In the 1960s, Cambodia was very prosperous. Every sector was
very well developed, and what amazes me the most was entertainment industry. At
that time, movie and music industry did make many countries in Asian region
jealous. We had Sin Sisamuth and Ros Sereysothea, whom Cambodian people of all
generations regard as the Golden-Voiced King and Queen respectively. And there
were so many talented filmmakers, song writers, movie stars, traditional
dancers, and so forth. What about nowadays?
When talking about this, I’m deeply disappointed. If I’m not wrong, 90 percent
of Khmer songs are plagiarized from Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, China, or the US.
Is it true that today Cambodians aren’t creative enough to compose our own songs?
NO, absolutely not. There are a lot talented people out there, but they don’t
have chance to show up. Why? Because Cambodia doesn’t have official modern art school
that trains people to be the professional song writers, singers, or musicians. All
we have is Royal University of Fine Art that is believed to be national
conservationists that pay more focus on traditional dance, music, drama, play,
and the like, and the new generation are not fond of that. That forces unskilled
music composers to illegally copy the melodies from others and write their own
lyrics or even translate the whole meaning from the original works in order to
please the audience which are mostly youth. Some are happy with those songs
without caring where they come from, but some are so sensitive with the act,
especially the plagiarism from Vietnam and Thai, the neighboring countries of
Cambodia. One of the reasons is no matter how hard they try to make the original
songs, they can’t make satisfying amount of money from their hard works. That’s
because people don’t buy the original CDs but the copied ones. This should be
blamed on the unforceful intellectual property law of Cambodia. In short,
without the encouragement and cooperation from the related institutions of the
government, Cambodians will never ever hold our heads up high when coming to
talk about entertainment industry especially the music.
