Musician pens song reflecting parents’ escape from Cambodia and his own struggle over identity
This story is part of a CBC Sask. series featuring artists’ work in celebration of Asian Heritage Month. For more on this project, visit the main page at cbc.ca/lovesk, where you can see more of the art we’ll be featuring.
As a teenager who felt like the “black sheep” of his family, Savan Muth couldn’t understand why his parents had certain attitudes about school and work.
“You should work hard; you should go to school; you should study; you should do all these things that I will never get the opportunity to do,” he recalled his mother telling him.
When he pushed back and questioned why she would describe him as blessed, she explained more of her story and journey to Canada.
Now, Muth — also known as Jeah and DED BOY — has written a tribute to that struggle, a song called From the Womb.
“The song is about my family, my parents, how they survived the Khmer Rouge war between 1975 to 1979 and all of the things that they had gone through to be able to make it to Canada,” he said.
While his parents faced physical war, Muth said he struggled with his own internal conflict once his family arrived in Canada.
That struggle is covered in the second half of the song, which tackles issues like racism and the search for identity.
Escaping Cambodia
An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died from overwork, starvation and murder under the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime.
“It wasn’t as easy as escaping, because as soon as they made it out of the camps, they had to run through minefields and a lot of their friends died during that time, too,” Muth said of his parents.
While his parents faced physical war as refugees from Cambodia, Savan Muth said he struggled with his own internal conflict once his family arrived in Canada. He wrote a song that addresses the external and internal wars that people face.
Looking back, he finds it incredible that both his parents managed to escape separately to a refugee camp in Thailand, where they lived for years before the young family found sponsorship as refugees.
“When we came to Canada, we lived in one room. There (was) six of us in one room — not all of us fit on the bed,” he said, with a chuckle. “I’m pretty sure I slept on the floor, majority of the time.”
Muth said that his upbringing led to complicated feelings as a child — for example, when he saw other kids who had so much more than him, or when he mixed with other immigrant kids who went to his public school.
“When you have a bunch of different kids that are from different places, you get into a lot of fights,” he said. “We didn’t know what else to do … not understanding that we’re all in this together.”
Finding kinship with other diverse musicians brought him a sense of peace, both from the music and from others who were searching for that feeling of kinship and connection.
“I learned to love so many different cultures, to finally come to terms with who I am,” he said.
His song takes listeners through those conflicting feelings, closing with the very people who gave him life and brought him to safety.
“I’ll forever be grateful to my parents for having gone through it and being here, still living with those traumas, but still putting a smile on their own faces just to show up for their children.”
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