The Cambodian Vintage Music Archive, co-founded by Hun, a music and film enthusiast, works to recover and digitally restore vinyl recordings of Cambodian popular music from that lost era. Hun presented his music archive at UCSB’s Music Library in an event sponsored by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music. 

Today, there is also an urge to create new music and art among a younger generation of Cambodian Americans. These individuals are often children or grandchildren of survivors who grew up with pieces of Cambodian culture.  

Hun’s archive locates collectors in order to preserve digital copies of Cambodian popular music recordings. He had worked as an assistant producer with director John Pirozzi on the 2014 documentary film Don’t think I’ve forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll.

Hun is also featured in Linda Saphan’s 2016 debut film, Nate From Lowell, MA, which was screened before Hun’s UCSB presentation. 

Hun was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, the city with the second largest Cambodian population in the United States. He grew up immersed in Cambodian culture and became extremely interested in pre-Khmer Rouge popular media.

“I first heard Cambodian music when I was just five years old,” he said. “I started collecting anything I could find from the era. I love everything related to prewar Cambodia and I have a special attachment to all things vintage.”

Hun feels he’s performing a public service, restoring a part of the culture that was lost. “Most people in our nation have not heard the original quality of Cambodian music. They are unaware of what it genuinely sounds like and don’t feel obligated to listen,” he said. It has been challenging, he said, because few are unwilling to endure the timely and expensive task of finding and restoring records.