Advertising and marketing. Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers
Mention quantum computing and people generally think, “what the heck is quantum computing?” Quantum computing uses the “weirdness” of the quantum world to create a new way for computers to do their thinking. It leaves the fastest computers in the dust. Australian researchers may have taken a huge step toward making quantum computers cheap and accessible. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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From: MeNeedIt
From tears and hugs to big smiles, the end Sept. 15 of a 20-year mission to Saturn for the spacecraft Cassini was emotional for scientists and engineers. Mission team members say the end of Cassini marks the beginning of a new chapter in planetary exploration and the search for life. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles.
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From: MeNeedIt
After a 20-year mission, including two extensions, the spacecraft Cassini is preparing to make a final “death dive” Friday into the planet Saturn.
Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory expect the spacecraft to plunge into the planet at 11:55 GMT.
NASA said their decision to end the life of the spacecraft in this way is because of what they found during the mission, the ingredients for life on some of Saturn’s moons.
“At the time of its design, we had no idea that ocean worlds existed in the outer solar system,” said Morgan Cable, Cassini’s Assistant Project Science Systems Engineer of the Cassini.
The discovery of ocean worlds on some of Saturn’s moons could mean life. One unexpected discovery came from the south pole of Enceladus, a moon embedded in one of Saturn’s rings.
“It has a liquid water ocean underneath and it shoots geysers and these cracks open up and these geysers shoot up,” Molly Bittner, Cassini spacecraft operations systems engineer, said.
Instruments on Cassini have been able to taste the grains and gas coming from that geyser plume.
“We know that there are salts. Now this is important for life because life needs certain minerals and salts to exist. We have very strong evidence that there are hydro-thermal vents down at that base of that ocean, the ocean flood. Now any time you find hydro-thermal vents here on Earth, you find rich communities of organisms,” Cable said.
Cassini was also able to gather data from the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which has lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane instead of water. There is also evidence of a liquid ocean beneath the surface that probably contains ammonia and water. Scientists and engineers say the environment could still hold life.
“We’re still open to trying to look for weird life in places like this and we found a strange place right here in our solar system,” Cable said.
These discoveries helped Cassini’s scientists and engineers decide what to do with as it runs out of fuel. They do not want any earthly organisms that may be on Cassini to contaminate a moon that may have life.
“I want to find life elsewhere in a place like Enceladus but I don’t want to realize later on that we put it there,” Cable said.
Scientists and engineers are already envisioning future missions back to Saturn and its moons such as Enceladus, to look deeper into the possibility of life.
“We really need to understand what’s in that plume, and if there is evidence of life, and I think with today’s instrumentation, things that we could put on a spacecraft right now, we could find that life with our instruments of today,” said Cable.
As Cassini plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere, it continues to send critical data to Earth until the very end. The data will be studied and analyzed by scientists long after the end of Cassini.
In Photos: Cassini & Saturn
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From: MeNeedIt
Jim McIngvale was standing in the parking lot of Gallery Furniture, greeting drivers and directing cars as they trickled in one sunny afternoon.
It had been a week and a half since his local furniture store chain opened the doors to its showrooms and offered shelter to hundreds of Houstonians during Hurricane Harvey.
Everyone had since relocated to other shelters, but McIngvale and his employees remained in disaster-relief mode as a long line of men, women and children snaked across the parking lot. On this day, drinking water, cleaning supplies, toiletries, clothing and free pizza were being handed out.
“My parents taught me that the essence of living is giving,” McIngvale said. “That’s who I am, that’s what we do.”
The local businessman and philanthropist is a longtime fixture in the Houston community, and he received national media attention along with an outpouring of public support for his latest efforts.
What about the bottom line?
How businesses respond in times of disaster can either enhance or undermine their public image. But does it affect their bottom line?
McIngvale didn’t seem concerned.
“After this hurricane, we took the people in and we said, ‘to hell with profit, let’s take care of the people,’” McIngvale said. “Profit takes care of itself. If you take care of the people, the people will take care of you.”
“When businesses make public stands and they make public commitments to do good things, consumers take notice,” said Utpal Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University.
According to Dholakia, doing well and doing good don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Businesses are a part of the community in which they operate, and as a result, community members can be seen as stakeholders. Businesses thrive when communities support them and vice versa.
“The company tries to do something good for the community and it actually helps them sell more and also make more money,” Dholakia said.
Employee Juan Rea has worked at Gallery Furniture for more than 30 years and has seen firsthand how McIngvale’s responses over the years have resulted in community members giving back to the business.
