Cambodian arts festival celebrates music, dance and performance as scene thrives once again
- Performing artists young and old will join forces over 10 days in November at Arts4Peace, the largest celebration of Cambodia’s arts in 40 years
- The festival marks four decades since the ousting of the Khmer Rouge, which all but wiped out the country’s cultural scene during its four-year reign
![Mak Therng, Arts4peace. Photo: Plae Pakaa [FEATURES 2019]](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1200x800/public/d8/images/methode/2019/08/21/e7cb3750-c302-11e9-ad8c-27551fb90b05_image_hires_120254.jpg?itok=lnCQqFMq&v=1566360196)
Arn Chorn-Pond says he can still smell the blood from all those years ago.
“Watching my little brother and sister die slowly; that’s still here with me,” says the founder of Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), an organisation established to preserve endangered art forms and rituals that has since grown to offer scholarships, support troupes and promote creativity in Cambodia’s arts sector.
Born into a family of artists, Chorn-Pond was nine years old when he was taken from his parents by Khmer Rouge soldiers and sent to a children’s labour camp in 1975. His abduction was part of a purge instigated by the Pol Pot regime that targeted swathes of Cambodian society, including intellectuals, artists and creatives. An estimated 90 per cent of Cambodian artists and performers were killed during the time the regime ruled the country between 1975 and 1979.
Despite this, it was music that saved the young boy from execution.
At the labour camp, Chorn-Pond met a skilled musician who taught him how to play the traditional Cambodian flute. He went on to play propaganda music for Khmer Rouge soldiers – a move, he says, that saw his life spared, unlike many other children in the camp.
At the age of 14 he was forced to fight on the frontline, defending Cambodia against the Vietnamese forces who would drive out the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Afterwards, he fled to a refugee camp on the Thai border. There he met American clergyman Peter Pond, was adopted and given a new life in the United States.
