Historical figure
Kram Ngoy
Khmer poet and singer whose sung poems of advice are taught in Cambodian schools.
Kram Ngoy (ក្រមង៉ុយ; 1865 to 1936), also written Krom Ngoy and born Ouk Ou, was a Khmer poet and singer.[1][2][3] His poems, sung to his own playing, gave moral advice in plain words. They are studied in Cambodian schools.[1]
Early life
CambodgeMag writes that Ouk Ou was born in 1865 in the village of Andong Svay in Kandal. His father, Ouk, was a commune chief. As a boy he studied arithmetic and literature at a village pagoda and became a novice there.[3] He left to work with his parents, then at 21 was ordained a monk at the same pagoda and stayed five years. Back in lay life he worked as a legal adviser for his father, then farmed.[3]
Singer and poet
Ngoy sang his poems while playing a stringed instrument. The scholar Khing Hoc Dy names it as the satiev, a one-string zither, and CambodgeMag names the two-string fiddle tro ou and the ksedeav.[1][3] CambodgeMag writes that he traveled the countryside to sing at village festivals after the harvest. He took no fee, and grateful villagers gave him money and rice. They called him Phirum Ngoy, "Ngoy, master of language".[3] His sung poems were in the style of chapei.[3]
King Sisowath invited him to sing at the royal palace and took him into the royal troupe, CambodgeMag writes. Because the troupe already had an artist named Ou, the king had him called Ngoy, or Krom Ngoy.[3] Khing Hoc Dy, as the Cambodia Daily reported, gives another account of the title: Ngoy was called Kram because he served as a go-between for villagers and government officials.[1] CambodgeMag adds that the king of Siam invited him to sing in Bangkok, where he stayed three months.[3]
Khing Hoc Dy called his style truly modern: morality tales and advice, simple and direct enough for anyone to follow.[1] CambodgeMag lists his subjects as peasant life, traditional weddings, poverty, the oppression of Khmer people by foreigners, the kingdom's need for independence, and the survival of Khmer culture and literature.[3]
Publication
In 1930 the French scholar Suzanne Karpelès asked Ngoy to sing all his works again so that the Buddhist Institute could write them down. The Institute published his poems in four books, later gathered in one volume.[3] Khing Hoc Dy and Jacqueline Khing published Les recommandations de Kram Ngoy in 1981.[2]
Legacy
In 2008 an official of the Ministry of Education told the Cambodia Daily that schools teach his work, in brief to younger pupils and in more depth in secondary school, so that students know what he achieved.[1] CambodgeMag writes that his texts were published again for schoolchildren in 2017.[3] It also writes that in 1975 the National Bank of Cambodia issued a 5,000 riel note bearing his likeness, which hardly circulated.[3]
In February 2008 the city of Phnom Penh put up a statue of him, about 2 meters (7 feet) high, on Sisowath Quay in front of the Cambodiana hotel.[3][1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 The Cambodia Daily, Neou Vannarin, Khmer legends (June 6, 2008)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 IdRef, Kram Ngoy (1865-1936), authority record 194592286 (undated) (in French)
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 CambodgeMag, Archive & Histoire: À propos du célèbre musicien et poète cambodgien Krom Ngoy (August 14, 2023) (in French)