Khmer music sounds the way it does largely because of its instruments. Once you can pick out a few of them, traditional songs, and many modern ones that borrow from them, begin to make more sense. This guide introduces the main ensembles and instruments in plain language.
Pinpeat: the ceremonial orchestra
The pinpeat is the largest traditional Khmer ensemble. It plays for royal courts and temples, accompanies classical dance, masked drama and shadow plays, and is heard at religious ceremonies such as Pchum Ben and Kathin, at funerals and at national festivals. A typical ensemble has around nine or ten instruments, mostly percussion and winds:
- Roneat ek: a high-pitched wooden xylophone that usually leads the group
- Roneat thung: a lower-pitched xylophone
- Roneat dek: a metallophone
- Kong vong: circles of tuned gongs that often carry the main melody
- Skor thom: two large drums played with sticks
- Samphor: a double-headed drum played with the hands
- Sralai: a reed instrument with a bright, piercing tone
- Chhing: small cymbals that mark the beat
There is a smaller version of the ensemble and a larger one. The larger version adds extra xylophones, gongs and cymbals, which makes the sound fuller and more melodic.
The lost harp
The name pinpeat comes from the pin, a harp that once led the ensemble. It appears in stone carvings at ancient temples and dropped out of the ensemble many centuries ago. In 2013 a French ethnomusicologist and a Cambodian craftsman revived it, and some modern groups are now bringing it back.
Mohori: softer entertainment music
Where the pinpeat serves ceremony, mohori was entertainment music for the court, made for nobles rather than for temples. It favours softer, gentler instruments, among them xylophones and a metallophone, flutes, small drums, a stringed instrument called the krapeu and bowed fiddles called tro. The khim, a hammered dulcimer, is also found in Khmer ensembles.
The tro: a bowed fiddle
The tro is a fiddle played with a bow. It comes in several sizes and tunings, and it appears in more than one kind of ensemble, including mohori. If you hear a singing, human-sounding string tone in a traditional piece, it is often a tro.
Chapei dang veng: a long-necked lute
The chapei dang veng is a long-necked lute with two pairs of strings, usually plucked. It belongs to a tradition in which a singer plays the instrument while singing stories, advice, satire, poems and Buddhist tales. Good players need wit, a gift for improvising and a sense of storytelling as much as technique. The art has traditionally been passed on orally, from master to apprentice and within families. The Khmer Rouge period badly damaged the community of players, and very few masters remain today. In 2016 the tradition was added to UNESCO's list of intangible heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.
Other sounds you may meet
- Arak: healing and religious music rooted in older animist beliefs, traditionally used to drive out illness
- Temple gong-and-drum ensembles that accompany ceremonies
- Wedding ensembles with their own music for each part of the ceremony
- Ayai: village singing in which two singers trade witty verses
How to listen
- Start with a pinpeat piece and try to pick out the roneat ek, which usually leads
- Listen for the sralai, the bright reed tone on top
- Move to a mohori-style piece and notice how much softer and more intimate it feels
- Find a chapei recording and follow the singer's story as well as the instrument
You can hear many of these sounds in the Traditional Khmer collection on Khmer Beat.
A note on names: Khmer instrument names written in Latin letters are not standardised, so you will see variants such as mahori and mohori, or different spellings of roneat.
Based on published reference material including Wikipedia entries on the music of Cambodia, pinpeat and chapei dang veng. Instrument lists vary between sources.