Between the Notes: Finding Asian America in Popular Music
Author(s): Oliver Wang
Source: American Music, Vol. 19, No. 4, Asian American Music (Winter, 2001), pp. 439-465
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3052420
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American Music
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OLIVER WANG
Between the Notes:
Finding Asian America
in Popular Music
When asked to explain the premise behind the Broadway musical he
helped create and direct-Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk-
George C. Wolfe wrote, "I'm interested in how, if you actively unearth
popular culture and look inside it, you can find all kinds of secrets
and truths and rhythms of a time period, much more than you find
in written history."' Wolfe's conjecture validates forms of expressive
public culture2 that are repositories for narratives that can capture the
meanings of an era with more accuracy than the "official" historical
record. In fact, with traditional historical methodologies coming un-
der increasing critique within the academy, cultural documents are
becoming all the more important as potential sites of knowledge. It
is not that they are any more objectively "true," but they can offer
alternative and complementary histories or, in some cases, be the only
history left to examine.
By examining examples of popular music drawn from the last forty years, one can peer into the history of Asian America itself-its
changing social, political and cultural identities, its larger relationship
to the national/ cultural symbol of "America," its remembrances of
the past and its visions for the future. I don't mean to suggest that
music is didactically reflective of society, as only a one-way relation-
ship existed, only that music has always been a site for more than
just entertainment or commercial enterprise within Asian America.
Oliver Wang is a doctoral candidate of the Ethnic Studies Graduate Group
at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are focused
on race, ethnicity, and popular music. He is also a frequent contributor on
music and culture for the LA Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and other
publications.
American Music Winter 2001
@ 2001 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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440
Wang
Ethnomusicologist
day
activity,
world,
and
an
a
Ma
indust
deeply
s
every class and cranny
include that music has
pressive culture that h
personal identity for m
This notion is made al
record" Asian America
ible. While knowledge
ular media, it has long
images-such as modeland tattered boat refug
ning over 150 years, t
in the words of histo
European immigrantsas foreign immigrant
been a long history o
Americans from the
around the "yellow pe
The works of histori
tried to "re-vision" this
They seek to show how
ry, not just passive ob
ans largely exclude fro
is an attention to popu
erary texts as forms o
any other community
dia, such as music, film
mentation-inherited
ments-rather than ima
Asian American popul
in
history.
the
is
r
"pre-panethnic"
The
first
e
mobilized under the um
The second era focuses
Asian American movem
legacy into the 1980s.
studying Asian Americ
porary
era
marked
community.
My purpose is not to create an ontology of musical production within the community. Like the history of Asian America itself, its popular music has followed a path marked by disjunction, not linearity.
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b
Between the Notes 441
Because musical practices are diverse
to draw any overarching conclusi
in any given era, the exceptions usu
examples I draw from are not necess
of Asian American music-making. R
a larger discussion, opening dialogu
clude it.
Theoretical Considerations
One of the first questions that this study generates is one of definition. What is Asian American music? There is no easy answer to this
query for the very idea of "Asian American" has always been in a
state of contention, continually challenged and reshaped depending
on social context and historical factors. I don't wish to replicate an
entire body of discourse within Asian American studies and cultural
studies except to say that any and all uses of "Asian American" in
this text are girded by an understanding of the constructedness of the
term. I deploy it not because I necessarily believe in its social factthat is, that there is a discernable, unitary Asian American community that one can reference-but because the term holds a significant
level of cultural cache within the public sphere. Indeed, the tensions
that surround the term itself are partially at the heart of how and why
music by Asian Americans is valued to begin with. Moreover, any
definition of Asian American music has to stay implicitly fluid and
adaptive to the particular situations in which the term applies. To this
extent, I draw on sociologist Yen Le Espiritu's work on panethnicity,
in particular, her thought that "ethnicization-the process of boundary construction-is not only reactive, a response to pressures from
the external environment, but also creative, a product of internally
generated dynamics."6 I argue that music is a prime example of the
creative ways in which ethnic identity is expressed and contested.
Not only is "Asian American" a difficult label to define but musi-
cologist Joseph Lam points out that music's uniqueness as a medium additionally complicates matters:
[Asian American music] is not something that one can easily
identify by merely listening to its sounds, or interpret with rigid
notions of cultures, histories, and peoples. Its musical-ethnic attributes and meanings must be analyzed with a series of parameters and discussed in musical, historical and social contexts.7
Lam argues that Asian American music is not dependent on the text
(e.g., lyrics, images, even melody, timbre, rhythm) or even a tradition
of musical practice. Instead, Asian American music is so designated
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442
Wang
based on the context o
as well as reception (h
This kind of open-ende
ican music difficult bu
suffocating the music
these caveats, however
American music" as a heuristic device because he feels such a move
is a necessary first step rather than a final definition. He argues,
The term Asian American music is needed to provide a theoretical and historical point of reference so that we can contrast and
compare diverse musical works of Asian Americans, examine
their musical creativity and artistry, and understand their expressions of living in America as individuals and as members of ethnic groups.8
Thus, for Lam, his attempt to define Asian American music is less a
desire to provide a canonical standard than to establish a point of
common reference that future discussions can work from-even if it
is to deconstruct Lam's own theories. Moreover, the very ambiguities
of the musical medium also speak to why it is such a powerful cultural form through which identity can be created and negotiated. In
her study of the popular music habits of Vietnamese refugees living
in the United States, Adelaida Reyes notes that musical expression
among South East Asian Americans is not so much a series of statements of stable identities but rather the uncertainty and unsettled
state of being that many of these newly forming communities have
to deal with. She writes, "Music, as their mirror or their embodiment,
projects their image not through its capacity for exactitude of meaning but through its capacity for ambiguity, for harboring a multitude
of possible meanings."9
Moreover, within the popular music are embedded key discourses
around Asian American identity-what is it, what does it mean? This
is not an outstanding claim; popular music scholars like Simon Frith,
Ron Eyerman, and Andrew Jamison have long suggested that music's
ability to fashion collective identities is one of its most powerful attributes.10 However, there is something unique in the Asian American engagement with popular music, one based on the particular historical contexts of race, gender, class and immigration experiences that
have shaped people's experiences.
