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Dengue Fever’s psychedelic take on the Cambodian
pop sounds of the 60s makes them one of rock’n’roll’s
most unique success stories. They draw enthusiastic crowds
from LA to the UK, from Maui to Moscow, and leave critics
rummaging through their thesauruses looking for new superlatives
to describe their sound. The band’s latest release,
the documentary feature film Sleepwalking Through The Mekong
(DVD/CD Soundtrack) continues the story and evolution of
the band as they travel to Cambodia as the first Western
group to perform the music of Cambodia since the fall of
the Khmer Rouge. Sleepwalking Through The Mekong has received
an enthusiastic reception at international film festivals,
as well as the Tucson Film Festival, the Silver Lake Film
Festival in Los Angeles, the Hawaii International Film
Festival and the Margaret Mead Film Festival in New York.
Brothers Ethan (keyboards) and Zac (guitar) Holtzman
started Dengue Fever in 2001 when they discovered they
shared a love for the Cambodian pop music of the 60s.
After adding sax man David Ralicke (Beck/Brazzaville),
drummer Paul Smith and bassist Senon Williams, they went
looking for a Cambodian singer. Enter Chhom Nimol, who
performed regularly for the King and Queen of Cambodia.
Her powerful singing, marked by a luminous vibrato that
adds exotic ornamentations to her vocal lines, and hypnotic
stage moves based on traditional dances, complimented
the band’s driving Cambodian/American
sound.
The Cambodian pop music of the 1960s seems an unlikely
template for an American band, but that sound captivated
Ethan Holtzman during a trip to Cambodia in 1997. Before
he flew back to L.A., he picked up every cassette of Cambodian
pop from the 60s he could find. Back home, Zac Holtzman
had just returned to L.A. after living in San Francisco
for 10 years. He’d been listening to a compilation
of Cambodian pop and when the brothers reconnected, they
decided play their version of Cambodian rock. They hung
out in the Long Beach Cambodian community to find a singer.
The band’s eponymous debut was mostly covers of Cambodian
classics: a tribute to the singers and songwriters who
were killed by the Khmer Rouge. Their second album, Escape
From Dragon House, written almost entirely by the band,
was more psychedelic, freer, looser and more experimental
than the debut. Chhom Nimol’s powerful vocals, with
lyrics delivered mostly in Khmer (pronounced “cam – aye”),
showed an impressive melodic range, complimented by the
band’s relentless grooves. It also incorporated the
rhythms of 60s Ethiopian jazz, another style that used
American rock, funk and R&B as its template. The album
featured “Ethanopium,” a cover of a tune by
Ethiopian singer Malatu Astatke that was used by Jim Jarmusch
in his film Broken Flowers. “One Thousand Tears
of a Tarantula” was later featured on the soundtrack
as well as the Showtime series Weeds. Their third release,
2008’s Venus on Earth, consisted entirely of original
material, with several songs performed in English, furthering
the band’s overall goal to fuse American and Cambodian
styles. |
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