AsiaLIFE

For the past five years, KlapYaHandz has been fostering original hip-hop in Cambodia. Founder Sok ‘Cream’ Visal explains the hip hop collective’s push for musical innovation to Mai Lynn Miller Nguyen.

Why don’t we just start creating our own music?” says Sok ‘Cream’ Visal, founder of the KlapYaHandz hip hop collective. “Even if we have to be inspired by our old songs, our own artists from the sixties.”

Under the production of Visal, KlapYaHandz has independently released four albums of hip hop music. Yet uniquely Khmer music remains largely underground as covers of foreign hits continue to dominate clubs and radio stations. Armed with a self-taught knowledge of music production and a passionate drive to promote originality, Visal is trying to pick up where the 1960s, Cambodia’s Golden Age of music, left off.

Visal’s zeal for hip hop developed in the suburbs of Paris. During the Khmer Rouge regime his family had immigrated to France where he was raised in housing projects. In the late eighties, he got involved with a group of graffiti artists. They started rapping and performing, but never got beyond being “world-famous–in the neighbourhood,” Visal jokes.

In 1993, Visal chose to return to the country of his birth. He set about starting his life over in Cambodia with a stream of jobs, joining the army, managing Monument Books, teaching French, and working for a petrol company. On the side, he kept exploring music. “It started like a hobby,” says Visal. “I bought myself a computer and I learned how to make music. I started to play around with old Khmer music, mixing with hip hop drum beats, basic stuff.”

Visal traces the rise of hip hop in Cambodia to a flow of music from Cambodians living abroad. A hip hop scene emerged in the nineties, spawning Khmer versions of American chart-toppers. Wanting to do something more home-grown, Visal remixed locally recorded vocals with samples of the sixties Khmer songs his parents had played throughout his youth. He put out a first mix tape, ‘Cream Remix of Khmer hip hop’, and began distributing it for free. His subsequent album, ‘Khmer Funk’, drew on the soul and funk style he knew from France.

Though Visal’s experimental work earned him some local notoriety, he gave up music to focus on raising and supporting his family. By this time, he had taught himself graphic design and was employed as an art director for an advertising firm. Eventually, music came to find him. “I got this kid working with me, a Khmer junior copywriter, named Aping. So one day, he was asking me if I was still making music,” recounts Visal. “I didn’t even know he was rapping. I didn’t really have time to take music to a more serious level, but I said let’s try something. That’s how KlapYaHandz started.”

Aping’s 2005 debut record, produced by Visal, sparked a movement. The Cambodian hip hop scene had fizzled out since 2002, but Visal found that as the album began to circulate, others were inspired to create their own songs. Artists started seeking out Visal’s beats and production skills, and the KlapYaHandz ‘music family’ grew. The label functioned essentially as a oneman show, with Visal managing artists, mixing and mastering songs, shooting and editing music videos, and financing operational costs.

When a partner came on board, they set up a studio and released the first KlapYaHandz compilation, establishing several of their artists as local stars. The Group is currently on what Visal calls its second generation of artists, with a total of nine artists signed to the label and being paid for the songs they create. In October, KlapYa- Handz plans to launch a new album and music videos, as well as showcase its talent in a concert. Incorporating influences of reggae, acoustic music, and other genres, new material will show the expanded dimensions of KlapYaHandz’s artists.

Still, hip hop continues to be at the core of the collective’s sound. “One other thing I think about why Khmer people easily adopted hip hop—I think it has a lot to do with the whole coming from nothing and turning into something,” says Visal. “Coming from the ghetto and wanting to be rich and bling-bling, and all that stuff. I guess Cambodians also wanted to relate to that.”

Concerning the misogynistic and substance abuse-promoting lyrics and lifestyles of certain American rappers, Visal keeps these negative aspects out of KlapYaHandz work. “It wasn’t right do anything gangster here,” explains Visal. “The goal here is to build something positive and to go as far as possible.”

For KlapYaHandz artists, music can serve as an outlet for expression. It’s a way for them to discuss their lives, particularly for those who come from poor backgrounds. The first song about the environment is currently in production, and Visal sees potential for music to have great meaning for Cambodians on all different issues. “As a producer, but also as a Khmer person, I feel like I have this mission of teaching and educating people,” says Visal. “My way to do it, the only way I can do it is, through music and songs.”