An informal portrait of Adelaide born ethnomusicologist Bill Lobban, a dedicated non government ...

An informal portrait of Adelaide born ethnomusicologist Bill Lobban, a dedicated non government organisation (NGO) worker who began working in Cambodia from 1987, receiving support from Save the Children Fund (Australia) and Australian Volunteers Abroad to develop a programme designed to revive Khmer music and dance at Phnom Penh's Fine Arts School, in conjunction with the State of Cambodia (SOC)'s Ministry of Culture. Very few surviving people had the skills involved in making, tuning and playing traditional Khmer instruments and the supply lines and knowledge of raw materials had long disappeared. The autogenocidal Khmer Rouge regime viewed any artisans as representatives of the feudal Khmer society they were attempting to purge, and almost 90 percent of Cambodia's dance masters and musicians, inheritors of a classical tradition dating back to the days of the Angkor kings, were executed. The traditions were, however, kept alive in the refugee camps on the Thai border, as well as in troupes formed amongst expatriate communities living in Australia, France and the United States.