Ros Serey Sothea

Ros Serey Sothea was born circa 1948 in Battambang to an impoverished rural family. Moving to Phnom Penh as a teenager, her extraordinarily pure, crystalline soprano voice was discovered by songwriter Stung Khieu, catapulting her to national stardom alongside Sinn Sisamouth.

Sothea recorded hundreds of legendary tracks spanning delicate folk ballads to blistering fuzz-guitar garage rock (such as 'Don't Be Angry' and 'Have You Seen My Love?'). King Norodom Sihanouk bestowed upon her the official royal title 'Queen of the Golden Voice'. During the early 1970s, she also served as an honorary paratrooper in the Khmer Republic army. Captured by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, she was forced into agricultural labor and perished under mysterious circumstances circa 1977.