The Roving Musicologist

Travel Post #22: Funeral Music and Hello Ambushes (Kampot, Cambodia)

No Laughing Zone

Joseph Conrad was right, heat warps your mind.  You can’t walk anywhere, any destination becomes a trudge.  Even the novice monks at the temples seem out of sorts.  Although the worst thing you could do is get married in this state of mind, weddings are a constant.  Funerals, coming along on their own, feature repetitive rolling tones blasted out of a PA system that looks like something from an elementary school.

This recording is the result of a day of walking around in the sun in Kampot.  One part of the recording is funeral music that was being played out of a PA system down a dirt road.  The other part is the music produced in an unattended school of music, abandoned in anticipation of the Khmer New Year and full of nothing but percussion and wooden swords.

Travel Post #20: Modern Day Angkor Living Loop Children. They surrounded me in the taxi and I let them go. Everything you hear is for sale, including the drums and stringed instruments.

Travel Post #19: Angkor Wat Echo Chamber

If you hit yourself on the chest while against the wall in this chamber you will turn into a Buddhist Gong.  Towards the end of this track I tried to make the sound through other methods.  It didn’t work.  Strangely enough, my first two recordings of this chamber refuse to play.  If you look for this chamber at Angkor Wat, it is located in the northwest doorway that looks out onto the library.  Stand against any wall and beat yourself severely.  Then tap your chest lightly and listen for the sound.

The Chinese Buses arrive at 8am so come early to avoid a line.