Historically speaking, Asian Americans have long existed in a state
of contradiction. Welcomed for their labor by capitalists and feared
by the white working class, early waves of Asian immigrants were
quickly stymied through exclusionary legislation while populations
already in the United States feared race riots and discrimination. This
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Between the Notes 443
tension-among the needs of capi
has pushed Asian Americans into
American national culture. As a res
Lowe writes,
Rather than expressing a "failed" integration of Asians into the
American cultural sphere, this distance [between Asian Ameri-
cans and the U.S. national culture] preserves Asian American
culture as an alternative site where the palimpsest of lost memories is reinvented, histories are fractured and retraced, and the
unlike varieties of silence emerge in articulacy.11
Lowe's definition of culture is actually quite expansive, including any
social practice that lies outside the narrow field of political represen-
tation. While she doesn't name popular music as an example of an
"alternative site," her argument resonates with the ways in which
music provides a means through which history and memory can be
re-visioned and articulated. British rock scholar Simon Frith describes
popular music as being able to "stand for, symbolize and offer the
immediate experience of collective identity."12 Adopting this assertion
and joining it with Lowe's argument about the role of Asian American culture, I argue that music has been a site where Asian American
communities could be imagined symbolically, in resistance to the denial of that collectivity in the American political, social, and material
world.
The Pre-Panethnic Era (1950-1970)
Setting 1950 as the "beginning" of the pre-panethnic era is misleading.13 In truth, that date should be around whenever Asians first came
to the United States, beginning with Filipino sailors who jumped ship
from Spanish galleons into New Orleans in the eighteenth century.
The history of Asian music-making in America extends back well over
150 years, including the tradition of mok-yu (literally "fish song"), folk-
songs composed by early Chinese settlers up and down the Pacific
coast. Based on traditional Chinese folksongs, the mok-yu songs detailed their struggles and sorrows as sojourners to America and, thus,
were among the first forms of cultural production that specified a
uniquely American experience.14
Likewise, by starting at 1950, I also exclude the long tradition of
jazz bands within Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino American communities, especially in California and Washington. Jazz pianist George
Yoshida's Reminiscing in Swingtime is an excellent history of Japanese
American jazz bands from 1925 to 1960, while Arthur Dong's documentary, Forbidden City U.S.A., looks at the prevalence of Chinatown
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444
Wang
jazz clubs in the World
serve greater explorati
However, my use of 1
derstanding a set of dr
American community
itself was a seminal h
contradictions. On one
Japanese American citi
from 1942 until the en
once-strong communit
time, Chinese, Korean,
both from the removal
economy, which they
granted
to
them
as
a
allies such as China and
mental shift in domest
suppress Asian Americ
Despite some of these
as the 1952 McCarran-Walters Act and various Asian exclusion laws
from the turn of the century prevented new immigration from coming to the United States. At the same time, those Asian Americans al-
ready in the United States experienced a set of new opportunities,
largely stemming from the space race and economic boom of the
1950s. Expanding employment opportunities in manufacturing, con-
struction, transportation, and service industries created new jobs
while the onset of the cold war gave educated Asian Americans the
chance to enter professional positions as engineers and scientists.
As a result, many Asian Americans were becoming more socially
mobile, moving up the class ladder, out of ethnic enclaves like Chinatowns, and becoming more spatially and culturally integrated into
the American mainstream. They were still in a state of pre-panethnic
consciousness; World War II in particularly was viciously divisive in
playing Japanese Americans against other Asian ethnic groups. However, the seeds of panethnicity were being planted as second and third
generations of Asian Americans were being born and raised in the
United States.
Both Takaki and Chan talk about the "second-generation dilemma"
of Asian Americans in the pre-World War II era, and it is plausible
to extrapolate these ideas to the postwar period as well.1" Takaki and
Chan document how second- and third-generation Asian Americans
were trying to enter into the mainstream of American society by
adopting "American" cultural values, gaining greater education and,
in general, trying to shed overt signs of "foreigness"-be it linguistic
accents, traditional dress, or cultural activities. In other words, they
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Between the Notes 445
were pursuing what Chan has calle
to assimilation and integration, the
try to become twice as American as
gain acceptance.19
Unfortunately, a severe paucity of
ican studies-or any other academi
how Asians culturally factored into
tween World War II and the 1965 Im
texts discuss some of the demogra
larly around geographic dispersal a
tically nothing is said about how Asia
the concept of America that existed.
torical artifacts of the era, such as f
many second- and third-generatio
Chinese and Japanese Americans, w
American popular culture industry
World of Suzie Wong, 1960), Nobu Mc
and James Shigeta (The Crimson K
roles-albeit often stereotyped-in H
C. Y. Lee (Flower Drum Song, 1957) a
1961) experienced moderate succes
musicians signing to major record
RCA/Victor), Elsie Itashiki (stage n
Ethel Azama (on Liberty).
These handful of record albums crea
plete and ambiguous statement on
both the culture industry and Amer
lack of oral histories and other docu
the social landscape, it is difficult to
Were they signs of how Asian Amer
amples of how pioneering Asian Am
their own terms?
For example, James Shigeta had a successful career, appearing as a
leading actor in over half a dozen films between 1959 and 1969. He
also briefly tried his hand at a singing career, signing with Silver Slipper Records in the late 1950s to release Scene One under the name Jimmy Shigeta.21 What's interesting about the album are the different,
sometimes contradictory, ways in which Shigeta is positioned as an
artist in reference to nationality and ethnicity. The music on the album is almost all completely Tin Pan Alley standards like "They Can't
Take That Away from Me" and "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To."