Hurricane Harvey evacuees slept on the store’s sofas and mattresses, and later were offered discounts of 20 percent to 40 percent off the same furniture, according to Rea.
“He helps the people and he makes money also,” Rea said.
Or taking advantage
Meanwhile, taking advantage of trying times for the sake of a buck can result in a public relations nightmare.
A local Best Buy electronics store decided to price a case of water at an exorbitant $42.96. After a customer snapped a photo and posted it on Twitter, the resulting public outrage prompted a public apology from company officials.
Why different responses?
In emergency scenarios, why do company responses vary so widely? Dholakia said that can be attributed to differences in management thinking and companies’ corporate cultures.
“Some managers have a very detailed plan of action in place about how to react when something like a hurricane or a similar natural disaster happens. So they’re able to execute their plan of action right away,” Dholakia said. “Other companies react in a slower way because they’re not prepared.”
McIngvale clearly was ready.
“Get prepared, get some sleep,” he told his employees before the hurricane. Rea worked seven consecutive days to aid evacuees, and after a day off, he was ready to keep going.
While it’s hard to quantify how a company’s bottom line benefits from good deeds, Dholakia said giving back can only help boost a brand’s standing in the eyes of its customers.
“It creates a positive knowledge association for the brand, which then feeds into the rest of the things that the customers know about the brand,” Dholakia said.
With so many advertisers vying for our dollars online and offline, good deeds become a way to rise above the noise.
“It is harder and harder to gain consumer attention in this fragmented media landscape,” Dholakia said. “Suddenly, you do something positive for the community and everyone is talking about it.”
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From: MeNeedIt
SpaceX has put together a bloopers video showing “How NOT to land an orbital rocket booster.”
Set to John Philip Sousa’s rousing march “The Liberty Bell,” the two-minute video posted Thursday shows rockets exploding at sea and over land. The opening blast, from 2013, is even synchronized to the music.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk can afford to poke fun at his early, pioneering efforts at rocket recycling, now that his private company has pulled off 16 successful booster landings. The most recent occurred last week in Florida.
“We messed up a lot before it finally worked, but there’s some epic explosion footage,” Musk said recently on Twitter.
In one video shot, Musk looks over a rocket’s charred remains with the caption: “It’s just a scratch.” After another huge fiery explosion, this one on the company’s barge, the caption reads: “Well, technically, it did land … just not in one piece.”
Musk tweeted Thursday that when the Falcon rocket’s upper stage and the cargo enclosure can also be retrieved and reused, launch costs will drop by a factor of more than 100.
For now, SpaceX’s first-stage boosters- 15 stories tall – separate shortly after liftoff and fly back to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station or an ocean platform for a vertical touchdown. Until the company’s recovery efforts – unique among rocket makers launching spacecraft into orbit – these segments were discarded at sea. A couple of these recycled rockets already have launched a second time.
The video ends with scenes of the first successful booster touchdown at Cape Canaveral in 2015 and the first one on an ocean platform in 2016.
“The Liberty Bell” march was the theme music for the old “Monty Python” comedy TV series.
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From: MeNeedIt
More than 50 local and national charities have raised more than $350 million in the nearly three weeks since Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas Gulf Coast, and the disparate groups are trying to decide on priorities while some storm victims still await help.
Distrust of large charities such as the American Red Cross has driven many donors to smaller, local organizations. For instance, Houston Texans football star J.J. Watt has raised more than $30 million for his foundation, an effort he started by posting appeals on social media.
One donor to Watt’s effort, Helen Vasquez, stood outside the Texans’ stadium and said she had seen a Facebook post listing the salaries of executives at top national charities. She gave Watt $20 instead.
“It’s all going to the people itself and not to the corporations, not the higher-ups in the corporations,” Vasquez said.
But most of the money raised for Harvey has gone to the Red Cross, which has raised a least $211 million. The rest went to other organizations, including 40 groups listed by Charity Navigator, as well as dozens of other groups and individual families raising money on do-it-yourself sites such as GoFundMe.
More than $50 million has poured into the local fund set up by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county’s chief administrative official.
Turner and Emmett openly urge donors to give to the local fund and not the Red Cross, saying doing so will ensure the best use of the money.
Emmett has blamed the Red Cross for problems that arose with setting up and running the emergency shelters used by tens of thousands of people who were flooded out of their homes.
The Greater Houston Community Foundation, which the men have asked to administer the fund, is creating a 12-member board and a grant committee to set priorities and distribute donations starting in the next several weeks. The foundation is working with the United Way and dozens of other charities, but so far not with the Red Cross or with Watt, who did not respond to questions sent through a spokesman for the Texans.
