THE AMERICA ONE NEWS
Aug 5, 2025  |  
0
 | Remer,MN
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge.
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge and Reasoning Support for Fantasy Sports and Betting Enthusiasts.
back  
topic
Mike Ives


NextImg:He Survived the Khmer Rouge and Built a Musical Legacy

Soeung Chetra, a high school student in rural Cambodia, practices a centuries-old musical art form: singing improvised ballads while plucking a Cambodian lute known as the chapei dang veng.

Like other Cambodian chapei players, he was inspired by Kong Nay, a master who died last year at 80. “I want to be as famous as him,” Soeung Chetra, 16, said outside his family’s wooden stilt house.

Few Cambodian artists of Kong Nay’s generation survived the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, the regime that ruled the country from 1975 to 1979, created a nationwide system of forced labor camps and killed up to a quarter of the population. Fewer still spent decades building a legacy.

Kong Nay, who was blind, raised the chapei’s profile by teaching young protégés and performing melancholic ballads at home and abroad. One of his last projects, a collaboration with a Cambodian rapper, exposed a new generation of Cambodians to their country’s traditional music.

“People say he’s the Ray Charles of Cambodia, but some people don’t like that,” said Song Seng, a nonprofit administrator who introduced Kong Nay to some of his first students.

Ray Charles, his admirers say, is the Kong Nay of America.

Image
Kong Nay performing at the Asia Society in New York in 2013, with Marc Ribot on guitar, Rudy Royston on drums and Ben Allison on bass.Credit...Chad Batka for The New York Times

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.


Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.