Only the Hawaiian pop song, "Chi-Sai-Hana (My Little Flower)" betrays any kind of ethnic or racial tint and, given that Shigeta was
Hawaiian born and raised, the song loses some of its exoticness. The
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446
Wang
music by Axel Strodah
by ballad-oriented big
er music of the era, fo
ers and Hammerstein's
(1958), there is no use o
entalism" or the ubiqui
ental." From an auditor
Shigeta from any othe
cial
/
ethnic
However,
level.
reading
thr
commentary, it is clear
an artist, especially sin
vious to anyone looking
notes, an uncredited au
nolulu-born, college e
Corps in Korea, and s
O'Connor. He also app
MacLaine and Louis Jo
tion and service tour se
ta as an American rath
Shigeta taken from his
The
critics'
slightly
be
both
praise
different
in
stor
acknowledged
the six comments desc
he is a second-generati
ple, Louella Parsons wr
sue Hayakawa complet
anese actor registered
James Shigeta." The A
Frank Sinatra of Japan
triple threat, two-cont
as being from Japan po
of these critics to talk
cial difference is unav
and explained within t
It is tempting to rea
zuki who recorded at least four albums for RCA Victor in the late
1950s and early 1960s-as being part of the "200% American" strategy to social integration / assimilation. After all, these singers were
positioned through their marketing as all-American. However, this
has to be balanced by the reality that there was little to be gained in
trying to emphasize ethnicity. Asian Americans constituted far too
small of a demographic buying audience for record companies to try
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Between the Notes 447
to appeal to, and while the 1950s als
exotica albums from composers like
few Asian Americans who held rec
that genre's development. It seems
albums by Shigeta, Suzuki, and ot
tor of the degree to which Asian A
anese Americans were being acce
scene, they didn't reflect any new
For example, in analyzing the
musical and 1961 film Flower Drum
only major Hollywood film to star
the musical and movie both seem to celebrate ethnic difference and
diversity, the narrative-and songs-are really a treatise on the joys
of American assimilation. To quickly summarize, the musical/ movie
was originally adapted from Chinese American author C. Y. Lee's
book of the same name, about a family in San Francisco's Chinatown
trying to find a wife for the eldest son, Wang Ta (played on Broadway and in the 1961 movie by James Shigeta). The songs, written by
Rodgers and Hammerstein, focus on themes such as the generation
gap between parents and children ("The Other Generation"), cultur-
al tradition ("A Hundred Million Miracles"), and ethnic mixture
("Chop Suey"). While the musical and movie are striking for their allAsian casting, Lee counters that the thrust of the narrative is about
erasing ethnicity rather than celebrating it. In talking about Flower
Drum Song as well as the 1956 Sayonora, historian Robert Lee writes,
Sayonora and Flower Drum Song both celebrate American liberal-
ism. In these films, ethnic assimilation is the vehicle through
which the social identities of race, class, sex, and nationality can
be displaced by the individual embrace of the modern.... The
nuclear family, the end result of both these films, is expected to
produce a new American: a liberal individualist who transcends
social origin.23
In other words, like Shigeta's solo album, Flower Drum Song must reconcile the exotic origin of characters and assimilate them into a recognizable and nonthreatening American mainstream. For example, in
the song, "Chop Suey," a metaphor for ethnic pluralism in America,
the tune begins using a cliched "Oriental" pentatonic scale to play
the first few notes but then slides into conventional Broadway big
band. The lyrics are telling: "Chop suey, chop suey / living here is
very much like chop suey / hula hoops and nuclear war / Dr. Salk
and Zsa Zsa Gabor / Harry Truman, Truman Capote and Dewey /
Chop suey."24 What is strange is that while chop suey is ostensibly
understood as a unique Chinese American food dish, all of the songs
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448
Wang
references
hoops.25
are
to
Ame
Moreover,
in
th
orated musical sequenc
square-dance country t
tary
ing
dance
a
song
moves
that
to
fit
celebra
popular culture, not the
These examples sugges
visibility within the Am
trolled and careful. Their success was not so much an indication of
how far they had come but how far they could go in "becoming"
American. Their presence wasn't so much to be celebrated but rec-
onciled and folded back into the American mainstream. For them to
gain a more independent foothold in the musical world, on their own
terms, would take an upheaval that extended well beyond the music
industry and one that confronted American society itself.
