1. wandering souls / utterly alone

2. please come listen / the roots of wars

3. my dearest, my child / they’ve snatched you away

4. keeping you is no gain / losing you is no loss

5. in the silence of the forest / you’ll be thrown away

6. awaiting ambrosia / for all the souls

7. the white bangsokol shroud / once this skin is shed, bliss arises

8. this body is pain / let it all go

9. wandering souls / coming back to life

HIM SOPHY — In 1970, the Civil War started in my country and my family fled from one village to another. During day time, we were afraid of bombs, at night we were worried about the Khmer Rouge soldiers asking us for information. We were living in misery and fear.

The Khmer Rouge evacuated people from city and created a tragedy for the whole country. We were working like animals in the fields with not enough food to eat, and they were killing people savagely. In 1976, I was working in a mobile youth camp where I got only 18 kernels of corn to eat; everyone got the same. I couldn’t walk far; I looked like an old man, but I was just a young boy.

I saw with my own eyes people being beaten to death with sticks. I saw people pulling carts like cows, emaciated from working long, tough hours with no food. My eldest brother was killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers—and later my fifth eldest brother was also murdered. There were countless memories from the dark time that was the Khmer Rouge regime.

Returning to today, we see still confrontations between world leaders, we see people threatening nuclear war—seemingly without thought for the consequences for people all over the world. My generation in Cambodia experienced war—I lost my family, I saw people killed. I don’t want that again for anyone.

As a composer, as well as a human being, I want to share these feelings through Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia. It is dedicated to all those who died during the war in Cambodia, and in wars and conflicts around the world. May their souls and spirits rest in peace. I wrote Bangsokol to help bring peace to the world—today and in the future.

—

RITHY PANH — Bangsokol is a beautiful work, complex and challenging. Him Sophy and I lived through the Khmer Rouge regime, and with this requiem we wanted to present to audiences— both in and outside Cambodia—the country’s harrowing modern history through traditional music, reinvented.

Bangsokol is an attempt to honor the Khmer Rouge’s victims by resuscitating the cultural heritage that the regime nearly wiped out, and passing it on to the next generation. Bangsokol may be a requiem, but it is less about death than about bringing the past back to life and restoring dignity to the disappeared. To create is to live.

Bangsokol—which was conceived, written, and performed by Cambodians—is yet more proof that our people’s capacity for imagination and creation could never be destroyed.

A German philosopher is sometimes quoted as saying that it is barbaric, or impossible, to write poetry after Auschwitz. It is not. Writing poetry in the face of horror is a right—and to some of us it feels like a duty, toward both the dead and the living. Art helps transcend atrocity by giving expression and meaning to suffering that is too great to explain. Art is more than an act of remembrance; it is an act of resistance, and of healing.

Taking the full measure of the Khmer Rouge’s crimes means looking beyond its total casualty toll: at least 1.7 million dead. It means remembering that this vast, anonymous number represents one person’s unique story and another’s and another’s and another’s... I hope that Bangsokol will allow each member of the audience to remember the dead as individuals, and intimately.

Some stars in the night sky are long dead by the time we see their light. Much like them, the bright souls of the Khmer Rouge’s victims are visible through the darkness of history.

—

TRENT WALKER — Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia offers several Buddhist ways of responding to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. The most common response to death in Buddhism is to contemplate it directly. The libretto invokes impermanence, suffering, and the loss of all we think of as “I” or “mine” as inexorable forces in human life. Buddhist rites for the dead emphasize the importance of recognizing our own mortality and reorienting our life in this light. Many Cambodians believe that such reflection on death brings wisdom to the living and benefits that can be dedicated to the deceased for their easeful passage to the next world.

Cambodian bangsokol rituals are traditionally performed for the sick as well as the dead. Such “skin-shedding” (bok sbaek) rites assume that the gift of the white shroud—the gift of one’s own body—embodies the regenerative power of life and the body’s capacity to heal. By taking on the part of a corpse, shedding their skin, and facing death with open eyes, the living may find peace. The libretto brings us face-to-face with violence and loss, providing an opportunity to remember, contemplate, and begin anew.

The libretto ends, as do most Buddhist rituals, with prayers of goodwill for all beings. This boundless compassion for all, including those who have harmed us, is an essential Buddhist response to violence. Such an extension of kindness is not the same as forgiveness and is not a replacement for justice. It is a recognition that hatred ceases only through love.

Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia honors the countless private rituals and acts of memorializing performed by Cambodians since 1979. Many of these rituals were bangsokol rituals performed on behalf of those who suffered and died under the Khmer Rouge. The requiem is therefore by no means entirely new or unique. It gives voice and respect to what Cambodians have already done over the past four decades to reflect on suffering, death, healing, goodwill, and the memory of those who perished.

Music developed in collaboration with Metropolis Ensemble Original idea by Charley Todd. Commissioned by Cambodian Living Arts. Produced by THE OFFICE performing arts + film. Additional commissioning support provided by BAM 2017 Next Wave Festival, The Rainbow Initiative, Ministry of Culture Taiwan (R.O.C.), Taipei Philharmonic Foundation for Culture and Education, The Charles E. Culpeper Arts & Culture Grant, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Australian Embassy in Cambodia, and Asia TOPA/Arts Centre Melbourne.