This website offers you a chance to learn about—and listen to—the Cambodian Dharma song tradition, or smot, a uniquely expressive form of Buddhist chant. Stirring and Stilling: A Liturgy of Cambodian Dharma Songs was originally conceived as a book accompanied by a set of CDs. These have been made available online in the hopes of enabling people from around the world to experience and appreciate this musical tradition.
Trent Walker, a scholar of Southeast Asian Buddhism, developed Stirring and Stilling based on six years of research into Cambodian Dharma songs as both a student and performer of smot. His English translations of sixteen Dharma songs are presented here for the first time.
Currently, Stirring and Stilling exists only in online form. You may access a PDF version of the entire site here and a playlist with all of the recordings here; both are also available from my personal website. For more ways to stay in touch or support the project, visit the connect page.