Legacies of the Asian American Movement (1970-1990)
The post-World War II complacency shared by white Americans revealed its vulnerability with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s,
but came crashing down all about with the social movements of the
1960s. The rise of the Black Power Movement, anti-Vietnam War agitation, and a host of other social movements came to the forefront,
including, at the latter end of the 1960s, the Asian American Movement. Like its contemporaries, the Asian American Movement pushed
for an agenda that included social, political, and cultural empowerment, creating organizations, initiating protests, and, in general, shaping a new consciousness. To say that the movement was a watershed
event for Asian Americans is gross understatement-indeed, the very
term Asian American was born of the movement. Prior to it, different
Asian ethnic groups were still largely insular, split by cultural and
linguistic differences into national subgroups, such as Chinese Amer-
ican, Japanese American, and Filipino American. However, a series
of different events in the late 1960s-the Third World strikes at San
Francisco State and University of California-Berkeley, the racially informed criticism of the Vietnam War, coalition-building brought on
by civil rights activism, as well as a raised level of ethnic conscious-
ness on college campuses-became the genesis for the Asian Ameri-
can Movement.26
By the time it quietly faded out in the 1980s, the movement had
created ethnic press, established community-based organizations, and
helped institute Asian American Studies classes. According to Yen Le
Espiritu, "Although broader social struggles and internal demograph-
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Between the Notes 449
ic changes provided the impetus fo
it was the group's politics-conf
Asian-that shaped the movement'
However, the movement's legacy
torian William Van Deburg observes
was not exclusively cultural, but it
a revolt in and of culture that w
forms and intensities.... It was thi
ly independent black cultural ba
hesion the movement eventually m
Much the same can be said of the A
greatest legacy was the unitary-how
meated not only the Asian America
ety at large. The impact of the Asia
Black Power Movement, was not jus
wrought, but the cultural impact
gues that, in fact, the Black Powe
tural movement that transformed
under the Civil Rights Movement i
Likewise, Asian Americans were at
ular culture as one way to shape th
to the 1960s, Asian America didn'
tural entity, thus the task for cultu
Not only were they attempting t
historically separate-if not antag
were also trying to provide a cultur
Thus, like the Black Power Moveme
wasn't just political-it was fundam
well, with expressive culture servin
ing the new Asian American nati
their impact on social norms and
opportunity for cultural change an
ies the ideals of the movement an
ment's politics themselves have dri
Music scholars Ron Eyerman and A
nection between cultural forces a
ous, writing,
In the creative turmoil that is unle
modes of cultural action are redef
sources of collective identity. For
habitual behavior and underlying
open for debate and reflection, and
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450
the
cial
Wang
political center st
lifeblood in often
This open window of s
Movement was able to
underlying motives. H
Whereas
Asian
Amer
accepting the need to
order to develop] an
also realized the need
form and substance to
Wei notes that one of t
itics was the question o
cultural producers who
sic played a key role as
Fred Ho and the folk t
expressive public cultu
ing to Wei, these artist
ambassadors' and bear
While Wei makes pass
form
of
tangent
from
names is A Grain of Sa
sons.33 For one thing,
ment-they came out o
Nobuko Miyamoto and
in 1970. The murder
convention galvanized
to help raise money fo
and Joanne," the two t
down the Pacific Coast.
both
had
worked
lie" Chin and renamed themselves A Grain of Sand after one of Chris
in
and Joanne's first songs. Together they performed at rallies, college
meetings, and social gatherings, acting as participants within the
movement rather than outside performers.
In doing so, A Grain of Sand wrote songs directly tied into the major cultural tenets of the movement. On their self-titled album, re-
leased in 1972, it seems as if the band distilled down all the major
tenets of the movement into a record: odes penned to panethnic identity, cross-racial coalition building, a class analysis of racial oppression, a treatise against American imperialism in South East Asia, and
calls for Asian Americans to take pride in their heritage. While much
of this new Asian American political ideology was developed in the
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c
Between the Notes 451
limited space of college campuses,
transformed them into song, and b
dience to take root and proliferate.
Consider their song, "We Are the
We are the children of the migrant
of the internment camp / sons and
ers / who leave their stamp on Am
selves / what do you have to lose?
we got the right to choose.34
In this song, "we" is clearly a refer
a common set of histories, not just
the migrant worker" refers to Filip
the concentration camp" were cle
"sons and daughters of the railro
Americans. However, rather than id
A Grain of Sand unites them und
heritage of one the heritage of all.
Americans to one day "leave their s
American, but as an internationa
Moreover, by saying "we got the rig
panethnicity is created through con
being a "natural" state of identity f
meant to adopt a political and social
icans living under the yoke of "Ame
Moreover, their music was firmly
ican musical idiom-folk-lending
based on music genre alone. With th
by Iijima and Wong) and Miyamo
Sand's arrangements and harmonies
spired by the works of popular fol
and the Weavers. But folk music, a
siderably in popularity by the midSand and others, like the group Yok
its forms in the early 1970s, acoust
in American popular music.
However, for A Grain of Sand, fol
music-for its mobility and lack o
ably, a symbolic genre as well. It is
of Sand's songs elided with unique
ed with folk music's practitioners
tice, working-class concerns, and co
by performing folk music, A Gra
confirmed their "American-ness" th
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452
Wang
It must be carefully b
Sand represents one of
in this era, they were
group. While their alb
ment-related musical
far from the only As
to the point, A Grain
litical sophistication, n
stunted their ability t
It's telling, for examp
visual arts of the 1970s at the Asia Pacific Cultural Center of Oakland
(California), titled "Music of a Movement," most of the bands included do not seem to be anywhere as politically charged as A Grain of
Sand. Browsing the exhibit, what appears evident is that while many
groups of this time, such as the Fabulous Mystifiers (later the Source),
Abacus, and Max B, were inspired by the events of the movement, they
were not necessarily composing songs that directly dialogued with the
movement's ideologies or tenets. However, it could also be argued that
the mere presence of Asian American bands-many of them deliberately panethnic in their composition with Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino members-was a political statement in and of itself given the relatively paucity of them in the mainstream music industry.
It should also be noted that while A Grain of Sand's lone album
was released on Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber's small, politically
oriented Paredon label, other artists were making in-roads with larger
music industry imprints. For example, Dakila was a Bay Area-based
Filipino American rock / funk band that signed to Epic Records in
1972. Japanese American guitarist Michael Sasaki was an integral
member and eventual producer for the San Francisco r&b band Cold
Blood, which was signed to Warner, Reprise, and ABC. Neither group
dabbled in ethnic politics. Dakila's liner notes told listeners that "the
new flavor is Tagalog; it's the Phillipines. Just a taste more jungle
than you're used to," eerily repeating the move to "foreign-ize" an
American group just as James Shigeta had been similarly treated over
a decade prior.35 It would appear that the idea of Americans of Asian
descent forming a rock band was untenable to the label-they needed to mark the group as different, both as a potentially exotic selling point, but also to explain their racialized difference in appearance and language.
