Made in Chicago: Chris Manfrin, Sooyoung Park, William Shin, and Reg Shrader of Seam, one of the highest profile independent AsAm bands. Photo by Peter Kim
|
Made in Chicago: Chris Manfrin, Sooyoung Park, William Shin, and Reg Shrader of Seam, one of the highest profile independent AsAm bands. Photo by Peter Kim |
By Oliver Wang
It’s easy to talk about the rise of Asian Americans in the independent, post-punk scene as a "phenomenon" because few rock fans expect yellow and brown faces in a musical community characterized by white angst.
But challenged by a skeptical listening audience, confused with Asian nationals in pop music, and scorned in their own community, Asian American musicians have their own angst and their presence in independent music is becoming less of an enigma.
The state of independent rock music is already fairly ambiguous and contradictory. On one hand, there is indie music’s rebellious, anti-establishment image; on the other, there’s the billion-dollar commercial rock industry. The romanticized, blue-collar rocker has to compete with the multitude of suburban garage bands. Even the labels "indie rock" or "indie music" are not universally accepted and agreed upon for fear of corporate co-optation. In some minds, any label gives the music industry the ability to package a certain "sound" into a commercial product, the very antithesis of what independence is supposed to represent.
Sooyoung Park, leader of the six-year-old band Seam, is one of Asian America’s best-known indie artists. He articulates the problems with trying to name the music he and others make.
"In the process of becoming a dominant musical genre, indie rock has lost its urgency; any anger or anti-establishment ranting is immediately co-opted and twisted into a catch phrase," said Park. "Its descriptive subcategories-Space Rock, Twee Pop, Dyke Rock, Emo-core, etc.-are totally unhelpful and meaningless."
From behind the counter of Aquarius Records, a popular San Francisco music store which specializes in independent music, manager Windy Chien says that the term does have some worth if only to differentiate between an attitude and an established sound. She suggests, "A lot of times it can be a reaction against corporate attitude or whole "commodification’ of the music industry. Oftentimes, if a band is on a certain label, that can qualify it as indie rock no matter what it sounds like. For the label "indie rock,’ it’s just a convenient way of describing a band’s attitude." The attitude she refers to is one of independence and self-reliance, a homegrown do-it-yourself (DIY) belief and goal.
Indie rock’s rise since the early ‘80s, correlating with the death of punk in the late ‘70s, has been marked by the rise of local labels and bands versus a mass movement. Chien suggests that indie rock has no central birthplace, unlike the relationship between New Orleans and jazz or New York and hip hop. Instead, there were many bands from a variety of locales, both in the U.S. and in England.
"Indie rock does not have a specific birthplace in America, or in Great Britain or Australia," explains L. Jim McAdams, a disc jockey at indie-rock station KAOS in Olympia, Wash. "It arose when all these independent artists [started] doing their own thing around the country, and the world began to become aware of each other in the early- to mid-’80s and began helping each other with tours and recording and zines and such."
The DIY principle is implicit in McAdams depiction of the rise of indie music worldwide. It’s a delicate balance of support from loyal fans, community or college radio stations as well as local record stores which continually take chances on unestablished artists.
Where Asian Americans enter into the mix is harder to locate. Given that there is no Asian American musical tradition, at least not in the same way that there are African American and European traditions, there is no grassroots inclination for Asian Americans to become involved in indie music. Music writer Robynn Takayama offers a hypothesis for the attraction that indie rock holds for Asian Americans, which relates rock’s self-reliant and diverse nature and the struggle of Asian American youth constantly pushed to the borders of mainstream America.
"Bands whose sound couldn’t make it on the radio or onto vinyl found college stations or small record labels who played by their own rules. If no one wanted them, they just started their own label," said Takayama. "They created their own aesthetics such as the DIY idea. With American racism and marginalization of people of color in mind, this would seem like a place of refuge for Asian Americans, a culture and music that embraces difference."
However, that’s not to say that the attraction of indie music to Asian Americans is solely because it acts as a political refuge. Ben Kim is a co-founder of Fortune4 Records, which put out the Ear of the Dragon compilation, featuring 19 different Asian American bands. Distilled to the bare essence, Kim argues that rock attracts Asian Americans like it attracts a lot of different people.
"I think many AsAm thinkers tend to idealize or fantasize the notion of the young AsAm breaking out of the old stereotypes, grabbing the electric guitar, and making a noise that purges or literally addresses the rage of the oppressed yellow folk," he elaborated. "In reality, the decision to rock defies such readings; the answer is often, "Because it seems like a cool thing to do.’ "But why?’ "Because.’ Participation in rock culture, then, can be as natural as joining the Drama Club or Debate Team. Self-differentiation is neither impetus nor barrier."
