"I Don't Want to Be Famous. I Want Our People to Get Enough Rice": The Messenger Band Interview

The Messenger Band, made up of former garment workers, gives concerts that highlight the difficulties of factory work and other women's issues in Cambodia. (Photo: Moritz Ege)

Click here to visit the Messenger Band website

For additional photos of the Messenger Band, please click here

Friday 12 March 2010
By Anne Elizabeth Moore, t r u t h o u t Interview

"My name is Saem, and the name of my group is the Messenger Band," the singer more formally known as Vun Em explains. We are in Phnom Penh's Meta-House, where four members of the six-member Messenger Band are about to give a quick a cappella concert to the reporters ex-pats, and tourists gathered.

It's not their usual venue. The Messenger Band was formed by the Cambodian NGO Women's Agenda for Change in 2005 to bring the concerns of the young women who move to the city to earn money for their families back to the provinces. They write songs in the traditional folk style, and choreograph moves to accompany their laments, and villagers are often riveted: the subjects of these songs are their daughters, their nieces, their friends.

The subjects of the songs are members of the Messenger Band. All former or current garment factory workers themselves, the varying group of women that perform as the band are well versed in the issues that affect women in Cambodia. "We are tired but we say nothing," one song goes. "We are hard working and much of this money I earn is dollars to help my mother."

Please click here to read more...