Kong Nay
Kong Nay (Khmer: គង់ ណៃ), also known as Kong Nai (15 March 1944 – 28 June 2024), was a Cambodian musician from Kampot Province in southwestern Cambodia who played a traditional long-necked fretted plucked lute called chapei dang veng.
Commonly referred to as Master Kong Nay, he was a master of the chrieng chapei genre (Khmer: ច្រៀងចាប៉ី), in which a solo vocalist performs semi-improvised topical material within traditional epics self-accompanied with the chapei.
He was one of relatively few great masters to have survived the Khmer Rouge era, and was known as the "Ray Charles of Cambodia". Though his music was very different to Charles, the similarity they hold is that Kong Nay was also blind. The fact that most of the remaining chapei masters, such as Prach Chhoun and Neth Pe, are blind was a rather remarkable coincidence.
He received the 2017 Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize.
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