Adding to Kim’s argument, Seam’s Park agrees that the rebellious nature of indie rock is sometimes given too much credit and that other, simpler, factors, are at hand. "I’m not really sure why AsAm’s are drawn to indie rock. If it does have strains of anti-establishment and rebellion, they are few and far between. But because of its current popularity and relatively short learning curve, it’s not surprising to me that AsAm’s have turned to indie rock as a means of expressing whatever it is they need to express."
From a personal perspective, Lance Hahn, the lead singer and guitarist for the San Francisco Mission District band, J Church, got his start at an early age growing up in Hawaii. His own love affair with rock had more to do with what he was exposed to but it wasn’t devoid of some degree of identity and social politics.
"My mom took me to rock concerts as a little kid," he recalled. "Allegedly she took me to see Jimi Hendrix when I was three. I definitely heard more of that [rock] when I was a little kid than I did jazz or classical. When I was in 7th or 8th grade, I started getting into Hawaiian land right politics, things like that. ... People who get into those things, at that age, are craving some kind of movement or bigger thing that’s dealing with teenage angst and alienation and such clich’s and that’s also when early punk was taking off in California. That’s probably the first time I thought I could start a band."
The role that "Asian-ness" plays in the content of the music and lyrics is an interesting contrast to other genres, like jazz and hip hop, where ethnicity is oftentimes much more explicit, especially among Asian Americans. Certainly, not every Asian American musician is obligated to wear his or her ethnicity as a badge, but issues of ethnicity are often submerged, leaving only a band photo or surname-check to satisfy the curious.
Jeff Yang, editor of A magazine, which helped promote Ear of the Dragon, addressed this issue when talking about the compilation in an article last May. "The songs aren’t about being Asian," he said. "They’re about being in love and being angry and being a musician-the same things everybody else writes about. It’s just that when you look at the head shots, they look different than Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots."
This isn’t to suggest that these groups are trying to hide their ethnicity at all. In fact, the lack of Asian American representation is a motivating factor for many of the Asian Americans who get involved.
"The power of the symbolic cannot be underestimated, especially when it comes to AsAms in pop culture," Kim said. "Screen stars have the most reach, of course, but seeing another AsAm on the rock stage, or even in a rock magazine, can be a singularly transformative and empowering experience."
Like the music itself, the indie rock aesthetic defies neat definitions. With new labels and bands making noise in certain communities, apart from what’s happening elsewhere, tracing the music’s evolution is a constant remapping of centers, borders, and the tenuous links between them. And while there are some more tangible examples of identity-based rock, like the women-centric Riot Grrrls, and more ethnic-based movements by black and Latino rockers, it’s difficult to predict if an Asian American indie community and attitude will ever arise.
From her perspective, Chien sees the role of Asian Americans in rock as being individual movers and shakers, but not necessarily organized as a movement. I think Asian Americans will be involved in [the music], but not in any overt sense because they’re Asian American," she said.
When it comes to a readily identifiable Asian American "sound" coming into existence, Park is somewhat skeptical, but he can see how a certain aesthetic can be achieved through songwriting. "You could see an Asian American aesthetic, not in musical terms, but more as a lyrical voice. People choosing to talk more about things that were previously taboo in rock music. I could see that happening in the next few years, because younger bands, like Miss May 66 and Emily’s Sassy Lime, [both of which are comprised of Asian American women], might be addressing those issues more directly."
Both opinions are marked by a certain ambiguity and a respect for the unknown. However amorphous it leaves things, indie rock’s history has never been predictable. Scenes can come and go with the swiftest of fads and other artists can rise to a level of influence that no one could have predicted just by being at the right place at the right time.
"We all eventually discover, of course, that AsAm-ness is a big deal, but also that it doesn’t completely define or determine the whole of existence," said Kim. "Perhaps it’s both, then, the emergence and absence or latency of explicit, politicized AsAm self-identification, that most often describes the AsAm rock experience."
Kim suggests that we can think of Asian American rock as not necessarily being one thing or another, but a combination of both; an identity marked by contradiction, not too unlike Asian America itself. In the end, all of these voices agree that what will ultimately make Asian American indie music significant isn’t necessarily explicit politics, or marketing toward an ethnic audience. It’s how personal experience gets translated into music and lyrics, whether it’s the experience of being a man, or a woman, in or out of love, or just living life on this planet as an Asian American.
Made in Chicago: Chris Manfrin, Sooyoung Park, William Shin, and Reg Shrader of Seam, one of the highest profile independent AsAm bands. Photo by Peter Kim |