However, the most successful among these groups to emerge in the
1970s managed to make popular art without having to sacrifice political commitment. If A Grain of Sand documented the political immediacy of the early 1970s, the music of the late 1970s and early 1980s
started to move in more musical directions to explore the cultural di-
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Between the Notes 453
mensions of the community. Forem
panethnic ensemble of Hiroshima, l
Hiroshima began as a group based
Spearheaded by the Kuramotos an
itself Hiroshima after the first city
but saw themselves as the phoenix
main, to this day, one of the mo
American groups in history, signed
ten years, with both a gold record
my-nominated album (1983's Third
complishments.
Hiroshima began as a fusion group
cial genre they were seeking to fit
of music and sound they dealt with
ma sought to create and reflect a n
music, but while A Grain of Sand r
of lyricism, Hiroshima added a mus
music was the way through which
using sound to tease out the nuance
Asian America.
The main method through which Hiroshima tried to achieve
sound was by using traditional Asian instruments in their fu
band, namely taiko drumming, koto playing, and Asian woodwind
In a 1975 documentary, Cruisin' J-Town, the drummer Mori elab
ed on how the sound of his drumming reflected his perspectiv
identity, saying,
I can relate more to a black or a Chicano than, I think, to a per
son from Japan. So that's why creating an Asian American thing
that I can feel comfortable with, I feel is very important. It w
starting to dawn on me that music is another expression that I
could possibly use to get into an Asian American identity ty
thing. And how that relates to taiko is playing a far out Japanes
instrument and developing a new culture, a new Japanese Amer
ican culture."3
Mori refers to the traditional Japanese practice of taiko drumming,
but for him taiko becomes an instrument through which he can express his unique identity and experience, thus changing the context
of taiko from a Japanese musical form to an Asian American one. Like-
wise, Dan Kuramoto expanded on Mori's points by adding,
Maybe it was kind of nervy, but we wanted to say something
about Asian American people to everybody, everywhere, this is
how we feel and these are the emotions that we have and these
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454
Wang
are
some
lot
of
of
the
thing
importance
in
this with you. Can yo
and all this other stuf
and we wanted to mak
For
Hiroshima,
this
music often included the inclusion of traditional Asian instrumenta-
tion such as taiko drumming, kotos (zithers), and Chinese woodwinds.
The resulting music had nuances of Eastern music, but was threaded
into a pastiche of popular American styles as well: funk, rock, soul, and
jazz. If Asian America was supposed to represent a forged identity from
the confluence of East and West, Hiroshima's music provided a musical envisionment of what that mixture would sound like.
It is important to contextualize when and where Hiroshima was
emerging on the popular scene. While the Asian American population was still tiny in the 1970s, less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, they were gaining recognition with formal social and political
spheres. In 1978 the Japanese American Citizens League began a for-
mal redress and reparations movement for Japanese Americans interned during World War II. The following year the Congress and
Pres. Jimmy Carter signed a formal proclamation designating an
Asian/Pacific Heritage Week to run for ten days in May (this was
extended to a month in 1990). Also in the same year, the United States
normalized diplomatic relations with China, leading to the reunification of Chinese American families. This was all happening with the
backdrop of the fall of Saigon in 1975 and a new generation of South
East Asian refugees entering the United States.
A Grain of Sand and Hiroshima-along with other musical peerscame out of a generation of artists influenced-though not always
reflective-of the political zeitgeist that surrounded them. While not
archetypes, they helped inspire and predict groups that would follow
in the 1980s such as the fusion groups Hot Cha and Noh Buddies, both
of which featured panethnic ensembles playing a mix of Asian, AfroCuban, African American, and other music styles while still grounding themselves with some level of overt identity/ethnicity politics.
These models-fusing music as well as fusing politics and aesthetics-
would take greater shape throughout the 1980s, especially in the Asian
American jazz community, but would confront a new challenge by the
1990s.39 Whereas what Asian Americans had to confront before was
the complexities of American society and its racial quagmire, what they
now had to deal with was their own internal diversity, one that threatened the collapse of the very structure of Asian America that activists
had fought to establish twenty years prior.
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s
Between the Notes 455
The New Asiatics: Asian American Music
in the 1990s and Beyond
One of the great ironies to emerge from the Asian American Movement is that just at the moment where it began to bear social changes
on American society, larger forces began to unravel the delicate tapestry that panethnicity spun. For many reasons 1965 would be a wa-
tershed year in American history (both political and cultural)-
marked by both racial turmoil and political assassinations. However,
1965 was also the year that Congress passed an Immigration Act that
would dramatically change American society in the decades to follow. Influenced by both Civil Rights Movement lobbying as well as
cold war diplomacy considerations, the Immigration Act of 1965 overturned the racial quotas established in the 1952 McCarran-Walters Act.
Whereas Asian countries like China and Korea had severe quota limits
prior (100 emigres allowed a year), these numbers now jumped to
20,000 a year. The Chinese American population, for example, more
than tripled between the years 1960 and 1980 as a result of the act.40
The net effect of this demographic wave that would soon overwhelm Asian America is astutely recognized by sociologist Michael
Omi, who writes,
It is indeed ironic that the term Asian American came into vogue,
in the late-1960s, at precisely the moment when new Asian
groups were entering the U.S. who would render the term problematic. Ethnicity, class, nativity, and generational differences
have manifest themselves in distinct political agendas.41
The panethnic model, forged through collective struggle by secondand third-generation Asian Americans, would now face the existence
of new generations who were either immigrant-born or born after the
events of the 1960s, creating a significant gap in historical experience
between these two groups. Asian America shifted from being a primarily American-born population to a primarily immigrant-born com-
munity during the 1980s. This new population is largely removed
from the historical events and significance of the 1960s and 1970s, at-
tached to the Asian American Movement mostly through collegiate
education, not direct participation.
