DISCOVER
THESE MUSICAL POLYGLOT
BAND OF MUSIC INVENTORS
REMEMBERING
A TIME
where musicians got together to create great music, that
often combined eclectic genres and cultures; Dengue Fever
was created in 2001. This cross-cultural and multi-racial
concoction of inquiring souls have resulted in a Cambodian
version of Grace Slick/Stevie Nicks-type singer fronting
a band that consisted of a renegade from ZZ Top, a Michael
Hutchence reincarnated, Bootsy Collins-like bass player,
Dave Garibaldi-type drummer and a Randy Brecker-style woodwind
player. If Jefferson Airplane had played with Cambodian
rock icons such as Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Sereysothea and/or
Pan Ron – instead of The Doors, Ten Years After, Fairport
Convention, Richie Havens and Crosby Stills Nash and Young
– they might have sounded like Dengue
Fever. Their version of colliding late sixties Ethiopian
jazz intermingled with Cambodian psychedelia highlighted
by the Joan Baez’s type of acrobatic vocals have left
many audiences in awe of their party music.
Documentary
Trailer
THEIR
ORGANIC VISUALS
(instead of the many pre-planned show of most of today’s
artists) of lead singer Chhom Nimol dancing and singing in
what appeared to be a too-tight bridal gown next to a Larry
Graham-type bass player grooving with a ZZ Top guitarist with
tonal colors provided by a Ray Manzarek-type keyboard Farfisa/Fender
Pre-CBS Rhodes are a natural extension of their music motivating
audiences to party to music where they don’t know what
is being sung – especially if the guys are wearing full
silken Cambodian regalia to match their Cambodian goddess.
THEIR
STORY
of a non-English-speaking Cambodian national named Chhom
Nimol coming to the United States, the Holtzman brothers
(Ethan & Zac) going to countless clubs in Long Beach’s
Little Phnom Penh to meet their idea of a vocalist to sing
the songs from Sim Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea they heard
in Southeast Asiain 1997-1998, writing songs that reflects
the convergence of multiple genres, the process of Chhom
Nimol learning to sing in English (along with the band learning
Khymer) and the harrowing experience of Chhom Nimol’s
“visitor’s visa episode” are stuff that
great movies such as Cameron Crowe’s “Almost
Famous” is based on,
THE
CAMBODIAN ROCK INFLUENCES
of Dengue Fever was based on music that was heard in the
1960s when the American Forces Radio stations in Vietnam
were beaming out a mix of rock and soul music that made
an immediate impact on the popular music of next-door Cambodia.
Artists began blending American rhythms and instruments
with their own traditional music, giving birth to a hybrid
that had Khmer society reeling and rocking, some with joy,
others with shocked disbelief. The vanguard music scene
boasted as much sheer invention, verve and breakthrough
technology as anyting in the United States at the time.
Unfortunately it was nipped in the bud by the war in neighboring
Vietnam and the Cambodian civil wars that took place in
the early 1970s.
Zac
Holtzman: I
never got into the "boy band" thing. I grew
up listening to Devo, the Beach Boys (I guess they
could be a "boy band"), the Beatles, Led
Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and what ever else came my
way. We camped out a lot growing up, and would always
bring instruments and sing murder ballads and rail
road songs around the fire. I lived in SF (San Francisco)
for ten years and my friend Byram worked at Aquarius
Records. He was always recommending good stuff. The
Cambodian music he suggested was one of many great
albums.
David
Ralicke: It
is my view that music emanates from ones heart and to
really play something well one must first deeply desire
to do it.
Senon
Williams: We
wanted our music to take us away...away to space or
the deepest ocean where bio-luminescent creatures
live, we wanted to make something pretty and familiar
but unrecognisable. We wanted to do something fun
that strikes our peers as something fresh and simple.
We are not historians or purists, we are musicians
who are having fun
DENGUE
FEVER HAS BEEN DESCRIBED
as “more a deconstructionist commentary on the globalization
of cultural commerce.” As a musical
polyglot that merges, mixes, cross-pollinates, interchanges,
mingles, superimposes and creates sonic textures – the
group
pleasantly surprises people with its recordings and performances.
