials, so we needed to mature as a band before our original material would have the heart of the Cambodian music that Nimol had been playing since she was a child. The old songs were in her bones. The first album was something we had to do to find ourselves and allow us to grow together.”
Later hits like “Family Business,” “Cement Slippers,” and “Tooth and Nail,” were chosen as some of the English-language songs in Cambodian Rock Band, but so were Khmer-language hits including “Uku” and “Sni Bong.” In actuality, most of Dengue Fever’s songs are sung in Khmer: After writing the lyrics in English, the band translates them. Williams says, “Nimol sings beautifully in Khmer, her native language. We never felt the need to put a song in English if it didn’t serve the song.”
A Symbiosis of Art
Flash forward to 2016, when Yee workshopped Cambodian Rock Band at Berkeley Repertory. Williams was part of the process, along with other band members, participating in morning table reads and teaching the cast and music director how to perform their music in the afternoon.
Then in 2018, it all came together with Cambodian Rock Band’s world premiere at South Coast Repertory. The play with music went on to earn accolades such as the No. 1 play on the 2017 Kilroys list and the 2018 Horton Foote Prize, and audiences who see it marvel at how symbiotic the music and the script are.
“I feel like I’ve always had a very love-hate relationship with musical theater in my life, and this play epitomizes to me this joy of seeing music when it has its little claws bared, and it attaches to the drama of a piece and enhances it,” Jungle artistic director Christina Baldwin says. “Neither side is having to give anything up for the other.”
As for Williams, he says, “I was really touched by the play. It is an amazing feat to be able to write a play about such a heavy subject and carry all the emotions from fear to laughter throughout the story, all the while supporting a narrative of beautiful growth of a relationship between a daughter and her father.”
Take home the sounds of Cambodian Rock Band at Dengue Fever’s online shop, which features its whole discography as well as the play’s soundtrack. Plus, the coupon code JUNGLE10 will get you 10% off through Aug 31!