IN 1940S CAMBODIA, a young boy found himself entranced by the sounds of village folk music that echoed from the distance across the paddy fields. At the time it must have been hard to imagine that one day he would be at the forefront of the Asian contemporary music scene in a faraway land.

Chinary Ung’s journey to his current position as Professor of Music at University of California, San Diego, has been a long one and he is ready to admit that it has been fraught with hardship. A realist at heart, he has no pretensions of fame and little time for pomp. Despite winning the prestigious Grawemeyer Prize for his piece Inner Voices in 1989, his music is ‘imperfect’.

His humility is infectious, and students at the Burapha University in Bangsaen, just off from Bangkok, where the composer was the guest of honour at the IV Thailand International Composition Festival in July, crowded around him to solicit his advice.

GATHERING HIS THOUGHTS before his keynote lecture, we relax in the cafeteria as he talks about how he made the trek from Cambodia to America in his gentle, steady, almost lyrical voice.

‘I was born in Cambodia in 1942, at the edge of the village surrounded by rice fields. My parents were very poor and unable to support me, so they asked my grandparents to adopt me. ‘There, I grew up with folk music – for example at night I’d hear drumming a few kilometres away [where some ritual was being performed]. And we have a kind of gamelan orchestra which [folk] performers would carry across the rice field on bamboo racks, and play as they marched across. The first time I heard it, I rushed to the backyard to watch. It was like music from heaven.’

Ung played the ranad-ek, a traditional Cambodian xylophone, and later studied the clarinet with a French teacher who was responsible for exposing him to the first sounds of Western classical music, at the time something relatively unknown in Cambodia. ‘When I first heard Beethoven’s symphony, it was a revelation!’ he recalls.

Those were the years when the cancer of the Khmer Rouge was slowly devouring the country. Ung narrowly escaped when he received a scholarship from the Asia Foundation in 1964 to study in the US. After his studies there, he met through a twist of fate his future mentor Prof Chou Wen Chung, one of the leading voices in Asian composition in the West.
‘I went to a concert of new music and heard a piece by Chou Wen Chung called Cursive. And he was in the audience, so I introduced myself to him. He said, ‘Come to my school, I just started teaching at Columbia.’ We talked it over and I really wanted him to be my teacher, and eventually got into Columbia.’

AT THE TIME, Ung found modern Western music alien to his Asian background. ‘Studying in New York when 12-tone or serial music was very prominent – what they called “up-town” music – I was emotionally torn. I remember once I ran out from my lessons into the street, and just leaned against the lamp-post and cried, because it was a shock to hear all this music that I had nothing to do with!’ He made up his mind to master this new music. ‘Although it was not Cambodian music, I made myself sit in any concert regardless of what music was playing. I disciplined myself by listening to every recording I could get, one month would be Mozart month, then Mahler month, then Debussy month … even while I was cooking I was constantly listening to music. This was aside from my school assignments, because I had to catch up!’ Ung recalls of his challenging student years.

‘You know, one time the New York Quintet came to our Conservatory to perform,’ he continues, relishing our rapt attention as would a village storyteller. ‘And after the concert, they asked if we had any questions, so I raised my hand and said, “Yes sir. It looks like this composer by the name of Mozart was very talented.” They asked why and I replied, “Because he knows how to make scales go up and down and make it sound good!” And it’s true! Twenty years later I remember that incident and think: that’s not a bad answer!’ he laughs heartily.

AT THE NEW music festival in Thailand, Ung showcased a few of his key works that bear a distinctly South East Asian flavour, either through their fluid structures or from the constant presence of modal harmonies and, in particular, vocal effects and singing by the musicians. This form of raw vocalisation marks Ung’s current artistic direction, one that he feels draws him closer to the spirit of his Cambodia roots.

‘That’s all I have been doing in the past decade, asking players to vocalise, to sing. It’s what Chou calls a kind of South East Asian type of expression. The voice never dominates the instrument; it’s always part of the texture.’

As an example he describes his latest work, performed by his wife Susan Ung at the concert at the Festival called Spiral XI for solo viola, where the soloist also uses not just the instrument but her voice as well. ‘By this time, I have had considerable experience; over ten years. When I first started writing in this way, I thought it was one of those things that you’d do and then that’s it, you move on to something else. But now I am doing it as a direction. It’s not just about vocalisation, it’s a chemistry that you add to the musical texture. ‘Chou agrees with me on this. He even advised me not to ask the instrumentalist to get voice training, so he understands what I am looking for: pure, untrained voice with no vibrato. That is what I want; it represents the voice of the villagers. [In South East Asia] the traditional performers and musicians are not trained; they are villagers who work in the farm! It’s no different from someone who works in a bank or in a rice field in Bali, and in the evening they perform the Ramayana!’

That night, we experienced his vision as Susan Ung performed on the viola, singing as a villager would as she went about her chores, humming as a mother would to a child, chanting and shouting as though in a village play or performing some ritual – earthy, primal, yet comforting in its familiarity.

DURING THE FESTIVAL, surrounded by hopeful Thai students, Ung found himself constantly contemplating the challenges facing Asian composers today. ‘The issue that’s been on my mind for some years now is how Asia is going to head into the future. We have the talent and we can work hard but the problem I can see is that, on the one hand, a number of composers have been following the European style too much. And on the other hand you also have those who simply transcribe their native music [into a western form]; they are not doing anything new. They are in fact destroying it. So the question is what should an Asian composer do?

