Yoeun Mek

Yoeun Mek (1939 - 2014) was a Cambodian musician who joined the Cambodian Master Performers Program (now Cambodian Living Arts) in 1999, an organization founded by his friend Arn Chorn-Pond to preserve Cambodian music, arts and rituals and keep traditional instruments from going extinct.[1] The program, in its quest to preserve Khmer music, sought out Cambodia's "nearly extinct instruments and the people who can make and play them."[2] 80-90% of the musicians of the country were "purged" by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979.[2] Out of the people who could play the traditional instruments to a high level, the Cambodian Master Performers Program estimated that only 100 to 200 musicians had survived the executions, which targeted almost everyone with an education, those who understood a foreign language, and many artists (including musicians, writers, and filmmakers).[3]

Wat Bo, Siem Reap, Cambodia. November 2001. Khmer Master Musician Yoeun Mek tries to play the one-stringed kse diev instrument for the first time.[1] Mek met Sok Duch, who was the only surviving master of that instrument, teaching at Wat Bo in 2001.[1]

Yoeun, who had made his first tro sor when he was 15, was a "master" of the tro family of instruments, especially the tro sau thom and tro u.[4][1] He also knew enough about the khim, takhay, drums and chheng to include them in his teaching traditional wedding songs.[5]

In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over the capitol at Phnom Penh, he would have been about 36. His friend Arn would have been 9-years old that year. Both Yoeun and Arn were in the same Khmer Rouge work camp together; working in the fields by day, and playing music for the soldiers in the evening.[1] His friend may have saved his life by begging the soldiers to let Yoeun play with the small group that entertained them.[6] Rather than play traditional Cambodian music, Yoeun was permitted to play revolutionary music with communist themes: "the dances depict hardworking people, farmers working together, people digging canals and people laboring in the sun to fix railroad and so on."[5] Separately from the soldiers, Yoeun taught his friend traditional music that was forbidden by their government.[4]

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Yoeun worked for his country's new government, in the State Department of Art and Culture until he retired.[4] He set up a barbershop and was found by his friend Arn, who hired him to teach his instrument at the Cambodian Master Performers Program.[4]