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Name that Tune

What is Asian American music? Or art? Or theater? I’ve been in and around these discussions since the 1970s, and have heard many creative ways of defining “Asian American” or “Asian Pacific American.”

The Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York (www.aaww.org) defines Asian American literature as anything written by Asians living in America. Yale University’s Asian American Cultural Center defines its mission as promoting an Asian American culture and exploring the “social and political experience of Asians in the United States.”

In 1979, I was active in the group that put on the first Asian Pacific American Heritage Week Festival at Damrosch Park, next to Lincoln Center in New York City. Everyone involved agreed that we needed community group participation, ethnic Asian cooking, and educational programs focusing on healthcare, education, social services, and legal needs. What we couldn’t agree on was the entertainment.

Groups that performed traditional Chinese fan and scarf dances were allowed to participate. So were an Asian Indian dance troupe, and a Filipino stick-fighting martial arts group. “Charlie” Chin, with his easy-going storytelling and soulful folk melodies, was a definite hit. The rub came when we reached the rock bands.

Alex Chin and his group were all immigrant Chinese Americans who practiced at the local Asian American arts hangout, the Basement Workshop. Alex crooned in Cantonese and English, and the rock was loud and raucous at times. The Heat was a multiracial group, with Dwight, a dreadlocked African American singer fronting the band that included legendary Chinatown guitarist and bassist Geoff Li. Geoff, Dwight and the boys had cut a single, “High School Sweater,” that made some waves over in Europe. But their lyrics were typical, tortured teen angst, not particularly “Asian American.”

I remember the long debates ranging on for hours at a stretch, as conference organizers tried to determine how something Asian became Asian American, and how something from mainstream America became Asian American. Was Alex’s band more Asian American because their songs were sometimes sung in Cantonese? Did they have to sing about the history of railroad builders and laundry workers, or could they focus on boy-girl lust, gang fights, or employment discrimination issues? Did we always have to hear a sitar or koto, or could amplified guitars suffice?

“Charlie,” Chris Iijima, and Nobuko Miyamoto had gotten it all started with a landmark album called Grain of Sand (www.greatleap.org/grainreunion/) in 1973. In this case, there was no hard decision to be made. The players were Asian American, the music focused on topics of relevance to Asian Americans, and the instruments were both Asian (a Japanese shakuhachi flute) and American (guitars). This was not “identity crisis” music because the lyrics and melodies were a forceful reaffirmation of the need to fight for justice as a way of building lasting world peace and fellowship. They sang in Spanish about their commonalities with Latinos in the struggle for better housing. They expressed their solidarity with African Americans, fighting against racism and an unjust prison system. They expressed sympathy for all peoples fighting against colonialism.

Subsequent albums by folk artists such as Yokohama California and Terry Watada, and jazz artists such as Sumi Tonooka, Hiroshima, and Jon Jang kept alive this theme of music grounded in the experience of one person or a group of people, rather than alienated music in search of a gimmick.

Today’s Asian American music scene is as diverse as the Asian American community itself. Young Asian Indians dance to Bombay-inspired hip-hop, and immigrants from Hong Kong or Seoul bring the latest Asian music fads with them. Artists like Hiroshima have gone on to win awards and shape the musical tastes of all Americans, not just Asian Americans.

Returning to 1979, Alex and Geoff’s rock bands ultimately got to play at the Heritage Festival, and we got both complaints and cheers for it. From my perspective, that gets to the heart of what any art form has to be: a genuine representation of a person’s perspective, grounded in some reality. If it errs on the side of preachy, it is propaganda. If it tries to be “universal,” it becomes a caricature. Whatever your reality is, lay it on me. But please, keep it real.