Black Magic Woman

As I have mentioned earlier in this blog, Cambodia abounds in children. Often before children there is a wedding - and wedding in this country are a very visible and audible affair.

Officially the woman should be at least 20 and the man 25 years old to marry, but unofficially at least in the countryside women often marry at 15. The family of the groom gives a dowry (these days in money, not in actual waterbuffalos, as is still the custom in Borneo - apparently the going rate for a bride there is two waterbuffalos). The dowry is used to arrange as grandiose a wedding as possible.

First a tent is set up in the middle of the road blocking at least half the lane. The tent is then decked with bunches of bananas and palm fruit tastfully spray painted gold and silver, "precious" materials are draped around the tent, plastic replicas of the great gate of Angkor Wat are set up... whatever the combined imagination, taste and wealth of the families has managed to produce.

Then tables and chairs for the visitors, possibly a road-side kitchen to produce the food, and if the family is wealthy enough, a live band.

However, no family is so poor, that they would do without a big, no I mean BIG set of loudspeakers, which blare out non-stop music and what sounds like comic radio talk shows for the whole duration of the wedding - which is two full days! Now these loudspeakers are LOUD in a way which would have any Finnish open air festival drooling at the mouth and town officials waving their desibel meters in outrage. You acutually hear weddings blocks away anywhere in town. But the music always starts at the beginning of Cambodian wedding reception with one and the same song - that classic of all wedding songs - Santana's Black Magic Woman.

After that Black Magic moment however, the musical selection goes native, and Asian music continues the festivities. Asian music is rather different from our Western music. For one thing, it isn't really harmonic, leaving the melody and rhythm to play the key role. However the melodies, to the uninitiated, may sound like a lovestruck cat going up and down scales randomly and the rhythm is usually as fast as the heartbeat of a rather small and extremely agitated rodent.

Alas, the house next to my guest house in Kompong Chhnang was celebrating a wedding, and I got a rude awakening this morning as bed vibrating soundwaves of Asian music woke me at 5 a.m.! And the music didn't stop... and I didn't sleep any more that night. The owner of the hotel apologized, but said we had been sort of lucky, since the more enthusiastic wedding households start up the music at 3 a.m. already. Oh well, much luck to them!