David Brady, CEO of the Red Cross of the Texas Gulf Coast, said his group would be “happy to be a part of all conversations” and that the Red Cross would review how it could improve its shelter operations in the future.
“We can’t take the criticisms personally,” he said.
The foundation’s CEO, Stephen Maislin, said it will pay the costs of running the Harvey relief fund on its own, including the credit card fees banks charge for donations.
The charities are still weighing the best ways to use the money and setting up systems to monitor where the money goes. Veterans of other major disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, say coordination between groups is critical to make the most out of every dollar.
Reese May, national director of recovery for the home rebuilding group SBP, said local leaders need to bridge the gaps between the dozens of groups by setting clear goals.
“When there is aggressive leadership, when there are aggressive goals that are publicly set, it plants the flag,” May said. “It gives neighbors the opportunity to connect with one another, saying, ‘Absolutely, we’re going to make it back from this.’”
Among the most critical needs is figuring out housing for thousands of people who are still living in emergency shelters, many of whom are not eligible for federal assistance. Others lost everything in their homes, and some people are living in gutted homes flooded by sewage because they have nowhere else to go.
The people involved in fundraising say they must move quickly and coordinate with each other.
“I’m praying we can stretch it,” said Anna Babin, head of the United Way of Greater Houston, which is already issuing grants to people needing help with rent and lost vehicles and cleaning out flooded homes. “But this is so significant.”
As the Texans played their first game of the season Sunday, around 1,900 evacuees were inside the NRG Center, the convention center across the street from the stadium. Thousands of NFL fans were tailgating in nearby parking lots, and smoke from sausages and chicken on the grill rose in the air.
Estella Martin and several other people said they wanted answers from the groups raising money on their behalf.
“They got enough to put every one of the people that are still here in a home or an apartment and help them out until they get up on their feet,” Martin said. “Instead, they’ve got us here.”
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From: MeNeedIt
The Northland area of Columbus, Ohio was booming in the 1960s and 70s. About 65 square kilometers, the area was a shopping and dining destination. Its centerpiece was the Northland Mall on Morse Road.
“You couldn’t get a parking space at the mall at Christmas time,” Dave Cooper, president of the Northland Area Business Association, told Columbusalive.com.
In the early 2000s, the area fell on hard times. Retailers began to desert the mall – Columbus’s oldest – for newer shopping centers and in 2002, Northland Mall closed, ushering the whole Morse Road corridor into a period of increasing crime and vacant storefronts.
The city of Columbus went into action, creating special commissions and offering tax incentives. But when help arrived, it came from an unexpected quarter.
As the old mall was closing, immigrants and refugees were opening up small shops and restaurants along Morse Road. A group of Somali refugees opened Global Mall just five blocks away, offering new space opportunities for startup entrepreneurs. Part shopping center, part community gathering place, Global Mall today hosts all sorts of businesses.
And Global was just the beginning of what has become a corridor of immigrant and refugee businesses along Morse Road.
“Some refugees or some immigrants have great business skills. So they got into the business without help of the government … and they flourished,” says Somali business owner Ahmed O. Haji.
Saraga Grocery
“I bought ramen noodles and extra hot peppers. I like the fact that there is a big variety from all different places around the world,” says Ron Kosa, a customer at the Saraga International Grocery, which is located in a former Toys R Us building on Morse Road.
Korean immigrant John Sung opened the 5,000 square-meter grocery four years ago.
“We have products from five continents, Africa, Asia, South America, Europe all over the world basically,” Sung says, adding that his 80 employees are similarly from all over the world.
In addition to selling groceries, Saraga provides space for individual merchants, hosting a halal butcher, a Mexican bakery and a Nepali food stand among others.
Jubba Value Center Mall
About two kilometers away from Saraga grocery is Jubba Value Center Mall where Somali refugees and immigrants have small shops and help each other bring in new customers. Columbus has the second largest Somali community in the U.S. after Minneapolis, MN.
“Morse Road is a very strategic location,” says Haji who started the Jubba Travel agency nine years ago. “It’s one of the highest revenue generated ZIP codes in Columbus. It’s a great location. Morse has very diverse ethnic people that live in this area.”
The influx of refugees and immigrants kept the population of the Northland area from declining in the first years of the new millennium.
From 2007 to 2012, immigrant entrepreneurship rose citywide by 41.5%. Native born entrepreneurship declined by 1.2 percent during the same time period.
