{"id":8383,"date":"2019-09-15T12:55:12","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T19:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/hi-lo\/?p=30000002243"},"modified":"2019-09-15T17:02:45","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T00:02:45","slug":"prach-ly-performs-dalama-perhaps-for-the-last-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/prach-ly-performs-dalama-perhaps-for-the-last-time","title":{"rendered":"praCh Ly performs ‘Dalama,’ perhaps for the last time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Near the intersection of Anaheim and Martin Luther King, where one must maneuver through narrow, slurry streets, sits the Phnom Pich Center plaza, once home to a specialty Cambodian karaoke store, where a kid from Long Beach listened to older neighbors speak their personal horror stories, eventually turning them into rap songs.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Sept. 14, in the Art Theatre, that kid, now a nearly 40-year-old man, rapped live, maybe for the last time, at the Cambodia Town Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\"\"
praCh Ly performs \u201cThe Great Escape.\u201dPhoto by Tracey Roman, Contributing Photographer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

praCh Ly took center stage at the Art to perform a special selection of songs from \u201cDalama,\u201d his groundbreaking album set to celebrate its 20th anniversary. That album documented the Cambodian killing fields and was informed by his own youth, growing up in North Long Beach surrounded by gangbanging.<\/p>\n

The album went No. 1 in Cambodia, prompting Newsweek to dub him that nation’s \u201cfirst rap star.\u201d<\/p>\n

During Saturday\u2019s performance, he masterfully wove spoken word with rap with live traditional Khmer vocals. Moving hard, he spit Khmer and English rhyme to beats tied to recognizable chapey dong veng; the long neck, twangy Cambodian guitar.<\/p>\n

But, ultimately, the night was about the camaraderie he shared with other Khmer performers onstage. In fact, Ly said that he had no plans to perform the album at the festival, it was his friends who \u201cwanted me to do this. I said I would, but only if they came and performed with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Rappers Sam Tea and Silong Chhun perform for the crowd at the Cambodian Film Festival Saturday night, September 14, 2019 in Long Beach. Photo by Tracey Roman, Contributing Photographer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The audience sang and cursed and laughed along, also. One kid touched the stage and raised her arms with conviction, someone else cried after Ly shouted, \u201cIt\u2019s hell on earth and it\u2019s getting worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ly\u2019s come-up is a tale of hardship and luck, the kind of stuff that seems plucked from a movie, which may explain why he\u2019s leaving music to focus almost solely on filmmaking. He is the co-producer of \u201cIn the Life of Music\u201d the feature-length film that opened the festival Ly co-founded.<\/p>\n

His experience is not dissimilar from many Cambodians born during the Khmer Rouge era who fled to America. Born in secrecy during the genocide, Ly grew up in North Long Beach around the time of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, losing his first job when the video store he worked at burned to the ground.<\/p>\n

Ly crafted an autobiographical memoir tucked in a rap genre of his own making. He made a couple thousand mix CDs in his parents\u2019 garage and passed them out at a Cambodian New Year festival, unaware that he\u2019d given a copy to Khmer DJ Sophoann Hul who would bring Ly\u2019s musical story to Cambodia, unaware he\u2019d be a lyrical phenomenon in his homeland with fans from youth to elder.<\/p>\n

\"\"
praCh Ly performs at the Cambodian Film Festival Saturday, September 14, 2019 at the Art Theatre. Photo by Tracey Roman, Contributing Photographer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ly also resonated with the significant, sometimes irreparable trauma experienced by many first-generation Cambodian immigrants. Chanrith Peth, 39, a Seattle native who visited the Cambodia Town Film Festival for the first time, spoke about his parents\u2019 constant repression of the past. He remembers the simple act of making a dish with mushrooms that moved his father to tears because his older sister had picked the same mushrooms before she succumbed to measles during Pol Pot\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n

Rithy Hanh, who sang a Khmer chorus to one of Ly\u2019s songs, said the rapper\u2019s performance \u201cgave me goosebumps. As a refugee\u2019s child also, [Ly] was a voice of a struggle and what people don\u2019t see in Long Beach,\u201d Hanh said of the changing Cambodian musical scene with themes that are moving away from past horrors. \u201cMusic is universal and\u2026 hip-hop is starting to revolutionize Cambodian culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ly\u2019s music is an explosion of art and music and intellect, a chronicle of loss and those things birthed in redefining and retelling the Khmer narrative while retaining a uniquely Long Beach experience. And through Ly\u2019s (last?) performance, Saturday night, the diverse crowd cheered every track.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnity is the most powerful tool,\u201d Hanh said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what culture, what nationality you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
praCh Ly. Photo by Tracey Roman, Contributing Photographer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And when the night began to close in, Ly performed one last song in Khmer. Amid the cheers and dispersed standing ovations, the kid near the stage gazed up at the rapper.\u00a0Performers and theatergoers alike, driven by post-concert vitality, took to the stage and aisles, conversing and taking pictures to freeze a moment in history.<\/p>\n

“My name is praCh, thank you for your time,” he said, thanking those that had spent 80 minutes with him on this, perhaps his last, live lyrical journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moving hard, he spit Khmer and English rhyme to beats tied to recognizable chapey dong veng; the long neck, twangy Cambodian guitar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":70507,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[303],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[7382],"class_list":["post-8383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","tag-cambodia-town-film-festival","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8383"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=8383"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}