Sinn Sisamouth

Sinn Sisamouth was born on August 23, 1932, in Stung Treng into a mixed Khmer-Lao family. Training as a medical nurse, Sisamouth possessed a velvety, haunting baritone voice that won him immediate fame on national radio in the 1950s, quickly becoming the favorite court singer of Queen Kossamak.

Over a dazzling twenty-year career, Sisamouth composed and recorded over 3,000 songs, pioneering an intoxicating fusion of traditional Khmer vocal ornamentation, French chanson, and western psychedelic rock. Songs like Champa Battambang and Rose of Battambang remain sacred musical treasures. Following the fall of Phnom Penh in April 1975, he was targeted as an intellectual artist and executed by the Khmer Rouge in 1976.