“Based on a recent study, we could account for over 900 businesses that were opened specifically by the refugee community,” said Guadalupe Velasquez, Assistant Director of the Department of Neighborhoods for the city of Columbus. “And they then in turn employ over 23,000 individuals.”
The total contribution of refugees to the city’s economy is $1.6 billion, Velasquez added.
Travel Agency
“I did not have an incentive move or any advice from the city,” says Haji about opening his travel agency.
“What drove me to start the business was the need for my immigrant people predominantly Somali people who are going back home. And the means of transportation is an airline. So I thought that was a lucrative business to get into.”
Since the president’s executive order limiting travel from six countries, including Somalia, took effect in June, Haji says his business has declined dramatically. But he will keep at it.
“The city is very welcoming. Columbus, I’ve been here for almost 21 years now, and I am not going to go anywhere else.”
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From: MeNeedIt
The World Anti-Doping Agency has dismissed all but one of the first 96 Russian doping cases forwarded its way from sports federations acting on information that exposed cheating in the country.
The cases stem from an investigation by Richard McLaren, who was tasked with detailing evidence of a scheme to hide doping positives at the Sochi Olympics and beforehand.
The 95 dismissed cases, first reported by The New York Times , were described by WADA officials as not containing enough hard evidence to result in solid cases.
“It’s absolutely in line with the process, and frankly, it’s nothing unexpected,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli told The Associated Press on Wednesday at meetings of the International Olympic Committee. “The first ones were the quickest to be dealt with, because they’re the ones with the least evidence.”
McLaren uncovered 1,000 potential cases, however, and a WADA spokesperson told AP it is the agency’s understanding that sports federations are considering bringing some of them forward.
Tainted samples missing
Niggli cautioned that it will be difficult to pursue some cases, because the Russian scheme involved disposing of tainted samples, and the Russians were not cooperative with McLaren in turning over evidence.
“There are a thousand names, and for a number of them, the only thing McLaren’s got is a name on a list,” Niggli said. “If you can prosecute an athlete with a name on a list, perfect. But this is not the reality. There were thousands of samples destroyed in Moscow.”
The revelation of the 95 dropped cases comes with a deadline fast approaching to make a decision on Russia’s participation at next February’s Winter Olympics.
Two IOC committees that will decide the matter — one reviewing individual cases and another looking at the overall corruption in Russia — are due to deliver interim reports at the IOC meetings later this week.
270 Russian athletes cleared for Rio
In resolving the case against Russia’s suspended anti-doping agency (RUSADA), WADA has insisted the agency, the country’s Olympic committee and its sports ministry “publically accept the outcomes of the McLaren Investigation.” Track’s governing body put similar conditions in place for the lifting of the track team’s suspension.
The IOC, however, has made no such move. More than 270 Russian athletes were cleared to compete in the Summer Games last year in Rio.
“The best we can do to protect clean athletes is to have a really good, solid anti-doping process in Russia,” said WADA president Craig Reedie, who is also a member of the IOC. “That’s our role and our priority. The rest of it, you have to go and ask the IOC.”
IOC president Thomas Bach said the committees are “working hard all the time.”
Russia blames WADA
Meanwhile, Russian officials are showing no signs of acknowledging they ran a state-sponsored doping program.
This week, the country’s deputy prime minister, Vitaly Mutko, blamed RUSADA and the former head of the Russian anti-doping lab, Grigory Rodchenkov, for the corruption, and suggested WADA was at fault, too. Rodchenkov lives in hiding in the United States after revealing details of the plot.
“We are rearranging the system but it should be rearranged so that WADA could also share responsibility,” Mutko told Russia’s R-Sport news agency. “They should have been responsible for (Rodchenkov) before, as they have issued him a license and given him a work permit. They were in control of him but now the state is blamed for it.”
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From: MeNeedIt
President Donald Trump has blocked the acquisition of a U.S. computer chip manufacturer by a Chinese company, calling it a threat to national security.
The Chinese-owned Canyon Bridge Fund has sought to take over Oregon-based Lattice Semiconductor Corp.
The U.S. Treasury Department, acting under Trump’s orders, said Wednesday it is prohibiting the deal. It says the president determined that it would put national security at risk and that negotiations would not reduce that risk.
“The national security risk posed by the transaction relates to, among other things, the potential transfer of intellectual property to the foreign acquirer…the importance of semiconductor supply chain integrity to the U.S. government, and the use of Lattice products by the U.S. government.”
