A Young Composer, Chanpanha MA

By Chanmalida CHHOUN

Mr. Ma Chan Panha, taken by Chanmalida CHHOUN

The meaning of life would not just rest on having dreams but on how we are going to achieve those dreams. It is a long and challenging way for us to accomplish those dreams, and at the same time those challenges will reflect our commitment and dedications to our goals.

Mr. Ma Chan Panha has an ambitious dream in the music industry, who delicates his life to the art of music more impressively, his dream is to make the world to know his motherland, Cambodia, through his musical talents and commitments. Here is the story of a teenager who tries his best to reach those goals, and the inspired accomplishments that he has achieved so far in his earlier career.

Panha is passionate about the art of music since he was a child, which reflected by his earlier ambitions to be the first Cambodian world film producer and wanted to own a design company. His had set himself a real challenge. However, those challenges did not bring him downed, instead become an instrument in encouraging strength to make him successful. His earlier achievements were praised, including: in the age of twenty, Mr. Ma Chanpanha became a composer and a singerand he formed a band group with nine members, includes him. Remarkably, in 2011 his band was participated the National Music Program, and won the second prize. “Through-out the competition, our group sang seven songs, and two of them were well received and rewarded us with that prize, namely: “Rea Trey Cha ChaCha and Ah NokSaChna Om Pov”, he recalled.

As the rising star in the music industry, Panha had devoted his life to all parts of the musical world. As we talked through his career, Panha told us “as part of my career, I also love to spend time to compose the song lyrics, and I wrote about over fifty of them so far. The one that make me proud was: A Last Smile of the Broken Heart Man. Understandably, Panha was interested in writing songs since he studied grade 9, and his classmates were the first one to have the chance to read his lyrics and encourages him to expand his given potential.

What were his main challenges?Panha enthusiastically shared his point “for me the most difficulty in writing a song, it would be the new challenge for me because I have never composed anything in the past and never learnt how to write a song but I do it with my passion and my feeling, and sometime I spent the whole night just to think how to begin”. With his joyful face he then continued: “in order to write a song, I have to be patient and know how to control my feeling well, especially when I found something interesting and meaningful I noted them down that I could include them in my song. Also I need to do it in a peaceful place and the wonderful environment”. “Beside write the lyric, I also accomplished ten fiction stories and the most popular one is “A Man in a Report”, he added.

With his busy schedule in studying, singing and writing songs, Panha also challenged himself to know how to play musical instruments.Panhasaid that “I learned many tools of music such as keyboard, piano, guitar and Monica from Sin Si SaMut Association and Nak Ni Pun Khmer Association”. As a Khmer proverb: “Endeavour lead to success”, his hard working spirit, Panha now knew how to play guitar well that make his dream even closer. More entertainingly he produced a short clip to show online. “A Beautiful Heart” as the title of his clip, which educated the people not to hate the cripple people, and also wants to show that the love was not just from the outside appearance but from inside the heart.

The strongest commitments and the sharpest determination have rewarded Panha with all of these extraordinary accomplishments. More importantly, the challenges that he has to face throughout his path did notdiscourage him to continue but he decided to face them determinedly. As he sadly recalled, “when I finished high school, I wanted to pursue my goals with the studying of art but due to the family financial difficulty, I decided to choose another course but I have never abandoned my interests in music”. “I tried to making friends the persons who learning about the music, so I can learn from them bit by bit”. It was an astonishing journey in learning the music for Panha; once again his endeavor awarded him with a video editor position in the BTV in 2009.

It was a touching experience to make the interview with Panha and knew lots about the way that he walked on to reach his dream. One last question I asked him about was to give advices to his audiences, he laughed and answered that I still have plenty of things to learn myself, and he continued to say that: “the only thing that I could say is to all people who like the art of music, please do not think that you cannot do it, yet think you can do it step by step and never throw out your dreams and wish everyone successful for everything”.