Creator

PraCh Ly

praCh Ly is a Khmer American rapper and producer who co-founded the Cambodia Town Film Festival.

praCh Ly is a Khmer American rapper, producer and filmmaker from Long Beach, California, and a co-founder of the Cambodia Town Film Festival.[1][2] His debut album, Dalama: The End'n Is Just the Beginn'n (2000), became the top-selling album in Cambodia.[3][4]

Music

Ly grew up in North Long Beach around the time of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. He listened to older neighbors tell of what they had lived through and turned their accounts into rap songs.[5] He has rapped about Cambodia's struggles since 1999, in English and Khmer, about the genocide, his community and immigrant life.[6][7]

In 2000, at age 21, he wrote Dalama: The End'n Is Just the Beginn'n in one week and recorded it at home with a karaoke machine.[3] The album sets hip hop lyrics in Khmer and English against traditional Cambodian instruments and retells the killing fields of 1975 to 1979. Ly calls it a "hip-hop memoir," built from the memories of genocide survivors who had come to the United States.[3][8] He made the cover art himself and gave CDs to friends around Cambodian New Year in 2000.[4] The Khmer DJ Sophoann Hul received one of the discs and brought it to Cambodia.[5] Without Ly's knowledge, the album was played on Phnom Penh radio and copied under the title Khmer Rouge, Khmer Rap, and it became the number one album in the country.[4][1] The Cambodian government banned its songs from radio as too controversial.[3] An Asiaweek reporter found Ly in Long Beach to tell him of the album's success, and Newsweek called him Cambodia's "first rap star."[4][5]

The album has been credited with bringing hip hop to Cambodia and with opening the history of the Khmer Rouge years to a younger generation that grew up largely unaware of it.[1] Ly has said that students' questions pushed teachers to discuss the killing fields and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia in school.[3] His music joins American hip hop with traditional Khmer poetry and storytelling, and he has released two further Dalama albums.[1] The later album Dalama: The Education of the Lost Chapter includes "Power, Territory and Rice," about the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the forced evacuations and the killing fields.[4] His later recordings reach further back into earlier Cambodian music, and he has worked with the poet U Sam Oeur and the traditional musician Kong Nay.[8][1] In 2007 he performed at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[7] As CEO of Mujestic Records, he produces other Cambodian artists.[1]

On September 14, 2019, he performed songs from Dalama at the Art Theatre for the album's 20th anniversary, during the Cambodia Town Film Festival. Over 80 minutes he mixed spoken word, rap and traditional Khmer vocals, rapping in Khmer and English over beats built on the chapey dong veng lute. He was then moving away from music to focus almost entirely on film.[5]

Film and stage

Ly wrote the scores for the documentaries Rice Field of Dreams and Enemies of the People.[1] He came up with the idea for a film festival after attending festivals such as Sundance, and in 2013 he co-founded the Cambodia Town Film Festival in Long Beach with the filmmaker Caylee So, serving as co-director.[6][9][10] The first festival was held at the Art Theatre on East Fourth Street, with new films and shorts on Saturday and older films on Sunday.[6] AsAmNews called it the first and only U.S. film festival focused on works by Cambodian creators worldwide.[9]

He was a co-producer of the feature In the Life of Music, which opened the festival.[5] He directed Satook, a 30-minute film about how war and immigration changed the religious traditions of Cambodian Americans.[9] In 2023 he wrote and directed KHMERASPORA, a production that included three world premieres by the Cambodian composer Chinary Ung and choreography by Mea Lath.[11]

Works


See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Words Without Borders, praCh
  2. ↑ Historical Society of Long Beach, Cambodian American profiles
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Asia Society, Interview: 'Spinnin' Memory,' Khmer American rapper teaches a traumatic history (May 26, 2017)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 PBS FRONTLINE/World, Cambodian-Americans speak: Prach Ly, the rapper
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 The Hi-Lo (Long Beach Post), praCh Ly performs 'Dalama,' perhaps for the last time (September 16, 2019)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Patch, Long Beach rapper highlights cultural heritage with film festival (September 12, 2013)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Voice of America, Cambodia hip hop artist tells story through rap (October 8, 2007)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Asia Society Texas Center, Young artist's rap tries to heal Cambodia's painful past
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 AsAmNews, 10th Cambodia Town Film Festival kicks off after two-year hiatus (September 13, 2024)
  10. ↑ Cambodia Town Film Festival, About
  11. ↑ Brandeis University, Peacebuilding and the Arts, Artist spotlight: Mea Lath (2023)
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:36.