Tip! 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. Yet during the 1980s and 1990s, Indigenous communities revived swidden agriculture, also known as slash-and-burn farming, and resumed gong playing, preserving their animist ceremonies and beliefs. Only in the 21st century have rubber plantations and corporate development, driven largely by dominant Khmer, Vietnamese, and Chinese interests, become a serious threat to the ways of life of these marginalized communities.

This album features various gong ensembles being played during animist rituals and for drinking the fermented rice alcohol called Tavei. Instrumentation includes Nipple and flat gongs, bamboo tubes, male and female vocals, and drums.