Creator
Sonny Thet
Sonny Thet is a Cambodian-born cellist in Germany and a founder of the band Bayon.
Sonny Thet is a Cambodian-born cellist who lives in Berlin. He was born in Phnom Penh in 1954 and was a founder of the East German band Bayon, which mixed classical music with folk, jazz and rock.[1][2][3]
Early life
Thet was born into a family of musicians and trained at the state conservatory in Phnom Penh.[3][2] In a 2016 interview with the Berlin newspaper taz, he said that his father led the court orchestra, which brought him into the royal court.[3]
In 1969 Prince Norodom Sihanouk sent him to East Germany to study European music. Thet told taz that he was one of eight young Cambodians the prince sent there that year, six of them to study classical music, and that they landed at Schönefeld airport on September 9, 1969. After six months learning German in Leipzig, he went on to the music school in Weimar, where he took his degree in cello.[3]
Bayon
Thet and Christoph Theusner founded Bayon in 1971, after their earlier band, the Garage Players, was banned. They named it after the temple of Bayon at Angkor.[3][1] The band was well known in East Germany and recorded three albums there; its first record, Bayon, came out in 1977.[3][1] Thet told taz that the band's models were John McLaughlin and Ravi Shankar, and that some call Bayon the founders of world music in East Germany, a term he does not find apt.[3]
Bayon wrote the music for the film Tiefer blauer Schnee (1981). Its song "Stell Dich mitten in den Regen" was used in the 2006 film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen). In 2010 Bayon was given an honorary RUTH, a German prize for world music.[1][3]
Berlin
After the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, Thet refused a passport of the new state. A lawyer obtained East German papers for stateless people for him, which let him keep traveling to Austria and West Berlin to work in the theater. In 1987, when he was told his papers would not be renewed, he moved to West Berlin, and his wife and two sons followed soon after.[3] After German reunification he played as a solo cellist with artists such as Rio Reiser, Katja Riemann and Söhne Mannheims, and in 2016 he released an album recorded with his son Anthony.[3]
Thet first went back to Cambodia in 1992. He told taz that he left again after two weeks because the country still bore the marks of the Pol Pot regime, and that the house where he was born was gone.[3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Qobuz, Bayon, artist page (undated)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Kulturaustausch, Sonny Thet, author biography (undated)
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 taz, interview with Sonny Thet, "Ich bin ein richtiger Berliner, nur meckern fällt mir schwer" (November 12, 2016; in German)