Powering a Movement Through Music

Chrek Sopha, Leng Leakhana, Hem Sela and Chea Sarat complete the Band’s line-up. All former garment workers, they have been using their artistic skills to give voice to their own past experiences of discrimination and exploitation, along with sharing the stories of farmers, sex workers, migrant women and other vulnerable groups in Cambodian society.  

Every track produced by the Band reflects the lived experience of real Cambodian women, carefully collected and turned into song through a process that can take up to a year. Accurately reflecting the reality of these women’s lives is paramount to the Band, which is why every new project starts with extensive community visits and research to understand the story they are trying to tell and the challenges faced by the community they seek to represent. From there, their stories will be turned into a poem and brought back to the community for reflection sessions before eventually becoming songs.

Through this process, The Messenger Band has produced songs exploring topics like the privatisation of essential services, the struggles of working-class women, the criminalisation of sex work, resistance to land-grabs and evictions and the exploitation that occurs within many factories in Cambodia.

On the day we’re meeting, Sopha and Sophors tell me about a new song they are working on to advocate for free and equitable access to healthcare.

While arduous, this process allows them to create songs that are true reflections of the marginalisation experienced by many in Cambodia - giving them more power in influencing people’s views on these topics and contributing to broader social change.  

Just how powerful these songs are cannot be overstated. The Messenger Band was a mainstay during Cambodia’s national strikes to secure a living wage for factory workers in the 2010s. Their music articulated to the public the exploitation, discrimination and violation of basic human rights that many workers faced within factory walls and provided one avenue through which their demands could be heard.

The Messenger Band’s music also serves as a powerful record of Cambodian life, as seen in the songs they produced during the peak of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The Messenger Band is part of IWDA partner organisation United Sisterhood Alliance – an alliance of four social groups including Women’s Network for Unity, Worker’s Information Centre and Social Action for Community and Development. Together, they work to ensure women’s voices are heard and can influence policy change in Cambodia. A core part of their work is to build and strengthen the country’s social movements to strive for social justice and equality.

This is why, in addition to creating songs that raise awareness of women’s concerns in the country, The Messenger Band also prioritises nurturing the artistic abilities of its members and actively creating opportunities to develop the skills of others in the community. Recently, the Band has been working with artists across Cambodia’s seven provinces to expand the reach of their message and grow the community of artists using music for advocacy.

This approach of equipping people with the tools they need to give voice to their experiences has been transformative – both for the movement and the members of the Band itself.

“Even with our husbands, now we can demand, we can discuss, we can negotiate for everything as a family. If we look to other females in society, they are afraid of their husband, they have no choice. The social norm is women just stay home, take care of the children, but have no rights. You have no power, even with their own husband or with their own parents. So we can say, as individuals, one of the successes of the Band is we now have more confidence," Sopha shares of her experience in the Band.

This work, of course, comes with its challenges. As former garment workers, they know all too well the cost that comes with standing up for their rights.

“If you dare to fight for your rights at the workplace, you tend to be terminated,” Sophors says. “Most factories use short contracts, so they threaten workers if you dare to strike or fight.”

The Band has also been facing more restrictions from the government in recent years. From using copyright law to limit how music can be used to red-flagging words like ‘movement’, ‘change’, and ‘power’ in their lyrics, the Band has had to find creative ways to continue using songs to share their message.