AsiaLIFE

Voicing a love for musical expression and 1960s Khmer rock revival, The Like Me’s chat with Mai Lynn Miller Nguyen on their visit to Phnom Penh. Photo by James Grant.

Alongside Carlos Santana and Lauren Hill, Laura Mam of The Like Me’s cites Pan Ron, one of the first female Cambodian singer-songwriters, among the band’s main influences.

For Mam, a Cambodian-American based in San Jose, California, music is a way to explore her heritage—and inspire others to do the same.

“There are a lot of young people like us that live in other countries and don’t know anything about our culture,” she says. “This contributes to this major identity rift, because you’ve got parents who don’t want to talk about the past and you’ve got kids who aren’t really curious because no one is telling them where they come from.”

Playing a mélange of pop, R&B and alternative music, The Like Me’s feature Mam on vocals and guitar, her first cousin Helena Hong on the bass, and Filipina-Americans Monique Coquilla on drums and Loren Alonzo on keyboard. With the exception of Alonzo, a trained classical pianist, the rest of the members are self-taught.

“Since we’re all female and we’re all Southeast Asian, we’re extremely underdog, absolutely not the people who are supposed to be in a band,” says Mam. “We want to challenge that image.”

After clocking off their day jobs, the band comes together in the evenings to practice. With lyrics written in English and Khmer by Mam and her mother, the group’s original songs encompass personal and cultural themes, such as the dichotomy between being both Cambodian and American.

Bringing Back The Golden Age
In April of last year, The Like Me’s covered Pan Ron’s Sva Rom Monkiss, a favourite dance song of Hong’s mother from the 1960s. Counting over 70,000 views on YouTube, the music video became an internet sensation, resonating particularly among Cambodian and Southeast Asian communities around the world.

The video flashes between scenes of a modern-day Khmer New Year party in San Jose and a soirée in post-colonial Phnom Penh. The band relied on the recollections of Mam and Hong’s relatives to accurately portray the 1960s, considered Cambodia’s golden age for the arts.

“We’re told you’re a descendent of Angkor, you’re a Khmer Rouge refugee,” says Mam. “There’s so much more to our identity. When trying to bring the sixties back, we’re trying to encourage people to go find out all the other things about being Cambodian. The point of that video was to get people to ask the question of what it used to be like here.”

Hong considers herself and Mam lucky to be part of a family that encourages speaking about the past. “Both of our mothers and fathers are survivors, they’re refugees,” she says. “I think they’re special because they actually sat around and told stories. I remember when we were younger, my uncles and my aunts were all sharing hard things to talk about, such as when my father was arrested and was going to be taken away to be killed.”

Unlike Hong, who was one year old when her parents fled Cambodia, Mam was born in the United States. Her parents enrolled her in classes to learn Khmer language and traditional dancing at an early age. She continued exploring Cambodian culture through music, recording her own renditions of classic songs through YouTube, as well as writing her own songs with Khmer lyrics. A fan base of Cambodians across the globe began tuning in.

The Power of Expression
When The Like Me’s came together two years ago, the members had each experienced a recent break-up. Music became a way to overcome their heartaches. They found potential in applying their experience to the Cambodian context, adopting the phrase “healing through expression” as part of their official mantra.

“Our main concept is digging deep to find out who you are,” explains Mam. “Whatever art you have inside of you, use it and channel it, and if you do so, then you can really get out of any problem.”

An album is in the works, but the recent focus has been on preparing for the journey to Cambodia. Though an aspiration since the band’s early days, the visit has been “a pretty crazy switchover from dreams to reality,” says drummer Coquilla.

The three-week tour includes performances at Phnom Penh’s Northbridge International School and during the Angkor Tribute to the Masters concert at Bayon Temple in Siem Reap. A final show will take place at the Parkway Studios, with proceeds benefiting Cambodian Living Arts and the Anvaya Initiative.

Sponsored in part by the Friends of Khmer Culture NGO, the band also intends for the tour to raise awareness about the Banteay Chhmar project, which addresses issues of unsustainable tourism.

Moved by the tragedy on the Koh Pich bridge, The Like Me’s penned a tribute to victims of the stampede. As traditional Cambodian mourning takes place 100 days after death, the band will perform a memorial concert on March 5 at the Koh Pich site.

A Musical Mission
The group hopes that their music will draw a positive reaction from Cambodian audiences, reinvigorating an emphasis on artistic expression lost during the war years.

“Original music is not so alive at this point, it’s take everything from Korea and throw some Cambodian lyrics on it,” says Mam. “What I’d like to see is other Cambodians apply themselves to art again, not just the conventional forms. We hope to bring back the flavour of being creative.”

For the next generation of Cambodian musicians, The Like Me’s may become an influence in their own right.