Spirits Just Wanna Have Fun

Percussion, Possession, and Good Times in Rural Cambodian Ritual

In this talk, I share sounds and stories from Laeng Neak Ta​ (ឡើង​អ្នក​តា) and Laeng Arak (ឡើង​អារក្យ) spirit possession ceremonies in rural Cambodia in order to consider the function of music in ritual practice and in the daily lives of Cambodian people. I then discuss why understanding people’s beliefs and worldviews is critical for sensitive and culturally relevant cultural policy and administration.

This is a live audio recording of a presentation I gave at Nerd Night, a public lecture series in Phnom Penh. The presentation format is 20 slides of 20 seconds each - and no, it’s not easy to adhere to the timings! For the purposes of this web story, I added a “beep” track to the audio file to indicate when to advance to the next slide.