NO SUCH THING AS DISTURBING THE PEACE

JULY 11 - If there's music in the air, it's Cambodia! This is the third morning I've awoken to traditional Khmer music...played from dawn to about 8 pm...maybe 2 blocks from Siem Reap Riverside Guest House where I live here.

Each kind of celebration has its distinct melodies and combination of instruments, so Khmer people can tell immediately the kind of celebration by thge music that is played. It floats throughout the neighborhood as a kind of invitation/announcement. Khmer traditional music is based upon the polyphonic stratification of several musical lins and melodies based primarily upon 5-tone scales as compared to the 12-tone scales familiar to our western ears.

My first couple years in Cambodia, I could not distinguish the melodies, instrumental ensembles, whether sad or happy...it all sounded minor key and haunting. Today I know this is not funeral or wedding music, but I cannot otherwise identify it except to know it's a happy occasion. I learn it's a candle celebration. This is a celebration a family mounts to consecrate large...very large - 4 foot tall and 6 inch diameter...candles that will be carried by the family, guests, monks and nuns in procession on the third day from the house to the pagoda.

While most celebrations are religious, many take place at home and the monks come to the home to chant and pray for the ceremony...wedding, blessing of new house, blessing of child on 1-year birthday, 100 day anniversary of funeral, 1 year anniversary of funeral, e.g....or at least start at home and end at the pagoda on the last day...funeral, consecration of young men to become monks, pagoda candle celebration, e.g.

Almost any Khmer celebration is 3 days and the family that mounts the celebration must provide food and drink for guests, stipend for the monks, rent tables and chairs and some sort of overhead shelter from the sun and rain, engage Khmer traditional instrumentalists and vocalists.

So poor families may never have an optional candle celebration. In the case of a funeral or wedding, some families with not so much money, maybe a 2-day celebration, and for the very poor, just 1 day.