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  Dance, Music, and the Nature of Terror in Democratic Kampuchea Toni Shapiro-Phim INTRODUCTION On a wooden platform in front of hundreds of weak, emaciated people, dancers dressed in loose tops and trousers, checkered scarves around their necks or waists, dark caps on their heads, and rubber tire sandals on their feet, stand in formation. Armed Khmer Rouge soldiers patrol around the silent audience. The dancers then proceed to march—walking in unison, arms swinging in rhythm with their legs— in choreographed linear and circular patterns. Wooden guns in hand, the performers dance to a song that makes explicit reference to Angkar, the Khmer Rouge revolutionary organization: We are young men and women protecting the coast. Children of the people of Kampuchea receiving new tasks of great importance to protect the integrity of our great country . . . However much the rain falls, the waves roll, the wind blows, Together we follow Angkar’s tasks forever. We love our Angkar, homeland and people, along with the cooperative that makes our produce plentiful.1 Such would have constituted part of a typical performance of revolutionary song and dance in Democratic Kampuchea, the official name of the Khmer Rouge revolutionary regime (–)2 headed by Pol Pot. In what follows I will discuss the conjunction of aesthetic practice with terror under the Khmer Rouge, viewing terror as both strategy and effect. Looking at dance and music as they were incorporated into the Khmer Rouge’s exercise of power, I hope to shed light on one aspect of the nature of their evil. I am referring to what Michael Taussig has called, regarding the situation in Colombia, the “sinister quality [that] depends on the strategic use of uncertainty and mystery” (:), which, at the receiving end, resembles the terror experienced by many Cambodians under Khmer Rouge rule. Khmer Rouge leaders recognized the signifying power of songs and dances.3 They created and organized public displays of revolutionary songs and dances through which they attempted to define reality and indoctrinate accordingly. Meanwhile, they forbade the practice of dance as Cambodians had known it (in all its variety) and allowed no performance of prerevolutionary popular, folk, or ritual songs.4 Following a brief overview of Pol Pot’s regime, I will talk about the new songs and dances, and then move on to stories that turn our understanding of officially sanctioned art during those years on its head. Viewing both corporeal and musical expression as loci of meaning-making, I aim to show how an examination of them as aesthetic practices may becloud the picture of state terror. Dance and music contributed to the fear-inspiring effects of Khmer Rouge rule, not only through the literal messages of hatred and violence in some revolutionary pieces but also through the inconsistency of responses to nonrevolutionary arts, evidence of a capriciousness that many informants reveal was unbearable. THE REGIME Scholars and survivors have documented the horrors experienced by the country and people of Cambodia in the s.5 As the decade dawned, civil war along with spillover from the conflict in neighboring Vietnam resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the uprooting of millions, and the destruction of vast amounts of arable land. When the war ended in  with the Khmer Rouge defeat of the Khmer Republic headed by Lon Nol, many welcomed what they thought would be an era of peace and rebuilding. Instead, Democratic Kampuchea unleashed unfathomable suffering upon the populace as the upheaval and destruction continued, but on an unprecedented scale. The revolution’s leadership, known by the appellation of Angkar, or “organization ,” strove to be the sole focus of people’s loyalties. Policies of mass relocation and family separation tore people from their communities. Religious worship, markets , and free association were banned. Constant surveillance was the norm for the masses in this “great leap”6 toward a self-reliant, agrarian, socialist state. The populace was divided into two main categories: the “old” or “base” peasantry, which had been under Khmer Rouge rule in its liberated zones prior to ; and the “new” or “April th” people, who had lived in towns or villages under the control of the Khmer Republic.7 Some “base” people held positions of local authority , while the “new” people were often subject to much more deprivation and harassment than the others. Forced hard labor, lack of access to modern medicine and adequate food, and brutal punishment led to the death of close to two...

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