This is not to say that Asian American panethnicity and the ideals
of the movement have been on their last legs, however. The 1990s
emerged as another watershed period. Asian America now is made
up of very different class, cultural, linguistic, and generational com-
munities, spanning the gap from wealthy Hong Kong businessmen
with American MBAs to poverty-stricken Hmong refugees still struggling to create a written language, let alone learn English. Likewise,
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456
Wang
cultural politics aroun
sues around gender, se
other sites for identit
masculinist tone of ear
fronting issues of iden
not limited to or behol
Political commentator
assemble our selves fro
cial construction, a dra
equally arbritary-and e
free, neutral, fluid" id
If Liu's viewpoints, as
ican, are indicative of h
the
increasing
strate
toward
Another
politics
is
ambiva
identity
perspective
offered
by
L
Rather than consider
established "given,"
American cultural pra
es that produce such i
constituted in relation to historical and material differences.43
This postmodern concept of ethnicity runs against the grain of the
dominant form of ethnic nationalism that pervaded the movement's
identity politics. While the movement attempted to create an identity by fixing its place with certain themes-pioneer histories, shared
oppressions, similar class origins-by the 1990s the fallacy of such
rigid identity constructions were laid bare for critique. The "historical and material differences" Lowe refers to are ever more apparent
in the 1990s with the growth in this new second generation of Asian
Americans, unlikely, unknowing, and sometimes unwilling heirs to
the legacy of the movement.
This ambivalence emerges in the musical forms that Asian Americans have involved themselves with this decade, creating two parallel developments running alongside one another. On one hand, there
are still musicians connected and committed to a sense of communi-
ty, social justice, and identity politics in the same way Hiroshima an
A Grain of Sand were in the 1970s. On the other hand, a wave of
young Asian Americans are now entering into the popular music industry as singers, rappers, rockers, and musicians. While they have
yet to crack the glass ceiling in the recording industry (merely a handful are signed to major labels), they have become a viable and, in some
cases, seminal force in popular music. They are spearheading a ma-
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Between the Notes 457
jor push into the popular media by w
ing in smaller niches of the music ma
generation, who made music "for,
many of the new artists seek to mak
their ethnic constituency. This doesn
nic audience, but they're not seeking
munity. Their music is, as the cliche
We can see the range of perspectives
ican hip-hop and how it has chang
performance artist Coco Fusco write
nant cross-cultural American languag
It is little surprise that Asian Ameri
in the musical form. However, there
the rap groups of the early 1990s an
At the beginning of the 1990s, many
grounds, were under the sway of po
icons such as Public Enemy, the X-Cl
sic meant to educate, incite, organize
people," for the promotion of ethnic
cans were no less attracted to this cla
like the Seoul Brothers (Seattle), Fists
low Peril (New Jersey) formed, adap
of rap music as "the Black CNN" and
Yee, of the Davis, California-based
tles, noted, "We need to be very vo
still an 'invisible minority."' Thus, th
es, the Apostles hoped to reach an A
educate them on community affairs a
is becoming more and more popul
group to stir up controversy and talk
This is essentially an updated vers
Grain of Sand were saying in the 197
yesterday's folk artists, are taking a p
an audience of their peers with the h
ing them. As we can see, the influen
these rap groups-both in terms of th
justice, fighting stereotypes) as we
communicate these issues.
For example, in the opening verses from Fists of Fury's "After
School," rapper C.Y.A.T. (Cute Young Asian Terrorist, a / k / a Darow
Han) says,
School / it's a place where we're sent as children/many times the
teacher torment [unintelligible] / separate the class into what? /
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458
Wang
her favorite students
us Asians were thus se
class majority / seen a
er ones / still we figh
In this song, C.Y.A.T. a
ity myth among Asian
visiveness. For him, hip
an
audience
to
educat
felt that it [rap] had a
medium. Probably pol
music
that
most
youn
be listening to."47
The idea Han expresse
crucial
here
because
t
mid-1990s is the presen
are interested in rap m
like Asiatic Apostles an
tion of postmovement
then the new generat
other issues through t
This newer generation
les'
Key
Kool
(a
third
Mountain Brothers, a t
delphia. The Mountain
philosophy; they ment
like Fists of Fury iden
musical
map.
Brothers'
In
Chops
their
begins
flippin' the page / bac
kid would sit makin' b
drum box / stolen from Scott's / sneakin' and listenin' to Dr.
Rock-N'-Dallas in the PM on weekends.48
In this example, ethnic identity is normalized; Chops mentions his
ethnicity, but it's only one of the many signifiers he lays out. In the
brief bars we listened to, he references retail stores, radio personali-
ties, and his own interest in producing-all dimensions to his personality and experience that define who he is. Ethnicity is part of it,
but it is not necessarily the most important or anything to draw attention in an overt, political fashion. The connections-the "identity
allegiances," if you will-that Chops draws are beyond just ethnic;
they are geographic, they are generational. Even musically speaking,
the kind of lush, organic production of Chops's beats on "Days of
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Between the Notes 459
Being Dumb" recalls the same kind o
Philadelphia soul artists like Gamb
O'Jays, and MSFB. Thus, on multiple
al, Chops is signifying his spaces of
more) on being a hip-hop generatio
tries to communicate with on this im
nore Asian Americans, but it isn't ex
In contrast, groups like the Fists of
relatively generic forms of producti
were drawn from the rap music aest
place or time. Bluntly said, they wer
artists a medium to rhyme over, bu
the same kind of statement that C
sets of artists are serious about their
are more focused on the politics, th
polished in their aesthetics. This mo
aesthetic, has taken place among Asi
notably in the 1980s in both music a
Although aesthetic Asian American
(identity, cultural conflict, alienati
are less concerned with the politica
with whether it fulfills their artis
are also often more interested in ex
than the particularistic aspects of
make them recognizable to as wid
cluding non-Asian Americans.49
Wei's dichotomy between "aesthet
ously reductive and too easily separa
arate art into either "aesthetic" or "
the possibility that many artists, w
working in both realms. Moreover
audience members might make up
lar artwork's political or aesthetic v
argument as a rough description for
that in the 1990s groups like the Mo
similar path-seeking universal appe
selves solely to Asian Americans. T
Chops (a/k/a Scott Jung), notes that
ic and beat heads. Those are the ones
ciate what it is that we do."50 There'
explicitly, of race or ethnicity. Inst
and beat heads," that is, fans who
Brothers based on their aesthetic tastes. What's crucial here is that the
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460
Wang
group
is
not
repudiat
1980s-but more than ju
is neither explicit with
James
Shigeta's
prese
startling aberration, to
like the Mountain Brot
rap industry.
