Singer gives voice to the new face of Cambodia [is he a Cambodia's Frank Sinatra?]

Young tenor hopes to change perceptions of his homeland

By Amy Smart,
Times Colonist
August 7, 2011

Cambodian tenor Hy Chanthavouth has the kind of voice that can change minds.

It may have played a role in changing the minds of high school administrators, who told him that he was too old to enrol when he arrived in Canada at 22.

Before he left the Kimberley school's office, a counsellor asked if he knew the song My Way by Frank Sinatra - it was his father's favourite. By the time Chanthavouth had reached the song's spirited climax, he had drawn a crowd.

"All the teachers just stopped working and came down to follow the voice," he said. "They didn't believe it was me."

Ultimately, they admitted him.

Since then, his voice has undoubtedly worked its magic a few more times, changing his teenage homestay brother's taste in music (he likes opera now) and others' ideas of what a tenor should look like - the slight 26-year-old is neither rotund nor Italian.

And if all goes as planned, he will alter Western perceptions of Cambodia.

"My goal here is to do my best, to finish school and to become well known for my country," said Chanthavouth, who works part-time in the kitchen at the Fairmont Empress Hotel. "I just want to be able to carry the Cambodian flag into the international stage and to show the world a new face of Cambodia."

As a goodwill ambassador for the Cambodia Support Group, halfway through a diploma program at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, he's doing well.

Chanthavouth will perform at Knox Presbyterian Church Monday at 7: 30 p.m. in a fundraising concert for the Cambodia Support Group, a Kimberley-based non-profit. He is joined by soprano Hillary Young and pianists Braden Young, Armand Saberi and Arne Sahlen. Admission is by donation.

It's that kind of goodwill that landed Chanthavouth in Canada in the first place. He met Sahlen, president of the Cambodia Support Group, in his home city of Phnom Penh, where he volunteered for everything from postering to translating for the group.

"Here was this man with an amazing voice," said Sahlen. "And more than that, a great passion to help make a difference."

The Cambodia Support Group, which sponsored Chanthavouth to come to Canada, has helped hundreds of refugees and immigrants adapt to life in Canada, in addition to undertaking development projects in Cambodia.

Now almost four years in B.C. - and just past his first anniversary in Victoria - Chanthavouth is miles away from his youth.

He fell in love with Western music after regularly passing a church in Phnom Penh and hearing the choir. "I used to walk by every Sunday morning and I'd stop and listen to the people in the choir and I just felt something unique," he said.

From there, he couldn't help but sing while doing the dishes, to his single mother's chagrin. He said he has always been the loudmouth among his four siblings, and ultimately persuaded his mother to enrol him in music school.

Besides changing Western ideas about Cambodia - often dominated by associations with the 1970s genocide - Chanthavouth hopes to also affect psyches within his country.

"After the genocide, we all, including my mom and her family, tend to be stuck in their past," he said. He hopes that his success will make them proud, even if Western music is still foreign to his family.

"Music like opera means nothing to the people in Cambodia, but perhaps it might mean something to them when I become well known."