PRESERVING AND MAKING THE CAMBODIA TRADITIONAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Adapated from the article written by Lobban, William (Issue 14.3 July 31, 1990)
(Source: http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/csq/csq_article.cfm)

The Struggle for School and the Overseas Assistance
The Fine Arts School began in 1980 mostly with students taken from the various state orphanages, where students had been auditioned for their arts skill. The music school had two sections: classical Khmer music and Western music. The teachers for the latter were mostly from Vietnam, and the students used Western instruments supplied by the Vietnamese.

The classical Khmer music section began with very few teachers and 95 students. Instruments were so scare that often each is used by up to 10 students. They were poorly tuned since there was no money to buy the mixture of wax and lead needed for tuning. As additional musical instruments were found, they were purchased or borrowed from those who had found them.

In 1988, The Save the Children Fund (Australia) was approached to help the Fine Arts School construct a workshop for building traditional instruments. The Save the Children Fund agreed to finance the construction of the workshop for young craftspeople along with all the equipment needed, and to purchase a two-years supply of raw materials so that the school would have a stock to work with in the construction of the instruments.

In September 1989 International Catholic Relief (CIDSE) agreed to fund the building of a forge on a site next door to the instruments workshop and at the same time helped to train a new generation of instrument makers.

Finding Traditional Materials to Make Musical Instruments
The percussion instrument "roneat" is made of the right rosewood for the cases and the keys and the best trees are those that grow on their own on the tops of ridges in the Elephant Mountains and in the forests of Kratie as well as several areas of Kompong Thom.

The "roneats" are almost always played in tandem: one instrument plays melody in octaves while the other weaves ornamentations and variations around the central theme. To fit within the orchestra, they are fine tuned by adding a mixture of wax and lead that has been melted together and then fixed either into the raised nipple of the gongs or on the back of the wooden key struck by a hammer.

The bamboo for constructing flutes is usually found in the mountain areas, and is best cut at the end of the dry season when the sap has stopped flowing.

The copper material for making gongs contains hardening agents that simple forges cannot separate. As a result, the modern gongs have a much harsher, metallic ring. A new gong cannot be included within an old set because the timbres are so different. *AJI

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