The arak ensemble of the Wat Reach Bo

Texts, photos, videos: © Patrick Kersalé 1998-2019, except special mention.

In Siem Reap, the Wat Reach Bo is one of the oldest Buddhist monastery in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge destroyed almost all of them. It was painted on an unknown date, before 1907 or between 1921 and 1924 (?). For now, the mystery remains.

The fresco that interests us here is at the bottom of the vihāra (temple), on the left, behind the sanctuary. It represents the Buddhist hells. The scene shows an old typical orchestra from the Siem Reap area until the Khmer Rouge, once again, meticulously, eliminate the musicians and their ancestral culture. Until the revolution, this orchestra accompanied weddings and possession ceremonies known as arak. There remains, in Siem Reap, a single family holding the know-how and repertoire played with the instruments depicted here.

Theme of fresco

This fresco depicts the Buddhist hells. As there is a great heterogeneity of beliefs about this theme, we leave to our Internet users the task of finding any information elsewhere on the Web. On the other hand, we have succinctly documented some of the images in the slideshow below by comparing equivalence with the scene of the underworld depicted in a 1950s fresco of the Wat Kong Moch (Siem Reap).

The orchestra and the instruments of the fresco

This fresco depicts an “old arak orchestra” (phleng arak boran) as it existed before the Khmer Rouge revolution. It consists of:

a long-neck lute chapei dang veng
a large reed oboe pei ar
a three-strings fiddle tro Khmer
two drums skor arak

There existed, at least since the second half of the 19th century (we limit our information to tangible proofs) a musical ensemble called phleng khmer consisting of stringed instruments, as opposed to pin peat, formerly called phleng siam, based on melodic percussion. This ensemble was also played at weddings. Formerly it was called phleng kar (wedding band). Today it is known as phleng kar boran (old wedding band) after the instruments have changed since the revolution. In this fresco, the presence of the female dancer, a medium-exorcist (rup) indicates it is a phleng arak ensemble and not a phleng kar.

Why are the musicians and the rup represented with animal heads and next to the hell scene? For the moment, we have no official explanation except that this ritual continues to survive on the sidelines of Buddhist practices and could be considered as deviant, although the Theravada Buddhist Cambodian is rather integrative.

The music that accompanies the arak ceremonies is probably one of the oldest in Cambodia. The musical concept of this type of ceremonies is found throughout Southeast Asia and beyond, each with its particularities. Although this musical genre has evolved over the centuries, it can be argued that it goes back, in Cambodia, to the times of the Proto-Khmer societies, having regard to the extent of the geographical area on which it unfolds.

The oldest and most important instruments of the arak orchestra are undoubtedly the voice and the drums. The oboe is the most important instrument after these two. We don't know when it appears for the first time in this ensemble, but it seems that a reed instrument, single or double, existed long time ago. The Tampuon and Kreung people of Ratanakiri use a free reed instrument (see below) in a similar ceremony while they don't know any type of oboe. The mouth-organs represented on the bronze drums of the Đông Sơn culture attest to the antiquity of the simple reed in ceremonial music. Bowed string instruments (formerly tro khmer, nowadays tro), although they now hold an important place in the orchestra, are more recent.

In order to testify to the importance of the oboe and the nature of the sound expected by the medium (rup), we wish to report here a singular event that occurred during the shooting of a ceremony. The medium had donned the costume of a male spirit but it didn't manifest itself, event the musicians had begun playing the appropriate song. Faced with the rebellion, the medium asked to replace the pei ar oboe by a pei one normally used in Khmer boxing. The musician then got on his motorcycle to get the requested instrument. He returned a few tens of minutes later. The time to soften the reed, to encase it in the body of the oboe and the music resounds through a repertoire piece of Khmer boxing. At once the medium-exorcist shuddered. The spirit was incarnated and the martial dance began.

Medium-exorcist and Tampuon musicians. Ratanakiri.

Médium-exorcist and musician. Tampuon. Ratanakiri.

Player of free reed instrument. Tampuon. Ratanakiri.

The phleng arak boran orchestra

The phleng arak boran orchestra was precisely described by the French ethnomusicologist Jacques Brunet*. We publish here part of its contents. The spelling of the Khmer terms, different from the one used today, has been preserved.

"The phleng Khmer music includes phleng kar wedding music (kar = wedding), and phleng arak or phleng memot magic music (arak and memot = evil spirits). It is played during healing ceremonies and taking possession of a spirit by a rup (medium-exorcist) during magical ceremonies called kru chol. This music is sometimes called phleng boran, litt. ‘old music’. The orchestras are pretty much alike in all cases, but with the addition of special magic ritual instruments for phleng memot music."

Then Jacques Brunet describes the phleng kar boran wedding band, quite similar in structure to the phleng arak orchestra. We publish here the generalities and the specificity of Siem Reap.

"The instrumental ensemble is said, for all formations, krom phleng. The krom phleng kar wedding band doesn't always have the same composition and varies slightly by province. There is however a typical formation of this orchestra and when it is not respected, it is due either to a lack of musician for a given instrument, or to a decision of the leader of the musicians to compose his orchestra otherwise. Many variants, however, are not considered to be opposed to the tradition, but just as another possibility. The phleng kar ensemble consists of a sadêv monochord, a tro Khmer tricorde fiddle, a pey â oboe, a chapey lute and one or two skor arak drums. It has become unusual to encounter this comprehensive training as described above. In the Siem Reap province, the orchestra as no sadêv. Yet some singers - very rare, it is true - play the sadêv as a soloist instrument to accompany their own singing. The phleng kar orchestras of Siem Reap and Sras Srang that we studied didn't integrate the sadêv and their training is however considered quite traditional. "

This description corroborates the iconography of the orchestra depicted on the fresco of Wat Reach Bo.

*Brunet Jacques, L'orchestre de mariage cambodgien et ses instruments. In: Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. Tome 66, 1979. pp. 203-254.