Just to complicate thi
(a / k / a James Chang
sic part of an "Azian/P
to educate young Asian
sic" that he feels is lac
traditional Korean and
to reach Korean Ameri
music. Drawing from h
discovery of Korean m
es of his identity. He
somebody else (black,
fortable speaking in K
tened to other people
like learning my nativ
Jamez suggests, "So m
of beauty, speech and
their
rich
legacy
of
mu
Jamez partially resem
American musical deve
by a political perspect
necessarily solely focu
Korean American hims
cans to their specific c
not like A Grain of San
vision. Instead, Jamez
that may be described
ture in a more global
tween traditional Korea and Koreans raised in America. This is a de-
cidedly different outlook compared to postmovement artist / activists
who saw their work as contributing to the formation of an Asian
American nation. Jamez falls between the cracks-or perhaps rises
above them-but either way, his work suggests an even greater di-
versity in thought among the newer generation.53
In the midst of these new and still unanswered questions, what is
starting to become clear is that the Asian American community is one
marked by difference, ambivalence, and a changing attitude toward
identity. The community is struggling to deal with the so-called post-
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Between the Notes 461
modern moment and the belief in an
become fluid and nonproprietary. The
the 1990s suggests that they are now
as entertainers and artists as with the
tatives in the cultural arena. While t
players in the music industry is no
artists is. In the past year, artists lik
Coco Lee and Filipino American ra
Neptunes) have come into prominent
place along longer known stars such
Beastie Boys), DJ Q-Bert and James I
Smashing Pumpkins.
Especially when Coco Lee, already
Kong and Taiwan, came back to the U
ican debut, publications like the Villag
lead an influx of Asian artists that w
sion of 1999 which propelled the care
fer Lopez.54 Such a moment has yet t
the question needs to be asked: wou
embrace of Asian Americans? Or sim
ca's hunger to consume ethnic chic f
Concluding on Consumpt
One question that has gone unasked i
sumption fits in. While the examples
Americans have produced music, h
equally valid path of inquiry. Debor
push for thinking on this topic, writ
American listens to is a way into c
Americans make choices about iden
least because very little public cultur
As noted, many of the artists disc
struggled in order to gain any kind
in the absence of "Public Displays o
ence on Asian American popular cu
becomes a crucial site to look at how consumerism is an act of iden-
tity formation just as much as cultural production. Almost as if in dialogue with Wong, Joseph Lam takes the matter of consumption one
step further:
Asian American includes all musics they use to express themselves. The ethnic identity or the composer who created the music or the historical origin of the styles and genres offer no fool-
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462
Wang
proof
tests
of
what
is
are in the ways Asian
negotiated by compo
specific contexts of s
other musical and social forces.56
In essence, by looking at how Asian Americans utilize music, rather
than just producing it, Lam suggests that what constitutes the field
can include musical works not even created by them. And while one
can argue that such an open statement practically negates the usefulness of defining Asian American music to begin with, Lam opens
up the idea of culture-not just music-to include the actions of not
just producers but consumers as well. Culture thus becomes more
meaningful than just a one-way delivery of products and artifacts
(films, books, songs) and suggests that there is a constant exchange
of meanings between those who create art and those who consume
it. Lam's open-ended treatise on Asian American music allows for an
involvement of players that isn't simply generous but radically
changes how they-as both a community and also as individual
agents-help constitute their own cultural forms and practices.
For example, in writing about how young South Asian Americans
(known as desi) have absorbed and appropriated elements of hip-hop
style and fashion in New York, cultural studies scholar Sunania Maira
argues against any simple reading that would either conclude that
desi youth have claims to some kind of hip-hop authenticity or that
there are practicing a new kind of minstrelsy by rejecting their brown
skin and replacing it with black style. Her conclusion is far more nuanced in trying to understand how, when, and why patterns of consumption enter for desi youth, especially in the context of understand
both the migratory flows of bodies across borders (vis-a-vis immigration) and flows of culture that run globally. Maira's work points to
ways of thinking that could well assist future scholars in trying to
unpack the complexities around consumption, noting,
There is no "authentic" reading of the consumption of hip hop
by desi youth, but there is indeed a politics of authenticity that
has meaning to the lives of these youth, and that is constantly
being negotiated with references to their positionings in a larger
Indian diaspora and to global flows of culture.57
Clearly, consumption is fast becoming a fertile ground for scholarly
inquiry and needs to play some role in any future theorization around
Asian Ameican musical practices.
As noted earlier, these contemporary times offer a new challenge
to understanding the contours and directions of Asian American pop-
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Between the Notes 463
ular music and its relationship to their
my intent to argue that there is a on
the two. Eyerman and Jamison write, "
experience to the potentialities of life,
scribe them or even describe them."58
in all the blanks that we have in regard
munity has taken across history. Yet at
ed of George Wolfe's quest to locate
rhythms of a time period" through son
such an exploration of Asian America
histories. Asian American music, like
about from the willful effort of peopl
ing, new ways of living. Thus the story
of Asian American music is sometime
of Asian America itself.
NOTES
1. Taken from the musical's production notes.
2. I use the term public culture to denote that I'm primarily interested in expres
culture within the public sphere.
