This is raw, unfiltered ceremonial gong ensemble music recorded on location by Laurent Jeanneau in Ratanakiri, Cambodia’s northeastern province, bordering Laos and Vietnam. Along with Mondolkiri to the south, it was once home to many of the country’s ethnic minority communities. During the colonial period, the French failed to establish full control over the region. After independence, the Khmer state also struggled to govern it, while Khmer Rouge rebels hid in its forests in the 1960s amid the wider conflict between communist Vietnam and the United States. The Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975 and the subsequent Vietnamese occupation, which lasted until 1991, could have devastated the traditions of northeastern Cambodia’s ethnic minorities.

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