Smot

Smot (ស្មូត, smot) is the Cambodian Buddhist art of singing sacred verse to slow, richly ornamented melodies, most often at funerals. Its texts, in Khmer and Pali, tell of the Buddha's life, teach the Dharma and lament the dead, and it has been part of Buddhist ritual in Cambodia for centuries.

Illustration inspired by a chanting table in a temple hall.

Tradition details
Khmer name	ស្មូត
Also known as	smot; smutr; smot srei
Practice type	Performing art
Usual occasion	Funerals and ceremonies
Subjects	Music & Sound; Dance & Theatre

Names

Smot is also written smutr, smūt or smūdhy, and is known in English as Cambodian Buddhist chant or Cambodian Dharma song. In Khmer it is also called a dharma song, thor bot. It has two Khmer spellings, ស្មូត and ស្មូធ្យ, of which ស្មូត is the more common. Women's smot is called smot srei.

Practice

Smot is the slowest, longest and most ornamented of all Cambodian Buddhist vocal styles. It is traditionally sung solo, by a man or a woman, and by monks or laypeople. Tricycle describes its melodies as having no strict metrical pulse, while Rolf Bader's study of recordings found a 4/4 meter at about 60 beats a minute, with vibrato close around the sung pitch. The singer holds notes for a long time and, by tradition, sings with eyes closed, while listeners attend to the words and think on life and death.

Melodies and ornaments are fixed in advance, so there is little improvisation. Singers read from traditional accordion-fold manuscripts of rhyming stanzas. Some smot songs call on the teveda, Hindu celestial beings, for help, as in "Chey Teous" and "Bat Sara Phanh."

Songs of pasāda, a feeling of clarity and faith, often use bright major pentatonic scales with devotional words, and are sung for worship and blessings. Songs of saṃvega, being deeply moved and shaken by suffering and impermanence, use mournful pentatonic scales and suit funerals, healing rites and tragic Buddhist stories. Bader describes smot as pentatonic, leaving out the fourth and seventh steps of the scale. Smot is regarded as a way to enlighten and heal the listener's mind.

Repertoire

Dharma songs tell of the Buddha's past lives (Jataka) or his final life, explain Buddhist ideas or the virtue of parents, and serve worship (puja) or protection (paritta). Many dharma songs are dramatic stories of grief and loss. Bader calls smot music of sorrow and comfort. The song "Sovansam" tells of a former life of the Buddha.

Smot songs teach that life involves suffering and point to acceptance and the Noble Path. They address impermanence, suffering and not-self. Other songs include "Lotus Flower Offering," "The Subtle Marks" and "Orphan's Lament." "Bat Sara Phanh," widely known in Cambodia, is often said to have been composed by Chu Nath. "Bat Kiriminon," about failing eyesight, counsels acceptance of it as part of growing old.

It is a demanding art, and its texts are in Pali or use Khmer words rarely heard in everyday speech.

Occasions

Smot is sung most often at funerals, and also at memorials, all-night consecrations of Buddha images, healing rites and yearly festivals. It may be sung at a deathbed, and at pchum vay or pchum benn, the festival for the dead held in September. It is also sung at Bonn Kathun, Pachay Boun and other Buddhist ceremonies at the pagoda, and monks and laypeople sing it privately as well. Many Khmer people link smot with funerals, death and ghosts, although its use is wider. Smot follows the stages of life from birth through adulthood to death, and it carries deep feeling for many Cambodians at ceremonies.

History

Bader notes that Cambodian Buddhism carries strong elements of Hindu and animist traditions, and cites a study of Khmer literature that places smot among secular (lpaen) rather than religious (ghambir) texts. Smot was already practiced before 1975. The monk Balat Un, regarded as the foremost smot master of the twentieth century, traveled across Cambodia singing Pali and Khmer texts until his death in the early 1960s. He received the title balat by royal decree, and his few vinyl recordings still circulate on cassette and CD. Di Ballad On was a famous smot singer and monk before the civil war.

Under the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia's arts were badly damaged, and smot singers were among the musicians targeted and executed. Teacher Ros Samoeun says the regime tried to destroy the tradition by killing many of its masters. Smot remained part of Buddhist life for Cambodians at home and abroad. Monasteries teach it in courses that last several years, with final examinations to find the best singers, and fieldwork in 2010 found it still sung and recorded in several monasteries. "Bat Kiriminon" was recorded at Wat Chan Boryvong in 2010 by three monks, among them Samdech Preah Venarat Noy Chrek. The tradition also lived on through lay singers and through recordings, including those of professional singers, copied and passed around privately on cassette.

In the twenty-first century, cassettes and a shortage of trained masters have made live smot rare, and the art is counted as endangered, with few practitioners left. In 2017 the composer Him Sophy wove smot chanting and other Khmer musical forms into Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia, for Western orchestra and chorus with Khmer singers and instruments. It played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival that year.

Variations

Among the Khmer of southern Vietnam, especially in Tra Vinh Province, smôt is the recitation of rhyming poems in sacred spaces during Khmer folk and Buddhist festivals. From January to July 2019, fieldwork at 50 places in Tra Vinh, with in-depth interviews of 300 Khmer residents, gathered ten smôt texts, mainly from Tra Cu and Cau Ke districts. The practice there is declining, in part because smôt has dropped out of life-cycle rituals.

Community

Smot is most often sung by the achar, an elderly man trained in Cambodia's religious traditions. Singers have also traditionally been older women or elderly monks. Bader writes that the most skilled performers are often laypeople rather than monks. Teachers pass on voice and pronunciation to their students in formal lessons. Famous chanters include Prom Uth (also written Prum Ut, 1945 to 2009). Younger singers include Phoeun Srey Pov.

Cambodian Living Arts seeks out young people to train with the few older masters left, as part of rebuilding Cambodia's heritage after the Khmer Rouge years. Smot is one of the arts taught in its classes. Phoeun Srey Pov, known as Sreypov Smot, auditioned for Cambodian Living Arts in Kampong Speu Province and began learning smot at 13, studying Buddhist texts and voice with Prom Uth and Professor Yan Borin. With a scholarship she continued her studies in Phnom Penh while singing at pagodas. She became a television host with her own program on the Cambodian Television Network and started a business advising families on Buddhist ceremonies. She calls smot "the voice of Cambodia."

At the KCDI school, blind music students learn smot verses. They find some on YouTube, write them in Braille and sing them for their class, and teacher Ros Samoeun recites songs over and over so students can write them down. Chourn Reach sings smot to his chapey lute.

Srey Pov has performed in Australia, India, Nepal, Taiwan and the United States. She found that hearing smot made Khmer listeners in the United States miss Cambodia.

References