Earlham College | News from Public Affairs

Arn Chorn-Pond's life is featured in the documentary film The Flute Player and more recently in Where Elephants Weep, a Cambodian opera. This Artist and Lecture Series event is sponsored by the Kazue Fukuda Hawkins Endowed Fund.

RICHMOND, Ind. — International human rights leader Arn Chorn-Pond will share the story about how music saved his life and how it led him to help others recover from the trauma of war during Earlham College's first Artist and Lecture Series event of the semester.

Chorn-Pond presents "Healing and Restoring Cambodia through the Arts" on Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 7 p.m. in Goddard Auditorium's Carpenter Hall. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for seniors and students. Tickets may be purchased on the Earlham campus at the Runyan Center desk.

Chorn-Pond was born in 1966 in Cambodia to a family of theatre artists. At the age of nine, he was one of hundreds of children enslaved by the Khmer Rouge. At Wat Aik, a labor camp and killing field, he worked morning to night with little and sometimes no food. While there, he learned to conceal his feelings because the children were killed if they showed any emotion.

Chorn-Pond says music saved him. He was one of only a handful of children taught to play the traditional Khmer instruments, and his ability on the flute spared his life.

Soon, however, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, and Chorn-Pond had to trade the flute for an AK-47. He was forced to become a child soldier in the Khmer Rouge army.

When he was 12, Chorn-Pond escaped to the jungle and lived there for months before being rescued and adopted by an American missionary. He went to high school in New Hampshire and played the flute to help him adjust to a new country and language.

He attended Brown University and began to speak out about his experiences. He says he was surprised to find that people were moved by what he had to say.

Chorn-Pond has received the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Anne Frank Memorial Award and the Kohl Foundation International Peace Prize. His work includes producing a documentary The Flute Player, about his life and work.

This event is sponsored by the Kazue Fukuda Hawkins Endowed Fund, which focuses on speakers or performers who are either themselves victims of prejudice or war, or whose particular message or performance addresses these issues and celebrates the indomitable spirit of those who overcome and survive such experiences.

As the co-founder of Cambodian Living Arts, Chorn-Pond works to help others heal from the trauma of violence and war. When he returned to Cambodia during the 1990s, he realized that 90 percent of Cambodia's traditional artists had died either during the years of the Khmer Rouge or during the difficult years that followed. Some of the great masters he remembered from his youth were living on the streets. He realized that if the few surviving traditional artists died without passing on their knowledge, Cambodia's musical heritage could disappear forever. Through his work with Cambodian Living Arts, Chorn-Pond tracked surviving musicians and established schools where they could teach. Chorn-Pond now lives in Cambodia where he oversees 20 master teachers who teach more than 500 students to play traditional instruments.

Chorn-Pond is the founder of Children of War, and he formed Peace Makers, a U.S.-based gang intervention program for Southeast Asian youths.