Echoes Across the Mountains: The Cosmic Groove of the Mondulkiri Space Project By Julien Poulson
The first time I heard the gongs of the Bunong people echo through the jungles of Mondulkiri, I knew I’d stumbled upon something sacred—and something alive. It was 2010, and I’d traveled to Cambodia’s eastern highlands chasing a rumor: a tribal groove so raw, so hypnotic, it had all the stoner rhythmic groove that great groups like Tinariwen have, a groove and a sound that I love. But what I found was far stranger—a sonic bridge between ancient ritual and interstellar rock ’n’ roll.
This is the story of the Mondulkiri Space Project, a collaboration between my band The Cambodian Space Project and the indigenous Bunong artists of Bou’Sra village. It’s a story of rooted war, survival, buried gongs, and a 90-year-old tribal chief who became our spiritual guide. But mostly, it’s about how music and culture—especially the kind that’s vanishing—can still shake the world.
“A psychedelic dialogue between past and future.”
Chapter 1: The Call of the Bird Man
It began with words for a song. Kak Channthy’s words in her Khmer language, I would put some music to these words. In 2009, she wrote her first original song for the Cambodian Space Project, a song called “Mondulkiri,” a haunting incantation about a bird-man spirit who watches over the mountains. Channthy had never been there, but the melody poured out of her like a prayer. “It’s for good luck,” she told me, dark eyes gleaming. “I’m calling to the old ones…. a bird spirit who lives somewhere up in the mountains”
So we went. Packed a van with guitars and recording gear, drove seven hours into the misty highlands, and arrived in Bou’Sra village—a cluster of stilt houses where the air smells of wild ginger and the earth hums. That’s where we met Sorng Brou, a Bunong elder with a laugh like thunder and a mission: to save her people’s culture before it’s bulldozed by rubber plantations and K-pop.
She introduced us to her uncle, Lok Ta, the 93-year-old tribal chief. Blind and bent like a jungle root, he strummed a homemade zither and sang in a voice that sounded like it came from under the ground. He’s very strong you know, we people here call Lok Ta “Grandpa Tiger” Sorng Brou told me. Later, I’d learn why: during the Vietnam War, a war his people referred to as the America War, his tribal clan buried their sacred bronze gongs to hide them from looters and fled across the border into South Vietnam. American Special Forces were already in the area, training the so called Montagnards (Highlanders). The Green Berrets and CIA got along with them because they were specially trained to interact with them and were not aligned to any national government. The Montagnards in allied service went on guerrilla raids on Communist forces (yes Americans did engage in guerrilla warfare in Vietnam). Decades later, Lok Ta and the Bunong people returned to Mondulkiri, upon relocating their lands, they dug up their sacred, hidden gongs—and the music started again.
Chapter 2: Gongs, Gunships, and Ghosts
The Bunong call themselves “the elephant people.” For centuries, they’ve lived alongside the animals, worshipping them as kin. But their real history is written in scars.
The Bunong people of Bou’Sra, Mondulkiri, embody James C. Scott’s concept of the “art of not being governed” – a centuries-old tradition of resisting state incorporation and preserving autonomy in Southeast Asia’s highlands. This legacy took a decisive turn during the Vietnam War. Facing devastating US bombing campaigns and encroachment by both Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese communist forces, many Bunong actively chose alliance over submission. Fleeing to Vietnam, they strategically enlisted with the US-aligned Khmer Republic’s army (FANK), often serving as irregulars under Bunong officers like Y Bun Sur who maintained ties to US Special Forces and Green Berets. This alignment, forged in the crucible of conflict and reflecting their deep resistance to Vietnamese state expansion (echoing the broader FULRO insurgency), was neither simple rebellion nor blind loyalty. It was a calculated survival strategy by a people fiercely guarding their self-determination. The profound losses endured and alliances formed during this period remain a powerful, living testament to their enduring struggle for autonomy within Cambodia’s complex tapestry.
One night, over rice wine, Sorng Brou told me about the helicopters. In 1972, American gunships strafed her village. She was six years old. “We ran to Vietnam with nothing,” she said, tracing a finger through the dirt. “Even the gongs stayed behind.” The Bunong became refugees, their songs silenced—until the 1990s, when they crept home and unearthed their instruments from the mud.
That resilience is in their music. The gongs aren’t just percussion; they’re time machines. Hit one, and you hear the jungle, the war, the ghosts. When we jammed with the Bou’Sra artists, their rhythms tangled with our Cambodian Space Project garage-rock riffs, creating something Captain Beefheart might’ve conjured upon a sonic canvas. No scales, no rules—just pure, trance-inducing dialogue between past and future.
Chapter 3: The Mondulkiri Space Project is Born
By 2015, we were bringing Sorng Brou’s troupe to Phnom Penh—their first time seeing a city. The audience, mostly Khmer hipsters, stood slack-jawed as a 12-year-old Bunong girl sang a harvesting song older than Angkor Wat. Later, at the Kampot Writers’ Festival, we staged a sunrise performance on the beach. “We’ve never seen the sea,” Sorng Brou admitted, grinning as she dipped her toes in the waves.
But the real magic happened back in Mondulkiri. We’d hike to waterfalls with battery-powered amps, recording elders like Nyel Che, a blind poet who improvised songs about forest spirits. His zither—crafted from a bomb casing—sounded like a broken radio tuning into the cosmos.
Chapter 4: Can a Folk Song Save the World?
In 2019, Sorng Brou flew to Paris. Not for a gig—to sue a French corporation (Socfin-KCD) for stealing Bunong land. “They offered us sugar packets for our forests,” she scoffed. The case failed, but she returned with a new song: “The Earth Is Our Mother.”
That’s when I realized: this isn’t just music. It’s a weapon. The Bunong’s language has no word for “time,” but their songs are clocks ticking backward, preserving what’s being erased. So we’re making a film, Echoes Across the Mountains, to scream their stories louder than any courtroom.
Sweating: over a hot Isan electric lute, seeking cracks in the universe
After 15 years of digging deep in the highlands with our Bunong family, what’s emerged isn’t fusion. It’s a raw, spiritual truth carved from mist and memory. Sorng Brou’s voice—tested by helicopter gunships and Parisian court battles—rises over reclaimed bronze gongs once buried from American bombs. My fuzzed-out phin weaves through Bunong rhythms that hold no word for “time,” only the pulse against extinction. This sound? It’s Black Sabbath’s heft meeting Khruangbin’s glide in an elephant’s sacred clearing. Messy. Necessary.
Forget world music as wallpaper. This is a jungle radio broadcast. A “No Kings” anthem forged in Zomia’s shadowlands, where the art of not being governed thrived. In an era of authoritarian shadows and billionaire algorithms, our collaboration screams: Handmade. Heartfelt. Human. It’s not a performance—it’s a tuning fork for the cosmic, shaking the walls Lomax warned us about.
So here it is: After 15 years of carrying this sound—this struggle, this resilience—the Mondulkiri Space Projectis ready. The groove is set. The gongs are struck. The ground is shifting. MSP is preparing for take-off.
