Showing posts with label California. Show all posts
Showing posts with label California. Show all posts

September 12, 2009

Boomer, a returnee rapping destiny


See a multimedia version of this story at this link.


Boomer is 27 years old. He was born in a refugee camp on the Thai border and arrived in the United States when he was just a baby. He has lived in Stockton, California. In 2003, after a couple of years spent in a Californian jail, he got deported back to Cambodia, in the “6th group” of returnees. Boomer is one of the 212 returnees who have already been deported back to a native country that they barely know – if not at all – when they arrive on the Cambodian soil. After his arrival, Boomer quickly realized that he couldn’t give up hope and looked forward to reconstruct a new life in Phnom Penh. Though it’s not easy at all, Boomer – in comparison with other returnees - hasn’t done too bad, even if he admits still struggling to make ends meet, support his family and the project that he has started.
Boomer has created his own organization, “A+ Entertainment”, certainly inspired by the success of KK and his organization “Tiny Toons”. Boomer is an artistic producer, mixer and DJ, but most of all he is an educator and role model for the young boys he brings off the streets of Phnom Penh, where he gives them a chance or at least a ticket to the growing rap-hip-hop-DJ club scene in Cambodia.
The “Khmer Tassou”, four boys who dream of being under the television spotlights, working under the mentoring and tutoring of Boomer, an older brother or a dad they may not have at home.































































In the studio, the “Khmer Tassou” are working on their texts. The four boys don’t cheat under Boomer’s instructions; they think and write conscientiously with Boomer behind them.





































































Poeun Sophon Pheap, 16, alias “DJ Shadow”, another singer at working in Boomer’s studio.

















May 3, 2009

Long Beach, Cambodia Town USA




Long Beach, California… A “suburb” of Los Angeles (just 20 miles away), on the Pacific coast. Long Beach is a city of nearly half a million people, the most ethnically diverse city in the United States. Besides this, Long Beach has one of the world’s largest shipping ports (for my whole life I had never seen such a wide huge massive extended port!), with a large oil industry since oil in the area is found both underground and offshore.






























Long Beach Asian community includes a large Cambodian community, considered the second-largest Cambodian community outside of Asia (after Paris, France) with 50 000 Cambodian American people or Americans from Cambodian descent. The Cambodian community of Long Beach is mostly visible in a neighborhood along Anaheim Street, between Atlantic and Junipero Streets. In 2007, the “Little Phnom Penh” became “Cambodia Town” - http://www.cambodiatown.org/ - with an official recognition from the city of Long Beach.










Long Beach is a place that makes Cambodian people proud! Even though the integration has not always been easy, even though some people in the Cambodian community still face big challenges to be able to make it here in the USA (language, jobs, wages, health, studies, education, “weight” of the past, identity struggle…), the Cambodian people in the US are proud of Long Beach for the actions, the results and the impacts that the community here has built in the city…

























































































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See more stories about the Cambodian Americans in the archives of this blog! ..

New Year festivities in Santa Ana, California



Santa Ana is located 20 miles East of Long Beach. On Saturday May, 11, 2009 the Cambodian community of the area gathered at the building of “The Cambodian Family” for the festivities of the Cambodian New Year. “The Cambodian Family” - http://www.cambodianfamily.org/ - is a non-profit agency serving the refugee and immigrant community of Orange County, California, promoting social health, helping immigrants in the search of jobs, mentoring youth. If it emphasizes on the Cambodia community, the agency also serves other Southeast Asian immigrants (Vietnamese, Lao/Hmong) and Hispanic immigrants.




































































































As "The Cambodian Family” also serves Hispanic immigrants, Mexican folkloric dances were in the program of the day.











And then came the Cambodian folkloric dances…































































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See more stories about the Cambodian Americans in the archives of this blog! ..