3. Mark Slobin, Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West (Hanover, N.H.: Wes
an University Press, 1993), 57.
4. Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (
York: Penguin, 1989).
5. Takaki has been criticized for this practice since he tends to conflate literary
es as historical fact.
6. Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1992), 176.
7. Joseph Lam, "Embracing 'Asian American Music' as an Heuristic Device," Journal of Asian American Studies 2, no. 1 (Feb. 1999): 47.
8. Ibid., 30.
9. Adelaida Reyes, Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 168.
10. See Simon Frith, "Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music," in Music and Society,
ed. Richard Lepper and Susan McClary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987),
133-49, or Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and Social Movements (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998).
11. Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1996), 6.
12. Frith, "Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music," 140.
13. By "pre-panethnic," I mean the time before Asian Americans adopted a unified,
panethnic political/ social identity.
14. Taken from an exhibit hosted at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle, Washington, circa 1997.
15. George Yoshida, Reminiscing in Swing Time: Japanese Americans in American Popu-
lar Music, 1925-1960 (San Francisco: National Japanese American Historical Society,
1997); Forbidden City, U.S.A., directed by Arthur Dong, DeepFocus Productions, 1989.
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464
Wang
16. See Roger Daniels's Prisi
a detailed history of the int
17.
18.
See Takaki, Strangers from
Ibid.; Sucheng Chan, Asian
1991).
19. Chan, Asian Americans.
20. More will be said about this landmark piece of legislation but, in short, the 1965
Immigration Act abolished racial quotas on immigration, leading to massive waves of
Asian immigration in the decades to follow.
21. Jimmy Shigeta, Scene One, Silver Slipper (LP 5000).
22. It should also be noted, however, that the other three critics cited, Cobina Wright,
Harold Hildegrand of the Los Angeles Examiner, and George Jackson of the Herald-Express do not make mention of Shigeta's ethnicity at all and speak instead to his singing and acting talent. Again, this is likely deliberate on the part of the label packagers.
23. Robert Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1999), 179.
24. Flower Drum Song: Original Broadway Soundtrack, songs/lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Columbia, 1959 (OS 2009).
25. Chop suey is entirely a Chinese American invention-the dish does not exist in
any traditional Chinese cuisine.
26. See Amerasia Journal 15, no. 1 (1989), commemorative issue, "Salute to the '60s
and '70s Legacy of the San Francisco State Strike." Also William Wei, The Asian American Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993).
27. Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity, 31.
28. William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and Ameri-
can Culture, 1965-1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 9.
29. This is not to say that various Asian ethnic groups in America didn't have cultural identities. I am focusing on the notion of a panethnic Asian American cultural
identity.
30. Eyerman and Jamison, Music and Social Movements, 6.
31. Wei, Asian American Movement, 64.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 35.
34. A Grain of Sand, "We Are the Children," A Grain of Sand: Music For the Struggle
by Asians in America, Paredon, 1973 (P-1020)
35. Dakila, Dakila, Epic, 1972 (KE 31756).
36. It should be noted that traditional South Asian instrumentation, particularly tabla drumming and sitar playing, was already making its way into white and black jazz
and rock fusion bands of the same era. There is undoubtebly social/ cultural implications arising from this practice, but I argue that they are different than Hiroshima's
use of instruments from "their" heritage.
37. Cruisin J-Town, directed by Alan Kondo, CrossCurrents Media, 1976.
38. Ibid.
39. I have left out a significant musical community that follows Hiroshima in the
early 1980s but precedes most of the artists I talk about in the 1990s: Asian American
jazz musicians. There are two reasons for the exclusion: (1) this community has already
been discussed at length in works by Deborah Wong (1993), Susan Asai (1995), and
other Asian American music scholars; and (2) their integration of political and aesthetic
ideas is close enough to Hiroshima's work that most of the points I could make about
their relationship to Asian America would largely be redundant. Nonetheless, I would
be remiss in not at least acknowledging the importance of such jazz artists as Jon Jang,
Francis Wong, Fred Ho, Mark Izu, and Tatsu Aoki (among many others) to establish-
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Between the Notes 465
ing a successful and prominent Asian Amer
"Transformations of Tradition: Three Gener
ing," Musical Quarterly (Fall 1995). Also Deb
Asian American Space in the Recording Indus
A Study of Twelve Musical Communities, ed. K
Schirmer, 1993).
40. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 4
41. Michael Omi, "Teaching, Situating, and In
Magazine of History 10, no. 4 (Summer 1996):
42. Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian: Notes of a N
1998), 64.
43. Lowe, Immigrant Acts, 64.
44. Coco Fusco, English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion In the Americas (New
York: New Press, 1995), 32.
45. Darow Han, "Asian American Nation," S.F. Weekly, June 24, 1992.
46. Fists of Fury, "After-School," demo tape, ca. 1992.
47. From a telephone interview conducted in the fall of 1992.
48. Mountain Brothers, "Days of Being Dumb," Self, vol. 1, Pimpstrut, 1998 (MBPS
1).
49. Wei, Asian American Movement, 67.
50. From a personal interview conducted in the winter of 1996.
51. From a personal interview conducted in the fall of 1998.
52. Jamez, Z-Bonics, F.O.B., 1998.
53. Amy Ling, ed., Yellow Light: The Flowering of Asian American Arts (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1999), 355.
54. Carol Cooper, "Are We the World?," Village Voice, Feb. 2, 2000.
55. Deborah Wong, "Finding an Asian American Audience: The Problem of Listening," unpublished paper, 1999, 3.
56. Lam, "Embracing 'Asian American Music' as an Heuristic Device," 53.
57. Sunaina Maira, "Henna and Hip Hop: The Politics of Cultural Production and
the Work of Cultural Studies," Journal of Asian American Studies 3, no. 3 (Oct. 2000):
338.
58. Eyerman and Jamison, Music and Social Movements, 46.
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