What are Cambodian Dharma Songs?

…didactic, narrative or liturgical texts in Khmer or Pāḷi sung with complex smot (ស្មូត្រ) melodies for Buddhist rituals…

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Kompong Speu province, Cambodia, September 2006

Miles and miles of palm trees and rice paddies speed by. Blue mountains rise in the distance while shirtless men pull carts of firewood alongside us. The dusty road leads to a small green hill. Arriving at a modest village at the foot of the hill, I step out of the car, relieved to be on firm, red earth. Two Dharma song masters, a tall white-haired man named Prum Ut (ព្រំ អ៊ុត) and a younger blind woman with short-cropped brown hair, Koet Ran (កើត រ៉ាន), greet me and lead me into a house on stilts, where fifteen of their students are kneeling on the floor. We greet, I listen, they sing. I sing in return. The masters try to teach me a song. The ungraspable melodies captivate me.

Koet Ran places her warm hands on my face. Her sweetly-spoken blessings linger in my ears. She feels the contours of my nose and cheeks, as if to remember me. She beams and beams, her smiles unrelenting. She sings "Suvannasam's Lament," (ទំនួញសុវណ្ណសាម) again, her voice unadorned, without an excess of vibrato, uncannily steady in pitch and tone:

Mother to whom I owe life!
Oh, how this strife comes my way!
Mother, come to help me today,
Passing away before you!
   
How can I see your sweet face?
Here in this place, I leave you.
Mother, come to help me through.
Like drops of dew, I vanish.

With this voice, she expresses the Buddhist stories told by Dharma songs with great feeling, focused concentration, and compassion. Her blindness speaks of grave trauma, but her voice resounds with the dignity of one who has met suffering with kindness.

Every afternoon for the next five months, I study with the two masters and their students. At night, I return to Prum Ut's one-room house. I kneel on the wooden floor and study Cambodian Dharma songs — didactic, narrative or liturgical texts in Khmer or Pāḷi sung with complex smot (ស្មូត្រ) melodies for Buddhist rituals — from him by candlelight. We pore over the folded pages of a traditional concertina manuscript (ក្រាំង) as I try to memorize the rhyming stanzas and flowing melodies. The monsoon pours down on the corrugated metal roof as he tells me stories of his teachers. Each evening until everyone in the village is fast asleep, he patiently corrects my vocal technique and pronunciation. He barely smiles, but his mellifluous voice soars over the howl of wind and rain, ringing out haunting verses on impermanence in the song, “The Holy Three Marks” (ព្រះត្រៃលក្ខណ៍):

RŪPAṂ DUKKHAṂ
Oh pain, great pain
Beyond measure
Small pain, great pain
Pain boils within
Without relief
Pain leads to death.

ANICCAṂ not long-
Lasting at all
Soon dead, just our
Foul corpse remains
The flesh and bones
And sinews rot
Back into earth.

ANATTĀ, no thing
No form, no name
No perceiver
No fame, no rank
No great splendor
No dear partner
No wealth either.

So reflect well
Care for your heart
If mad, calm down
Your heart soft like
Mother and child
If mad, calm down
Let it all go.