Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll
The very notion of Cambodian rock ’ n’ roll is somehow unexpected, but now there’s a documentary — a very good and moving one — on the subject. “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll” introduces a little- known niche of musical history and offers a unique point of entry into one of the most terrible events in Southeast Asia’s modern era.
The story of Cambodian pop begins with the nation’s independence from France in 1953, with the emergence of neatly groomed and affable singers like Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea, who became major stars.
In the 1960s, new, sometimes harder, musical influences were heard: straight- ahead rock and R& B, surf music and even psychedelic sounds. The war in Vietnam, which had been nibbling at their border, became an inescapable fact for Cambodians — the United States bombing of the neutral nation began in 1969.
Performance footage from the time could have been played for kitschy laughs, as we see musicians and audiences in bell- bottoms, go- go boots, puffy hairdos and Beatleslike suits, performing and listening to covers of popular American and British songs. But the movie makes it clear that the affection for the music was genuine.
It was a pleasant time, but short- lived, as the 1970s brought civil war and a coup to Cambodia, and, worst of all, victory for the Khmer Rouge. Western music that valued rebellion and individualism had to be stamped out by the totalitarians of the Pol Pot regime, and many of the musicians named in the film were targeted for exile, imprisonment, torture and murder.
No one knows how many musicians were among the 2 million Cambodians eventually killed. A few made it through, and are interviewed in the movie. Their recollections are chilling. Many others weren’t as lucky, including Sisamouth, who is believed to have been executed in 1976.
Director John Pirozzi worked closely with the Cambodian Documentation Center to locate old footage and track down survivors, both musicians and their fans. The film is an extension of work Pirozzi did on his previous feature, “Sleepwalking Through the Mekong” ( 2007), a documentary about a tour of Cambodia by Dengue Fever, an L. A. band with a Cambodian lead singer.
Does focusing on a small slice of society trivialize an account of genocide? Actually, the film personalizes this terrible story in a way that a broader historical treatment couldn’t. Learning names and faces, and seeing the excitement generated by the music, makes the movie’s description of mass murder all the more crushing.
“Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten” ( this part of the title comes from a Cambodian song lyric) will surely appeal to rock ’ n’ rollers, but deserves the widest possible audience.