‘And I don’t want to be in the position to give the answer, because there is no one answer. But during this Festival, I began to realise that the answer is neither one of them. You should swim in the middle. You have to go internally, spiritually, to uncover or tap on the mother energy, and see what you can do to go beyond yourself. ‘And when you go beyond yourself, you are part of the community, part of the collective consciousness. I think that’s what the answer is.’

Art not as an end in itself, but an expression of a community, as it used to be in our past? ‘Art itself is an illusion, just like political power is an illusion. But nevertheless the artist is one of the cleanest persons on the earth. Why? Because as a good artist you have to have truth in you. If you keep lying all the time, then you keep changing that damn chord all the time!'

‘Silence, like the blank page, represents a sacred space. It does not matter whatever religion you believe in, but you have to respect that sacred space. When it’s sacred, you know that you cannot abuse that space. At one point in your music, you end up being an observer of sound that is moving and in transition. And when you reach the point where you feel your body is filled with sound then you know you don’t have to worry about composing anymore. The problem of composition is over, and it’s then just a matter of time that you will finish the piece.’

Ung believes the act of composition is a spiritual search rather than a deliberate act of creation. ‘But that does not mean that your piece is a masterpiece or that everyone will love it. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with a deeper self-realisation, that any manifestation imperfection is a gift! I mean, if we never die, something is wrong with us!’
He laughs heartily. ‘This is what is called balance. In Cambodia, if you look at the floor plans of hundreds of temples, you see that they don’t build a perfect square. Of course they know how to do it ... but for example Angkor Wat is a 1km square, but they add six feet to one side on purpose.

‘Thousands of stone monuments and Buddhist temples in Cambodia face the East, but only Angkor Wat, the most world famous heritage site, faces West. Why? It drives Western scholars crazy! They want answers, dammit! “I have a PhD, why do they frustrate me?”’
He laughs, imitating a bewildered Western scholar.

‘SO WHAT ARE we doing now? Where are we heading? I call it a silent spiritual crisis in musical composition among Asian composers. The purpose of art – older branches or art – is to strive for liberation. ‘If you are worshipping the “ism” – minimalism, serialism, or whatever, you are dead. Or perhaps you are writing music for recognition, or maybe for love. But love doesn’t have to go that way, you don’t have to sell yourself. You have to strive for liberation, spiritually, so you don’t get trapped.'

‘You know, a number of the ideas in my music are not mine at all; they have been in existence for a long time.’ It reminds me of a quote I heard recently, that it is not the resulting work of art that is important; it’s the process of creating art that holds true meaning.

‘Exactly. If I have to label my art, my music is an imperfect music, on two grounds: first, I cannot make it perfect, because that’s an illusion. Secondly, I literally, deliberately make it imperfect. I distort it. ‘Ultimately, we are all impermanent. We are not God. We are nobody. We cannot even be a master of ourselves, we can only be an observer, I think. To be a master, that person must know the secret of being a master. Forget it, I say. Baloney! You don’t need to run yourself down but let’s be honest, you can’t master yourself.’

UNG TALKS CANDIDLY about how he struggles with each new work, and the months of searching and graft that it involves, and questions the meaning of it all. ‘I struggle and struggle, and ten months later at one point I feel my body fill with sound – and then it’s over. So the question is, are you composing for yourself or for your audience? Some say how can you compose for all the people? Others say, “I write music for myself.” But what is “yourself”? Do you think that sound belongs to you? Or to your culture? Or from deep down? That’s not 100 percent right either.'

‘In my past, I have been searching for my musical voice, and I find that one’s voice is a moving target, always changing. Now I am not expressing my voice, maybe ... I don’t even care.’ Friends and family are more important, he says.

‘Productivity should not be the key. Overproduction can really overtake your artistic direction. You have to be aware of this. Be aware! It’s very difficult [to be so aware]. Many people step all over other people’s feet to get somewhere.’ Because its always a case of so little money or opportunity for so many people to fight over? ‘Yeah, but actually it’s not relevant; they just don’t see it that way. I teach my students to think differently. That is not the only job if you want to feed yourself. I have driven a taxi, I have been a bus boy. It’s something I had to do to earn money!'

‘One thing that the young generation has misunderstood, as good as educational evaluation might be – and I have some reservations on that, straight A’s and so on – they never really test themselves spiritually or internally.’

Ung talks about composers who write from formulas or textbooks and who churn out works for mass consumption, and how they fail to challenge themselves, draw on their spirit.
We see them all the time; artists who work for position and power, who use art as a rung in the social and career ladder. In Malaysia, artists like that are celebrated and put on pedestals, and probably receive titles, I tell him. We laugh, and Ung tirelessly continues contemplating all that is wrong with the world, and how it is all mirrored in our little microcosm of composers and musicians.

Along the way he drops plenty of his quirky little gems of wisdom, one of which is rather timely: ‘If Beethoven or Mozart were around now, they’d get into technology and into avant-garde music, and maybe even try the roller-coaster or go to Las Vegas, because that’s what life is! It’s not like in the hospital where everything is sterile and protected from germs! I remember this quote very well: Pasteur at the time of his death regretted that, “All my life I tried to extinguish all the bacteria and viruses ... I made a mistake.” I really like that … We should learn to coexist. You don’t have to make everyone follow your religion. You don’t be rich alone. You don’t take it all. You share.’

ff The Edge, Nov 08

Related Links

• Rain of wisdom - Chinary Ung's lecture at Burapha University