A Grain of Sand
By Phil Tajitsu Nash

The “Foolish Old Man Who Removed Mountains” is a Chinese fable about a man who decides to move the two mountains that block the sun from his house. Each day he carries buckets of dirt, while his neighbors laugh, saying there is no way that one small man can remove such huge mountains. He replies, “When I die, my children will dig after me. And when they die, their children will carry on. With every shovel full, the mountains become lower. Why can’t we remove them?”

This fable, made into an inspirational and beautiful song by Chris Kando Iijima and Nobuko Miyamoto, was one of several classics from the 1973Grain of Sand album, which were brought to life last weekend in Washington, D.C. As the first of four concerts in the “Made in the USA: Asian American Music Today” series sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution’s Program for Asian Pacific American Studies and the Washington Post, it tied together the artistry and activism of the 1970s and today. Gray-haired activists from the 1940s sat side by side with college activists of today in an evening that was funny, moving and musically rich.

The Grain of Sand reunion brought together Iijima, Miyamoto, and singer-storyteller “Charlie” Chin, three giants of the Asian American arts and activism worlds. Nobuko, a singing and dancing star of Broadway and movies (West Side Story, The King and I, Flower Drum Song), has gone on to write many songs, create numerous multicultural shows, and found Great Leap (www.greatleap.org), a performing arts organization. Chris, a poet and musician as well as a political activist, became a lawyer and now a law professor at the University of Hawai’i. “Charlie,” who played coffee houses in New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1960s, went on to play important roles at the New York Chinatown History Museum, and has appeared in one-man music and activism showcases on hundreds of campuses over the years. If our community handed out “Lifetime Treasure”

awards, these three would certainly be on the top of the list.

The concert started out with some of the old classics, Yellow Pearl and Wandering Chinaman, which galvanized a generation to action and which painted a picture of life in the ethnic enclaves of our major urban centers. “Charlie” then showed why he is a pre-eminent raconteur and storyteller with his characterizations of a Chinese uncle who learned English in the 1920s, and as a man from Trinidad who is dealing with the customs of several worlds at one time.

Interspersing Grain of Sand classics with later songs, the 200 in attendance saw glimpses of a Filipino Manong (sojourning laborer), and tenant organizing with the Latino community (Somos Asiaticos). Charlie’s funny Noodle Connection and Chris’s ode to his new Hawai’ian home (Tuahine Rain) blended seamlessly with Nobuko’s spiritual To All Relations.

One young activist remarked after the concert that, “the concert was lots of fun. I loved each of them for their unique talents, and felt re-inspired to work hard to help the Asian American community.”

If that is any sign of the concert’s success, then the Grain of Sand trio did a good job of passing on the pick and shovel to the next generation. At this rate, never doubt that the “mountains” of racism, sexism and greed will someday be removed.