Cambodia is a country on the Indochinese mainland of Southeast Asia. Cambodia consists of many great plains and rivers including the river trade routes linking china to India and Southeast Asia. Most of Cambodia has been known for annual flooding and soils poor of nutrients so the central plain and annual flooding allow for the fertility of the plain and provides natural irrigation for rice cultivation. The population of Khmer inhabitants belong to the Mon-Khmer ethnolinguistic group, most are Theravada (Hinaya) Buddhists which belongs to the older and more traditional schools of Buddhism. Buddhism also reinforces a sense of hierarchy within societ. The Khmer empire owed much to Indian influence, but its achievements also represented original contributions to Asian civilization. Khmer is the official language of Cambodia and is used in most social contexts.
Music occupied a dominant place in traditional Cambodian culture. Traditional music ensembles, distinguished in part by their instrumentation, included various combinations of wooden flutes and reed instruments, bowed and plucked lutes, struck zithers, xylophones and metallophones, kong vong gong circles, and drums of different sizes. The players followed the lead of one instrument, often the xylophone, and improvised their own parts building from a pool of conventional melodic and rhythmic formulae. Pinpeat is a form of classical Cambodia music, it is characterized by a rich and resonant tone as well as a strong rhythm. it was also used for things like shadow puppets and pantomimes. Usually, a pinpeat ensemble will consist of between nine to twelve instruments. Mohori music is most often heard at royal banquets, played to folk dancing or at summer concerts in the present day. The subject of this genre of music can range from lullabies to love songs to beautiful stories in general, and there is often a vocalist who lends their voice to the whole effect. PlengKar is the music that this played at weddings and this ensemble is made up seven instruments, with representation from the wing, string and percussive instruments. A vocalist will usually accompany the musicians and this type of ensemble will usually perform locally for any weddings that occur. modern Cambodian pop music is divided up into the two categories, ramkbach and ramvong.
On 17 April 1975, Lon Nol's weak-ended government was itself overthrown by the Khmer Rouge. They immediately emptied the capital of its residents and brought Prince Sihanouk back, only to hold him under house arrest. The ensuing four years "Reign of terror" under Pol Pot's democratic Kampuchea resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 milliion people. the Khmer Rouge was overthrown and the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea was established. In 1989 the Vietnamese withdrew the last of their troops and the government renamed the country State of Cambodia.
Cambodia is a collective society - individuals take second place to the group whether t...