The creative "imaginations" brings back memories
of diverse groups ranging from Mahavishnu Orchestra to Frank
Zapp’s Mothers of Invention to Was Not Was to A.R. Rahman
that brings unexpected magic to ears that seek much more than
the common (albeit) popular music of the day.
DENGUE
FEVER CONSISTS
of the Goddess from Cambodia (Chhom Nimol), saxophonist David
Ralicke (Beck), guitarist Zac Holtzman (Dieselhed), bassist
Senon Williams (Radar Brothers), farfisa organist Ethan Holtzman,
and drummer Paul Smith. This band
of creative gypsies have been acknowledged in many ways.
In Matt Dillon's City of Ghost, in his attempt to evoke a
traveler's experience of Southeast Asia far beyond most fictional
films, he had the group provide a great Khmer version of Jonie
Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" and the Pen Ran/Sin
Sisamouth duet "Mou Pei Na." That the band's
music stood up against the other classic Cambodian rock
icons on the film's CD (via songs such as Wait Ten Months,
Have You Seen My Love, I'm Sixteen, Chan Chaya's Sak Kra Va,
Choun Malai's Love Pillow, etc.) is a testament to Dengue
Fever's musicality.
Chhom
Nimol: At
first I didn't quite fully understand the guys'
intentions, I was a bit afraid. I brought a fellow
friend along to help me interpret. Their mellow
and down to earth approach made me comfortable about
learning more about their ideas. At first I was
confused about the plan - why would these Americans
be interested in playing Khmer music? It was a crazy
idea, I thought it's worth a shot.
Ethan
Holtzman: Trust
was a big issue for the birth of Dengue Fever.
At the beginning Nimol and her sister Chorvin
were very distrustful of us. They did not
speak any English and the idea of playing
music with us seemed suspicious. What did
we really want? My brother had a three foot
beard at the time, and my moustache was thin
and greasy. We must have visited the Dragon
House, where Nimol used to work, six or seven
times before she finally agreed to come practice
with us. When she finally came to the studio
to sing with us, from the first note she sang,
we all felt a powerful connection.
THE
GROUP WAS THE FOCAL POINT
of the documentary "Sleepwalking
Through the Mekong" (that was shot in ten days)
that confirms that music can indeed bridge cultures, a point
that seems to have a greater significance during the present
President Obama administration. Director
John Pirozzi's 75-minute film served as a vivid reminder
to take nothing for granted. The documentary
is filled with varius interactions with Khmer master musicians
and school children - highlighted by an open-air finale
in a shantytown. In addition, the band performed songs made
famous by Khmer pop icons Ros Seray Sothea and Sinn Sisamouth,
both of whom vanished during the Pol
Pot era. The movie's
hope is to bring back its music to the people that it was
taken from by Pol
Pot's reign of "The Killing Fields" era in
1975 that murdered approximately 1.5 million people while
forcing many of its people to flee after 1980 to places
such as Long Beach's Little Phen Penh. Their efforts are
seen when they visit schools dedicated to keeping alive
the art of playing certain exotic Cambodian instruments
for which only a handful of masters survived the Khmer Rouge
killing fields and writing new songs in Khmer (Cambodian)
with a tuktuk driver. The director's background (as stated
on the film's website) include making music videos for (in
addition to Dengue Fever) Queens of the Stone Age, Calexico,
Victoria Williams, Vic Chessnut, Earthlings and the Japanese
Metal band Outrage. As a Cinematographer he has numerous
documentary credits including Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
which premiered in Sundance last year, Z Channel: A Magnificent
Obsession with a premier in Canne, Too Tough To Die: A Tribute
to Johnny Ramone, Speed Racer :The Story of Vic Chesnutt
and the forthcoming Bling A Planet Rock which explores the
Diamond Wars of West Africa. John's Cinematography credits
also include the feature films Broken English by Zoe Cassavetes,
Matt Dillon's City of Ghost for which he was the 2nd unit
Cinematographer and Kimberley Pierce's Boys Don't Cry for
which he shot the distinctive time lapse photography.
Paul
Smith: What
took place on April 17th, 1975 was an atrocity. The
attempt to control the masses like that, for reasons
like theirs, is the darkest part of mankind. The specificity
of targeting people more likely to be free thinkers
like artists, doctors, educators, and so on...is even
more saddening. The issues that we face as a band,
I believe to be mostly positive, though. For people
who were around before and during this dark period
it can be very cathartic to hear those songs again.