Trump acted after both Lattice and Canyon Bridge lobbied the administration hard to allow the deal to go thorough.
China has not yet reacted to the Treasury’s announcement. Trump has vowed to crack down on what he says are unfair Chinese trade practices, including alleged intellectual property theft.
The administration’s perception that China is failing to put enough pressure on North Korea to end its nuclear program has also put a strain in ties between Washington and Beijing.
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From: MeNeedIt
As Congress looks into ways to fix the immigration system, often with the goal of safeguarding job opportunities for U.S. workers, at least one immigration organization argues that current federal regulations fail to protect foreign visa holders from job misrepresentation, recruitment fees, exploitation, fraud and discrimination.
Four women who came to the U.S. on temporary visas were part of a panel discussion Tuesday in Washington to raise awareness of a system they said often treats human beings like commodities.
“In the workplace, there were about 80 of us, women, and we had a hard time,” Adareli Hernandez, a former H-2B worker, said in Spanish during a discussion hosted by the Center for Migrant Rights (CDM), a Mexico-based organization with an office in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hernandez, who is from Hidalgo, Mexico, looked for two years before she was finally able to get a H-2B seasonal non-farm work visa to work at a chocolate packing factory in Louisiana.
Inequality in workplace
While men who worked at the factory earned higher wages by carrying and stacking boxes, women were relegated to packing chocolates on assembly lines with no time off for illness.
“We weren’t able to make complaints, because if we did make complaints, we were threatened by the manager. … We were told we didn’t have a right to file complaints, because we didn’t have rights here in the United States,” she said.
But after four seasons as an H-2B visa worker, Hernandez fought for better labor conditions along with 70 colleagues. She said though work conditions improved, the company decided not to rehire her or co-workers.
Hernandez’s testimony is one of the 34 detailed worker stories featured in a CDM report, Engendering Exploitation: Gender Inequality in U.S. Labor Migration Programs.
Though the report focuses on women migrant workers, CDM policy recommendations say, “All temporary labor migration programs should be subjected to the same rules and protection so that unscrupulous employers and recruiters do not use the patchwork of visa regulations to evade liability.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, about 1.4 million people are recruited to work in the U.S. each year through temporary work visas, including H-1B (specialty occupations), H-2B, J-1 (exchange visitor program) and TN (Canadians and Mexicans in certain occupations under the North American Free Trade Agreement).
The visas may vary, but immigration and labor organizations report that recruited foreign workers face common patterns of abuses.
In 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security cracked down on abuse within the H-2B system, hoping to prevent the exploitation of workers and to ensure U.S. workers’ awareness of available jobs.
Rosa’s story
A licensed veterinarian, who asked to be called only Rosa for fear of retaliation, submitted a statement that was read during CDM’s discussion. Rosa was unable to join the panel because the U.S. government rejected her application for a tourist visa.
“Although the U.S. government had no problem offering me a TN work visa at the employer’s request, it won’t allow me to visit the country as a tourist. Anyway, that’s not going to stop me from sharing my story,” Rosa’s statement said.
Rosa is a former TN visa worker who was hired for an animal scientist position in Wisconsin. She was “thrilled” for the opportunity to work at a place where she would put in practice the skills she acquired as a recent graduate from a top Mexican university.
TN visas were created within NAFTA to allow U.S. employers to hire Canadian and Mexican workers for specialized jobs.
“I was deceived by my employer. They promised me a salary that they failed to pay, a contract they didn’t respect,” Rosa’s statement said.
“The supervisors would yell at us constantly and tell us that our visa was only good for obeying orders. I cleaned animal troughs, unloaded them from trucks. As the only woman, they would also give me jobs they considered ‘women’s work,’ cleaning the bathroom or the kitchen,” she said.
Protecting American workers
Rachel Micah-Jones, CDM’s executive director, said there is a need to ensure workers have basic protections, including the right to understand a contract before entering into an agreement with a U.S. company.
Immigration hard-liners agree about the need to protect visa workers, but they also express concern about the welfare of American workers.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said though she agrees these visa programs “can be beneficial to certain employees for legitimate purposes,” there is a “big problem” with employers abusing the system as a way to bring in “workers who can be paid less, and who end up replacing American and legal immigrant workers.”
“The solution is not necessarily to end the program, but to reform it and for the government agencies that are responsible for these programs to do a better job of oversight to make sure that they are not abused,” Vaughan told VOA.
Vaughan was scheduled to speak about guest worker visa programs at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that had been scheduled for Wednesday. The hearing was postponed because government officials were focused on hurricane response and recovery efforts after two storms struck in Texas and Florida.
