I entered Cambodian literature through the door of sound. My first intensive encounters with its literary forms were as a student of Buddhist chant and poetry recitation in the rural Cambodian province of Kampong Speu, for thirteen months from 2005 to 2006. My teachers, lok kru Prum Ut and neak kru Koet Ran, had exacting standards for diction, melody and moral conduct, and knew that their role as masters of an exceptionally musical form of chant called smot meant instilling such standards in their students. I was only eighteen at the time, fresh out of high school in San Francisco, and was at first a failure in their eyes. I mispronounced the words, put trills and glissandi in the wrong places and once ran away to a nearby mountain temple when I couldn’t stand the pressure of complete immersion in Khmer village life. Despite my transgressions, they took me under their care. Under their tutelage, I repeated short phrases until I got it right or until my throat, irritated by the silty tea we drank out of dimpled beer mugs, simply gave out.

In studying with Prum Ut and Koet Ran, I had unwittingly been steeped in the way Cambodian literature had been transmitted for the past fifteen hundred years. Koet Ran, who became blind after the Khmer Rouge period, stressed the oral method alone: she would sing, I would repeat, then she would critique me and sing again. She had memorised well over a hundred chants and had high hopes I would have such a fine memory. But here again I failed, fumbling for the words whenever I set down my notebook. Prum Ut offered a dual method, both oral and written. At night, he would sit me down on the creaky floors of his one-room home, light a slender candle and take a thick krang off the altar. This paper manuscript, folded in the leporello or accordion style, guided my studies of smot and sparked a lifelong passion for traditional Southeast Asian books and manuscripts. Prum Ut chanted Khmer and Pali texts from the krang in ornate, flowing melodies as I did my best to keep up. By day, I returned to the manuscript, transcribing and translating the texts we had studied the night before. My failures notwithstanding, these are the core methods that Cambodians have used in teaching literature and the performance of literature to new generations since at least the seventh century of the Common Era. For many Cambodian authors throughout history, their rigorous approach to language built the foundation for the expressive art of literature.

• Tags: Cambodia, Issue 29, Trent Walker