When we were in Cambodia, this was something we were
told several times and it was very touching for all
of us.
Thirty
years after the rise of the Khmer Rouge revolutionary
peasant army, the horrors of their brutal, murderous
rule still stain the fabric of this impoverished Southeast
Asian kingdom. On the outskirts of Phnom Penh, near
the Choeung Ek Genocidal Museum, the evidence of mass
murder is easily found. Just scraping the surface
of communal graves turns up bone fragments, teeth
and clothing worn by those put to death by the Khmer
Rouge. Seeking to create a utopian society, the Khmer
Rouge abolished private property and money and emptied
the cities by driving the urban population at gunpoint
into the countryside to live in ommunal camps.
The
genocidal experiment began on April 17, 1975, and
wreaked havoc for nearly five years. An invasion by
the Vietnamese army early in 1979 ended the group's
reign, but not before an estimated 1.7 million or
more Cambodians had died from violence, starvation
or overwork. The Khmer Rouge waged a guerrilla war
for two more decades, but its abuses have largely
gone unpunished since fighting stopped in 1998.
(link)
One
has to agree wth Metallica's Kirk Hammett that his
choice of Dengue Fever's "One Thousand Tears
of a Tarantula" is a great song. Their tunes
ranging from tip My Canoe, Hummingbird, March of
the Balloon Animals, Sober Driver, Tiger Phone Card,
Seeing Hands, Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, Ethanophium
instrumental, Monsoon of Perfurm takes the listeners
to many lands that are not often visited.
Within
their inherent search of seeking to create sonic
landscapes, they have thankfully gone 180 degrees
away from the normal formula-laden formats and beats
that inhabits most of the music that is heard within
most radio stations. Starting from an original premise
of merging diverse genres into great music, instead
of embracing the latest music trends or the current
"America Idol" syndrome - it might frighten
people with its adventurious ambitions.
Maybe
fans of the music of the 1960's can share the passion
and creative drives that was integrated within the
wildly diverse and eclectic styles that was heard
on one bill at the famous Whiskey night club. If
one can understand and embrace creative search to
create great music - one can thoroughly the journey
that Dengue Fever is taking its visitors while joining
Kirk Hammett and Peter Gabriel as its fans.
ANOTHER
OF THEIR HIGHLIGHTS
is performing at the Hollywood Bowl with Grace Jones and Of
Montreal, truly a night of adventure and wildly unexpected
surprises awaiting around every moment of KCRW's World Festival
night. To be invited to perform on a bill featuring the reclusive
and legendary diva name Grace Jones (along with Of Montreal
- one inspiration of Dengue Fever) is the latest evidence
of the reputation that Dengue Fever has obtained with KCRW
and the Hollywood Bowl.
THEIR
OTHER 2009 SUCCESS
included the band make their live debut throughout the world
(Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Luxemborg and Turkey),
wrote and performed to standing ovations a new soundtrack
for the 1925 silent film class The Lost World, New Year
Eve concert at The Mint, released a DVD/CD soundtrack for
the above-mentioned Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, DFest
(where the Black Crowes, Ozomatli/another adventurious band
and Cake were part of the bill), played at London's Scala,
Metallica's Kirk Hammett named their song "One Thousand
Tears of a Tarantula" his 2nd favorite song of the
2000s in Rolling Stone's Best of the Decade poll, performed
at the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco (where they
provided a great performance where Black Eyed Peas, Dave
Matthews Band, M.I.A. and Beastie Boys were part of the
bill) and collaborated with Inara George (The Bird and The
Bee) on a 21st century take of the disco classic "I
Feel Love."
THEIR
PRESENT 2010 PLANS
include a West Coast tour in support of the January 10th
release of Dengue Fever Presents: Electric Cambodia (Minky
Records) that is a compilation of fourteen of the band member's
favorite classic tracks, from artists such as Sinn Sisamouth,
Pan Ron, Ros Sereysothea and Dara Chorn Chan. They will
be forforming at Austin's South by Southwest, the Bergenfest
in Norway and other European and Asian dates.
WITH
THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEWS
with the members of the band, we will discover that there
is even more evocative and seductive musical backdrops that
forms the creative foundation behind Dengue Fever.
