Creator
Patrick Kersalé
French ethnomusicologist whose Sounds of Angkor project reconstructs Khmer instruments documented in temple reliefs.
Patrick Kersalé is a French ethno-archaeomusicologist and harpist who reconstructs the lost musical instruments of the Khmer Empire.[1][2] Through the Sounds of Angkor project he has rebuilt instruments shown in temple reliefs from the seventh to the sixteenth centuries, including the pin harp.[3][4]
Career
Kersalé comes from Nantes.[5] His first instruments were the accordion, the church organ and the Romanian pan flute, and his research into old instruments began in Paris in 1984, while he was playing the pan flute.[4][3] Since 1991 he has done field research on music in some forty countries in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia, photographing, recording and filming traditional musicians.[1] He spent four years recording among the Gan and Lobi peoples of Burkina Faso, and he co-founded the Museum of Yesterday's and Today's Music in Bobo-Dioulasso.[4][6] He spent ten years in Vietnam working on the music of ethnic minorities.[5] For ten years, from 1998, he also built a large world-music teaching project for France's national education system with Éditions Lugdivine.[3]
He has written or produced hundreds of records, books, DVDs, films, articles and teaching aids on traditional music. He has directed the Peoples CD collection and the Parole d'Ancêtre book-and-record collection of spoken oral traditions.[1][6] He is a member of the Société des Explorateurs Français, SACEM, SCAM and SPEDIDAM.[1]
Sounds of Angkor
Kersalé first came to Angkor in February 1998 and studied the music shown on the walls of the temples.[3] His work on the Khmer harp began in 2009, and in 2011 he decided to reconstruct the harp and the other instruments carved in temple reliefs.[4] He moved to Phnom Penh in 2012.[1] There he began rebuilding Khmer harps with the instrument maker Keo Sonan Kavei and his team, starting from a seventh-century relief at Sambor Prei Kuk.[4] The pin, a harp that had fallen out of use after the thirteenth or fourteenth century, returned to Cambodian music through this work.[7][8]
His sources are temple reliefs and other images, inscriptions in Sanskrit, Old Khmer and Chinese, and objects recovered by archaeologists.[3] He compared Khmer carvings with Cham sculpture from Vietnam and with Indian and Javanese images, and he traveled to Myanmar and Thailand to study how Burmese and Karen harps are built.[3][4] Because no instruments of wood or gourd survive from the period, the project presents its instruments as proposals based on the temple images and on living practice.[3] The rebuilt instruments include several kinds of harp, monochord zithers, cymbals, drums, trumpets, conches and oboes.[3] The metal trumpets were modeled on the military orchestra carved at Angkor Wat.[7]
In 2012 Kersalé began forming the Sounds of Angkor troupe, with support from Cambodian Living Arts.[4] The band tested the rebuilt instruments for sound and playing, and he then made technical and organological adjustments (changes to how each instrument is built).[3] The troupe performed for UNESCO ambassadors in 2013 and played during King Norodom Sihamoni's visit to Angkor Wat in 2014.[4] Kersalé moved to Siem Reap in 2013 to continue the work.[4] The first Sounds of Angkor exhibition was held at the French Institute of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, and from 2016 to 2021 the instruments were on permanent display at Theam's Gallery in Siem Reap.[3] Sounds of Angkor runs a music school in Siem Reap that teaches the harp, the monochord zither, the lute and the kantoam ming ensemble.[2] The project's website, in French and English, covers 1,500 years of religious and secular music in Cambodia.[1]
Chapei dang veng
From 2017 to 2020, UNESCO and Cambodia's Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts commissioned Kersalé to research the chapei dang veng, the long-necked lute.[9] The lute and its community are inscribed on the list of intangible heritage in need of urgent safeguarding, and he built a research site on the instrument for the two bodies.[6][1]
Performance and film
Kersalé is a solo harpist. He also plays the harp with the dancer Pheak Sok, who performs contemporary dance built on the gestures of Khmer classical dance.[1] He made the documentary Mysteries of the Khmer Harp in French and English.[4]
Recognition
A royal harp recreated through Sounds of Angkor was given to King Norodom Sihamoni.[2]
Works
- Pinpeat (Tradition)
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Patrick Kersalé press kit
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Sounds of Angkor, English home page
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 Sounds of Angkor, Reviving the musical instruments of the Khmer Empire
- ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 Sounds of Angkor, The true story of the Khmer harp's revival
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Ouest-France, Patrick Kersalé a présenté l'art des Khmers anciens (June 12, 2016)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Recreation Cambodia, Patrick Kersalé
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 The World (PRX), Cambodia works to revive an ancient harp (October 29, 2013)
- ↑ Pin (harp), Wikipedia
- ↑ Patrick Kersalé, Sounds of Angkor, une recherche atypique