The Sydney Morning Herald
October 12, 2010
Dengue Fever ... blending venerable south-east Asian pop and a modern rock band.
DENGUE fever, the disease, does things to your brain and body with headaches and joint pains that make you suffer. Dengue Fever, the band, does things to your brain and body by mixing Cambodian pop music of the 1960s with American psychedelic rock that makes you dance.
Although you may have put it in the too-strange-to-be-true category, blending venerable south-east Asian pop and a modern rock band is exactly what Zac Holzman and his brother Ethan conceived of after a holiday in Cambodia. A Scottish travelling companion's dengue fever outbreak was soundtracked by a bus driver's tinny radio blaring old-school local music sung by a succession of spooky female voices.
Back home the brothers feverishly (sorry, but it's true) sought out someone who could repeat the dose for them, finally finding a young immigrant, Chhom Nimol. She was more than a little reluctant initially when these two hairy white men explained their plan to play the music of artists revered by Cambodians, such as Sinn Sisamouth and his singing partner, Ros Serey Sothea.
But three albums later, now with more originals than covers in their repertoire, Dengue Fever is a seriously entertaining and, dare one say it, groovy, band.
The guitarist, songwriter and occasional vocalist Zac Holzman is, I've been told, up in the hills when I put the call through. Sadly we're not talking the hills of Cambodia.
''We are based in Los Angeles,'' Holzman says apologetically. ''But there is a huge Cambodian population down in Long Beach, which is very close to LA. So if you want to experience the cuisine or the nightlife there are some places you can go down there and try to dance Cambodian.''
How does one dance Cambodian, particularly when one is decidedly American?
''Well, the cool thing is that guys get to go a little bit crazier than the girls. For the girls it's all in their hands but the guys get to do a cool sort of tai chi kind of a walk.''
Thanks to Lou Reed, Sydneysiders are down with the tai chi in rock but can Holzman explain Dengue Fever's blend? It turns out it's what the Lion King might call the circle of life.
The music performed by Sinn Sisamouth in the '60s was a blend of traditional Cambodian styles, and the music heard through American soldiers in neighbouring Vietnam. So what the Holzman brothers did was take that American-influenced Cambodian music and make it into Cambodian influenced American music.
''It's like a game of tag: they were inspired by what they were hearing on the radio and they added their thing to it and then we heard it and thought, 'That's really different; we like that,''' Holzman says. ''We've gone to Cambodia a couple times now and I think we are having an influence there and hopefully people are putting the karaoke machine in the closet and picking up a guitar."
There is not just some two-way cultural exchange happening here but also some cultural restoration. What can't be ignored with this band and this country is the legacy of destruction suffered by the Cambodian culture and people during the murderous Pol Pot regime in the mid-'70s.
''They were on the fringe of losing everything, instruments, songs and dance that had been with them for 700 or 800 years,'' Holzman says. ''We've been working with some old masters who survived the Khmer Rouge who are teaching kids.''
Another feature of the band is Holzman's extravagant, if not Z Z Top, beard.
''My first trip to Cambodia, the girls I would be talking to would look and go 'why? It's really bad'," he laughs.
"Then after we were on the Cambodian television network we were in some other part of the country, walking down the beach and some kids trying to sell me some little bracelet or something were like, wait a second, 'you sing in Khmer, you sing for me!'"
Dengue Fever plays at the Factory Theatre, Marrickville, on Friday (15th October).
Although you may have put it in the too-strange-to-be-true category, blending venerable south-east Asian pop and a modern rock band is exactly what Zac Holzman and his brother Ethan conceived of after a holiday in Cambodia. A Scottish travelling companion's dengue fever outbreak was soundtracked by a bus driver's tinny radio blaring old-school local music sung by a succession of spooky female voices.
Back home the brothers feverishly (sorry, but it's true) sought out someone who could repeat the dose for them, finally finding a young immigrant, Chhom Nimol. She was more than a little reluctant initially when these two hairy white men explained their plan to play the music of artists revered by Cambodians, such as Sinn Sisamouth and his singing partner, Ros Serey Sothea.
But three albums later, now with more originals than covers in their repertoire, Dengue Fever is a seriously entertaining and, dare one say it, groovy, band.
The guitarist, songwriter and occasional vocalist Zac Holzman is, I've been told, up in the hills when I put the call through. Sadly we're not talking the hills of Cambodia.
''We are based in Los Angeles,'' Holzman says apologetically. ''But there is a huge Cambodian population down in Long Beach, which is very close to LA. So if you want to experience the cuisine or the nightlife there are some places you can go down there and try to dance Cambodian.''
How does one dance Cambodian, particularly when one is decidedly American?
''Well, the cool thing is that guys get to go a little bit crazier than the girls. For the girls it's all in their hands but the guys get to do a cool sort of tai chi kind of a walk.''
Thanks to Lou Reed, Sydneysiders are down with the tai chi in rock but can Holzman explain Dengue Fever's blend? It turns out it's what the Lion King might call the circle of life.
The music performed by Sinn Sisamouth in the '60s was a blend of traditional Cambodian styles, and the music heard through American soldiers in neighbouring Vietnam. So what the Holzman brothers did was take that American-influenced Cambodian music and make it into Cambodian influenced American music.
''It's like a game of tag: they were inspired by what they were hearing on the radio and they added their thing to it and then we heard it and thought, 'That's really different; we like that,''' Holzman says. ''We've gone to Cambodia a couple times now and I think we are having an influence there and hopefully people are putting the karaoke machine in the closet and picking up a guitar."
There is not just some two-way cultural exchange happening here but also some cultural restoration. What can't be ignored with this band and this country is the legacy of destruction suffered by the Cambodian culture and people during the murderous Pol Pot regime in the mid-'70s.
''They were on the fringe of losing everything, instruments, songs and dance that had been with them for 700 or 800 years,'' Holzman says. ''We've been working with some old masters who survived the Khmer Rouge who are teaching kids.''
Another feature of the band is Holzman's extravagant, if not Z Z Top, beard.
''My first trip to Cambodia, the girls I would be talking to would look and go 'why? It's really bad'," he laughs.
"Then after we were on the Cambodian television network we were in some other part of the country, walking down the beach and some kids trying to sell me some little bracelet or something were like, wait a second, 'you sing in Khmer, you sing for me!'"
Dengue Fever plays at the Factory Theatre, Marrickville, on Friday (15th October).
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