Cambodian rock book's final mission needs gas!

Between 2012 and 2019 I travelled across 3 continents and interviewed more than 40 musicians to piece together the story of Cambodia's golden age of pop. Part travelogue, part cultural history, Away From Beloved Lover, A Musical Journey Through Cambodia (published by Granta in 2023) recounts my years of travel, tracking down surviving superstars in traditional houses on stilts by rice paddies, deep in the ancient forests, and in cafes of Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh.

Finished copies were sent to English speaking subjects in France and the USA. However, regrettably the book has not yet been translated into the Cambodian language of Khmer.

Nine months ago I hired United Nations workers Dalin and Kanha to translate five chapters. The chapters are ready for delivery but the Cambodian postal service is not. Mailing chapters to Cambodian cities lacking an ascending numerical address system or to remote locations in the jungle is at best slow, at worst, impossible.

So now I need your help to close the circle: to return to Cambodia and place the translated stories in the hands of the octogenarians and rockers who told them to me.

My translator and I will be documenting a week long road trip on a shoe string budget at break neck speed. But we need your help to make this final chapter a reality before it's too late.

About Away From Beloved Lover

After nearly a century of colonisation and a decade after gaining its independence, Cambodia was ready to rock and roll. In the swinging 1960s and into the 1970s, young musicians flocked to the capital city of Phnom Penh. Teenagers cycled along the Mekong River, guitars slung across their backs, on their way to rehearse Cambodian covers of the Beatles and Booker T. & The MG's. The city was a melting pot of sound – rock 'n' roll, heavy metal, surf guitars, ska and love duets. Then on 17 April 1975 the music stopped. After the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, ending the civil war, and beginning the genocide, around 90 percent of the musicians died in the killing fields.

Photoof Drakkar band, courtesy of Touch Chhattha

By turns tragic, funny, bizarre and moving, Away From Beloved Lover is a surprising cultural history of an era often overshadowed by Pol Pot's genocidal regime – it is the story of Cambodia, past and present, set to a joyful soundtrack long silenced.

The book received critical acclaim from a number of national and international news outlets: The Telegraph, National Geographic, Mojo magazine, BBC6 Radio, The Economist, The Spectator, The Times and more.

Photo © Granta

About the crowd funder

Writing a book about 50 year old music 8,000 miles away is an archaeological dig of sorts and it takes money to finance. I spent 10 years and £10,000 of my own savings along with my publisher's advance on the dig, the write-up and the recent translation project. The savings and advance have long run dry and I'd have to sell a hell of a lot of copies to make this trip alone.

Readers of the book will remember my beloved fixer and translator, Sophorn who journeyed alongside me.

Photo: author's own. L-R: Svay Sor and Lim Sophorn.

Sophorn and I intend to take one final trip to deliver the chapters to their storytellers before it's too late. Storytellers like the music master Svay Sor (White Mango), rockers of the Drakkar and Apsara bands, the reclusive guitar legend Thach Soly, music collector, Keo Sinan and the surviving families of musicians like Sinn Sisamouth, Kong Nay and Ros Sereysothea.

Photo: author's own. Ros Saboeurn, sister of Sereysothea.

The journey will span around 1400 kilometres on tarmac and dirt roads from the far north to the west, to the far south of Cambodia. We'll be keeping costs as low as possible – back packing hostels, pork and rice and Pepsi bottle gas for those who know!

Cost breakdown:

£111 Mileage/gas

£150 accommodation (5 nights in provinces x 2 rooms)

£306 food for 2 people x 7 days

£1000 Dee's flight

£1045 Sophorn's translation fee x 7 days

Total:

£2612.

Photo: author's own. L-R, Keo Thorng-Gnue, wife of Sinn Sisamouth, and Oro.

Three of the storytellers have sadly passed away since writing began, and it is my great hope to get translations to the others before it's too late.

I will book the trip as soon as the funds are raised and share photos and videos of the trip with all of you.

No donation is too big or too small and we thank you for any and all support to make this final chapter possible!

Photo: author's own. author, Dee Peyok with guitarist, Minh Sothivann.

Banner photo: author's own. Kong Nay.