He Survived the Khmer Rouge and Built a Musical Legacy

Observer

07-08-2025

Soeung Chetra, a high school student in rural Cambodia, practices a centuries-old musical art form: singing improvised ballads while plucking a Cambodian lute known as the chapei dang veng.
Like other Cambodian chapei players, he was inspired by Kong Nay, a master who died last year at 80. 'I want to be as famous as him,' Soeung Chetra, 16, said outside his family's wooden stilt house.
Few Cambodian artists of Kong Nay's generation survived the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, the regime that ruled the country from 1975 to 1979, created a nationwide system of forced labor camps and killed up to a quarter of the population. Fewer still spent decades building a legacy.
Kong Nay, who was blind, raised the chapei's profile by teaching young proteges and performing melancholic ballads at home and abroad. One of his last projects, a collaboration with a Cambodian rapper, exposed a new generation of Cambodians to their country's traditional music.
'People say he's the Ray Charles of Cambodia, but some people don't like that,' said Song Seng, a nonprofit administrator who introduced Kong Nay to some of his first students.
Ray Charles, his admirers say, is the Kong Nay of America.
Kong Nay was born March 15, 1944, near the Gulf of Thailand as one of 10 children, according to his son Kong Boran, 39. His parents were rice farmers, and he lost his eyesight after contracting an illness during childhood.
As a teenager, he asked his uncle to teach him the chapei, a two-stringed instrument played in traditional Khmer ensembles or to accompany ballads.
'How can I teach you if you can't see?' his uncle asked, according to his son.
'Just play and I'll try to remember,' Kong Nay said.
He later earned a reputation for his playing. It would save his life when the Khmer Rouge guards in his work camp asked him to sing propaganda, his son said in an interview.
Khmer Rouge soldiers planned to kill him, Kong Nay told The Guardian in 2007. But before they could, Vietnamese soldiers invaded Cambodia and ousted the regime.
Kong Nay returned to his hometown, where he played chapei at weddings and ceremonies. He and his wife, Tat Chan, who survives him, had 11 children.
He moved to Phnom Penh, the capital, in the early 1990s, and his profile grew on the strength of his plaintive voice, witty improvisations and commanding presence.
One of his best-known songs is a lullaby for a lover.
Please understand my loving heart
In spite of living in our tiny hut, doorless, with holes in the wall
Even though sometimes we eat rice with only fish sauce
You're always here with me
His songs often conveyed moral lessons or social commentary. One gave tips for avoiding the coronavirus. Another said that while young people were once ignorant but respectful, they were now smarter but more mischievous.
Chapei music is 'not just about telling old folk tales,' he told an audience in New York City in 2013. 'It can be used to tell stories with educational messages, and also to critique activities in society that are wrong.'
Over the years, Kong Nay taught dozens of students, including Savy Ouch, his partner on the 2007 album 'Mekong Delta Blues.' Another student, Pich Sarath, now leads a chapei group that has trained dozens more.
'Kong Nay is a role model for other chapei players,' some of whom use chapei music to sing about social problems like drunken driving, Pich Sarath said in an interview.
Soeung Chetra, the teenage chapei prodigy, didn't study directly with Kong Nay. But he watches YouTube videos of the master and covers his songs, including 'Dancing in a Circle,' which deals with romance and longing.
Kong Nay's success made the chapei appealing to younger players, said Soeung Chetra, who has more than 100,000 followers on TikTok and was the subject of an admiring profile last year in the Phnom Penh Post newspaper.
'I want to spread chapei playing to the world, and I don't want it to get lost,' he said.
Kong Nay's career showed that traditional music doesn't have to be consigned to the past, said Catherine Grant, a music researcher in Australia.
'He is uniquely Cambodian and the instrument, in representing him, is a source of cultural pride,' she said.
That pride was clearly displayed in 'Time to Rise,' a song Kong Nay recorded with the Cambodian rapper VannDa in 2021. It celebrates Khmer heritage, including musicians who disappeared under Khmer Rouge rule.
The music video opens with Kong Nay plucking ominous notes on his chapei in the darkened galleries of Cambodia's national museum. As an infectious beat rises, he invokes his own legacy.
To the male and female artists
Who seek to fulfill their dreams
Go forth and open the new
Chapter of the treasured arts
Inherited from me, Kong Nay
The video has been viewed more than 130 million times on YouTube. A few weeks after Kong Nay's death, VannDa paid homage to him when he performed the song at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
I said time to rise
Time is priceless
Rise beyond the sky like master Kong Nay
Who rose beyond the stars. —NYT