Historical figure
Pen Ran
Pen Ran was a Cambodian singer of the 1960s and 1970s and one of the best-known female singers of the era.[1][2] The Cambodian Vintage Music Archive writes that she is considered "the second leading singer of Cambodia".[1] Her name is also written Pan Ron and Pen Ron.[3][4]
Early life
She was born in Battambang in 1944.[1] Little is known of her early years. Cambodge Mag writes that she went to the same school as Ros Sereysothea, who was a few years younger.[2]
Career
Her career began in 1963.[1] The press kit for the film Don't Think I've Forgotten dates her hit "Phkar Kabass" to that year.[4] From 1966 she recorded duets with Sinn Sisamouth.[1][4] The Cambodian Vintage Music Archive adds Ros Sereysothea as a duet partner from that year, and says the duets made her more popular.[1] She also sang with Chea Savoeun and Eung Nary.[1]
Cambodge Mag describes a catalog of several hundred songs that ran from rock and twist to cha-cha-cha, mambo, a-go-go, jazz, folk and traditional music.[2] On stage she wore a Western haircut and striking clothes and danced suggestively, an image far from what Cambodians of that time expected of a woman. Her lyrics were just as direct, with songs whose titles translate as "I'm Unsatisfied" and "I Want to Be Your Lover".[2] In "Chnam Oun 31" ("I'm 31"), sung when she was single and in her thirties, she answered Ros Sereysothea's hit "I'm 16".[2] Her song "Rom a Go-Go" was sung by Sieng Dy in the 1969 film La Joie de Vivre.[1]
The writer of a 2007 feature in The Guardian, who heard her among Ros Sereysothea's contemporaries on the soundtrack album of the film City of Ghosts, wrote that "Pan Ron hits notes that shatter glass".[5]
Under the Khmer Rouge
Pop music ended when the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in April 1975.[2] What happened to Pen Ran after that is not known,[1] and Cambodge Mag writes that accounts of her fate differ.[2]
Legacy
Her voice reached Western listeners again in the late 1990s through the compilation Cambodian Rocks and the reissues that followed.[2] Her songs have since appeared on labels such as Parallel World, Sublime Frequencies and Rough Guides.[3] The 2014 documentary Don't Think I've Forgotten features her.[4] The Los Angeles band Dengue Fever began by covering songs by Sinn Sisamouth, Pen Ran and Ros Sereysothea.[6]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Cambodian Vintage Music Archive, The Legendary Singers (undated)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Cambodge Mag, Music & History: Pen Ran, the Rock Voice That Stirred Up 1960s Cambodia (August 4, undated year)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 NTS Radio, Pen Ran (undated)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Argot Pictures, Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll, press kit (2014)
- ↑ The Guardian, A voice from the killing fields (May 20, 2007)
- ↑ The Cambodia Daily, Cambodian rock via LA (November 22, 2023)