Singing About ‘Known Knowns’ and ‘Unknown Unknowns’: A Kore-Am sets music to Donald Rumsfeld’s briefings
July 30, 2004
San Francisco musician Bryant Kong’s life is what most of us might imagine for APAs growing up in the Midwest. The second son in an overachieving family, he was the only APA face at his high school in the all-white Grosspoint Woods community outside Detroit, Mich. The family would drive up to Toronto’s Chinatown to shop for goods on weekends. Kong moved out West and then settled down in San Francisco, going from a double major in French and chemistry to a classical music aficionado and professional.
He’s just released a classical CD with a comedic and timely twist, The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld. The lyrics are direct quotations from the secretary’s Pentagon briefings. His recording debut has been covered by The Associated Press, CNN, NPR and the BBC. Kong plays the piano with soprano Elender Wall. The artists’ “Weapons of Mass Distraction Tour” is currently in progress.
AsianWeek: So tell us how you came to think of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s quotes as poetry, and then as music?
Bryant Kong: Hart Seely inspired it with Slate Magazine’s April 2003 issue. He had compiled snippets of Rumsfeld’s speeches and put them into poems. I took it to the next performative step, and set these poems to song. The texts are hilarious and evocative, encapsulating the broader themes of the war in Iraq, Rumsfeld’s role and the control of information.
When Elender and I began to perform the songs, people enjoyed them both as humor and as music. Then my latent entrepreneurial gene kicked in and I began developing a business plan to produce our first album. While I knew the Rumsfeld songs were unusual, only then did I realize the opportunity they presented — to reach people and go places far beyond traditional classical music. Thus was born my new record label, Stuffed Penguin Music.
AW: So what’s the album like?
BK: This CD is an expression of my goal to update classical music and make it accessible to a broader audience. I drew from a variety of musical influences — cabaret and pop music as well as traditional and modern classical music. I also felt that the speech of Secretary Rumsfeld as a public figure was a valid subject for artistic treatment. So I have taken different ideas and traditions and claimed them as my own, which is something that I think many Asian [Pacific] Americans — and immigrants and minorities in general — can relate to.
AW: Can you talk about the different ideas and traditions in your background?
BK: Well, I probably take after my mother in terms of hard work. But it’s important not to be one-dimensional. I started the first student magazine at UCLA, got an M.B.A., did grassroots work for the Green Party, then non-profit AIDS work and a telecom stint with AT&T. I was a good Asian academic kid and a pragmatic Midwesterner. You know, it’s all about taking what’s mainstream and making it your own.
AW: And how do you create art?
BK: I think great art is both timeless and timely. Pablo Picasso painted “Guernica” in response to the bombing of a small Spanish town. While the painting makes clear Picasso’s antiwar sympathies, “Guernica” endures because the art comes first and the message follows.
I’m getting away from those protest songs and protest art where the message comes first. Those are as bad as a Dick Cheney speech. The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld seems to succeed — and, hopefully, will endure — because when I wrote the songs I was thinking of the texts and the music, not politics.
AW: Do you think APAs will go for this music?
BK: They already do. We’ve started talking to Cecilia Chang about doing a benefit for her group, Justice for New Americans [formerly WenHoLee.org] in September. And we know Asian [Pacific] Americans are coming to our concerts and buying the CD online already. A Reuters television segment on us has been picked up by networks in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Japan.
To hear selections from The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld, read the lyrics, find upcoming performances or purchase the CD, visit www.stuffedpenguin.com.
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