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From: MeNeedIt
The Cambodian Space Project, long on the forefront of a local rock’n’roll revival, is a band making good with their pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia sound.
The Cambodian-Australian group, kicked off a mini-U.S. tour on Tuesday with a performance at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. Channthy Kak, 38, also known as Srey Thy, said she was honored to have been invited to perform at the Washington venue, where the band played their original brand of psychedelic rock, before heading to New York City and California. On the West Coast, they’ll rock out in Long Beach, which has the largest Cambodian population in the U.S.
“It is very special that we are invited to perform on a very big stage and in a very big city,” Chanthy said about the Kennedy Center gig. “It is unbelievable.”
Perhaps more at home among the rice paddies and rural villages of her home province of Prey Veng, Chanthy formed The Cambodian Space Project after being approached by Julien Poulson, a musician from Australia’s island state of Tasmania, while working as a karaoke singer at a bar in Phnom Penh. Neither of them expected to be on the international scene just eight years after forming.
Video: A Ros Sereysothea song uploaded to YouTube
‘Lost’ Cambodian rock
Inspired by the great artists of Cambodia’s golden era of the 1960s, the band aims to revive the country’s lost rock’n’roll scene, which was wiped out during the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.
Fans heard original favorites such as “Whiskey Cambodia,” as well as covers of 1960s divas such as Pan Ron and Ros Sereysothea.
American music brought to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War influenced Cambodia’s music scene in the 1960s. Bands like Baksei Cham Krong, Bayon and Draka introduced Phnom Penh to new sounds, said Seng Dara, a music preservationist.
“They were highly educated artists. Though they were influenced by Western culture, they were able to integrate Western music to be authentically Khmer,” he said. “It’s good to conserve pure Khmer culture, but it’s not very creative.”
As the Vietnam War ended in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh and erased foreign influences. The regime targeted intellectuals, artists and musicians, destroying documents, cultural records and songs. Citizens identified as the “cultural elite” were sentenced to death during the regime’s four-year rule. An estimated 1.7 million lives were lost.
Cambodian Space Project takes off
Chanthy says the inspiration for song comes either from the heart or the head, and the songs of the 1960s “are very deep in the heart.”
“When I started writing my own songs, I didn’t have a mentor,” she recalled. “But what I experience, see and feel, which can be easily forgotten, I put into words, I put it into a song so that it will always be meaningful and remembered.”
Chanthy dropped out of elementary school with only basic reading and writing skills, and that has made communicating with composers her greatest challenge.
“I don’t know melody. I don’t know the ‘do, re, mi’ things,” she said. “We use body language. I raise my hands up, they play the high keys, and as I put my hands down they play lower keys.”
Her musical idol is Pan Ron, who became a national star in Cambodia in the mid-60s when she teamed up with Sinn Sisamouth. She is believed to have been executed during the final days of the Khmer Rouge regime.
“Her songs are sexy. Her laugh and sense of humor and her voice are beautiful. Ros Serey Sothea also had a golden voice. But Pan Ron, you know, it’s just like me. We only fit with rock and roll because we’re a funny kind of person. Not sentimental. I’m very playful,” Chanthy said.
Her mother was the best singer in her town, Prey Veng, Chanthy said, and she recalls how her father often listened to music on the radio.
At 19, Chanthy moved to Phnom Penh to look for work. After almost being duped into working in a brothel, she tried her hand at everything from construction to owning a souvenir store – until the beat freed her soul.
“Rock’n’roll is the type of music genre that helps people get relief and become happy,” she said. “It helps them get out of painful feelings because of its humble and funny lyrics.”
Rock revival
The Cambodian Space Project was the subject of a feature-length film, Not Easy Rock’n’Roll, which premiered in 2015.
Director Marc Eberle said the film’s recent screening on BBC World was “a great way to bring Cambodian culture to the world. In many countries in South America, Africa and across Asia, the story resonates well with the audience.”
Along with The Cambodian Space Project, the Los Angeles-based group Dengue Fever pursues a similar mission to preserve and innovate in the Cambodian music scene.
Jimmy Kiss, a rising Cambodian pop-rock musician, says he is impressed by the current state of Cambodian rock’n’roll. He disagrees with those who say it is stuck in the past.
“The only difference between musicians in the past and the musicians in the present is how people value the music,” he said. “There are so many talented musicians out there nowadays. The thing is that people in the past valued musicians more than people do now.”
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From: MeNeedIt