Don't Think I've Forgotten

This upcoming documentary on the Cambodian pop music scene of the 1960s (and the horrific tragedies that befell most of the performers once Pol Pot came to power) promises to be quite fascinating. Have you heard this stuff? A combination of garage rock grit, bubblegummy pop and traditional folk melodies makes for intoxicating listening ... there's a certain naive charm that foreign (specifically non-European) rocknroll of the same era possesses, but the Cambodians integrated their own culture into the sound much more successfully than most. The music thrived until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge's genocidal targeting of anything remotely related to the West meant death for anyone with a yen to pick up a guitar.

A handful of Cambodian pop compilations float around the interweb these days, but the granddaddy of them all is Cambodian Rocks , available for free download here on the WFMU blog. I first heard this while living in Detroit (thanks Willy!) and it haunted me from first spin. Years later I found my own copy and it never gets old. Dig the trailer below for a riot of color and sound ...