Dengue fever is a virulent tropical disease spread by mosquitoes. The symptoms are extreme pain in the bones and joints, rash and fever. Dengue Fever is also a virulent Cambodian psychedelic surf-rock band from LA.
No, seriously.
It may seem as though psychedelic surf-rock as a genre would be a small niche of limited potential, but with the band’s third album, last year’s Venus on Earth, mainstream success seems imminent. Dengue Fever, the band, is five American male musicians:
- Ethan Holtzman on keyboards
- Zac Holtzman on guitar and vocals
- David Ralicke on sax and horns,
- Paul Smith on drums
- Senon Williams on bass
... and one female singer, Chhom Nimol. Ms. Chhom, a well-known singer in her native Cambodia, used to sing regularly for the king and queen there.
Lending her talents to this new endeavor, she sings sometimes in English, sometimes in Khmer, and adds some of her tradition’s dance movements.
American Invasion
How does your average American boy from Southern California become enchanted with the music of another time interpreted by another culture? Ethan Holtzman rediscovered American music of the 1960s on a trip to Cambodia in the late 1990s.
Western pop music came to Cambodia with American boys who landed in Southeast Asia by the thousands during the Vietnam War and quickly became a part of the region’s culture and was just a quickly suppressed under the murderous Khmer Rouge regime that followed. While there, Holtzman’s traveling companion came down with the disease and the link between the music and the illness was formed.
Returning to the United States, in 2001 Ethan and his brother Zac went looking for a Cambodian singer. They didn’t have to look very far. Long Beach, California has one of the world’s largest Cambodian populations outside of the Southeast Asian country from an immigration precipitated by the Vietnam War and the Cambodian genocide that followed it.
Listening to the band one can almost see a smoky bar filled with GIs listening to a petite vocalist belting out American pop standards in the Khmer language, a kind of eerie echo of Apocalypse Now.
Flashback to the Fillmore
From the quavering, foreboding minor chords of Ethan’s Farfisa organ and Zac’s resonant psychedelic guitar licks on Seeing Hands, the Venus on Earth CD's first track, those of a certain age might feel like they are having an acid flashback to the Fillmore Auditorium in 1967. Nimol’s vocals only heighten the hallucinatory effect.
“The songwriting is a collaborative effort,” drummer Smith said on the band’s website. “Most are written in English and translated by Nimol and we explore emotions and situations that Khmer culture ignores. Cambodians are reserved, while Americans aren't shy about expressing their emotions directly. And the music of the 60s musicians are drawing on still brings up a lot of pain for Cambodians.
These songs are from a time and place that doesn't exist anymore, but music can be therapeutic. We're hoping we can continue to build bridges between America and Cambodia, between the present and the past.”
The song subjects can be just as unusual as the sound. In Sober Driver, the CDs fifth cut, a guy complains that he is being used as a free chauffeur by a party girl. The third cut, Tiger Phone Card, tracks the long-distance love affair of a New Yorker and a woman in Phnom Penh.
The group seems to harken back to older production styles as well, recording most of Venus on Earth on analogue tape, ostensibly "to preserve the full, rich sound of the rhythm section." The band’s music has been featured in a number of films and television shows including City of Ghosts, Must Love Dogs, Broken Flowers, HBO’s hit series True Blood and twice on Showtime’s, Weeds. They have released two previous albums, the self-titled Dengue Fever, and Escape From Dragon House, and released their DVD/CD soundtrack to the documentary Sleepwalking Through The Mekong in April of this year. The film documents the groups concerts in Cambodia.
Strangely Familiar
Western brashness and eastern mystery is an intoxicating blend. It's been said that real art makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange. That’s what happens to one culture’s art when it is transformed by filtering it through another culture. If you doubt it, witness what happened in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the lads from Liverpool started playing their own compositions based on American rhythm and blues. Dengue Fever probably won’t reach that level of popular success, but don’t underestimate this group’s blend of cultures and talent. Anything can happen.
For more information on the band visit www.myspace.com/denguefevermusic. To learn more about the impact of the fusion of Western popular music and traditional Cambodian music and culture visit www.cambodianrock.com.
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