I begin this blog post with two pieces of information, which will seem unrelated. Please bear with me.

1. Yesterday, over at the Hyphen Magazine blog, there was this really interesting entry about the stage revival of Joy Luck Club. Interesting not because I’m a big Amy Tan fan, but more about the personal story that Neela, the post’s author, shares about being 15 and naively loving the movie because any representation – no matter how simplistic and self-loathing the material – was better than no representation. It brought back memories of purchasing Sex Packets by Digital Underground (on cassette!) when I was I guess 10 or 11, and actually feeling kind of proud when the guy in the skit was telling the packet dealer, “give me the Chinese girl man.” It was like, I never heard anybody say anything about Chinese people – except Chuck Norris, who had me actively hating the Chinese villains – and so I was like, “Cool! Digital Underground likes Chinese people! That’s probably because they’re from California…”

2. The Boston Red Sox victory parade was held yesterday as well. A bunch of people at work headed down there, as did my mom. Exciting times, I mean we haven’t had a major sports championship parade in Boston since, man, like, almost three years now! I can barely remember 2005 when the Patriots had the thing, then in 2004 the Patriots and the Red Sox won, and if I stretch, I can vaguely recall 2002 when the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Imagine, for some toddlers, this is their very first Boston team championship! But the one thing that has struck me as really bizarre for several years is the songs the Red Sox have chosen to affiliate themselves with.

The two I’m thinking of are “Dirty Water” by the Standells and “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond. The former is about how Boston is home to “muggers and thieves” and how women have to “be in by 12 o’clock.” The latter is about a couple in love that basically grows up together (but the song was used as a sing-along in the movie “Beautiful Girls,” which took place somewhere in rural Massachusetts – the connection to New England is weak, I know). The Standells were a California band from the 19060s, using a 12 bar song structure most closely associated with the Delta blues. Neil Diamond is from Brooklyn. Are these really the best songs the Boston Red Sox could find to represent themselves?

Click here to read the rest of this entry (at BPRLive.org)

So an old friend I haven’t heard from in a minute recently sent out an e-mail explaining why I hadn’t heard from her in a minute. Apparently she was participating in “The Amazing Race,” a CBS reality show, in which teams travel to various locales trying to win some kind of something in the end. As far as reality TV goes, it’s probably the one show with the lowest probability of being really offensive. So kudos CBS.

Now of course I hope she and her pops win, because they’ll get like a million dollars, and then the thought hit me: Asians tend to win reality shows. Tell me I’m wrong.

I don’t watch much television, but one of the few shows I’ve made an effort to catch over the past few years is Bravo’s “Top Chef,” and the excitement – at least among my friends – over Massachusetts-native Hung Huynh taking the whole thing still hasn’t died down. Throughout the run of the season, the judges constantly told Hung that his cooking had no soul, that there wasn’t enough “Hung” in his food. One couldn’t help but feel a lot of that came from the fact that the judges expected him to cook more Asian food. It’s interesting because Jennifer Aniston also competed on the show, and she considered herself an Asian fusion chef, and when incorporating Asian flavors, she didn’t get the same criticism, that there wasn’t enough Jennifer Aniston in the food. By the end of the season, the unfounded attacks began to wear Hung down, and in interviews he’d say shit like: “What do you want me to do? Make Sweet & Sour Chicken?” and “I don’t go to a restaurant and say, ‘that steak was so soulful.’” (more…)

Message to the Red Sox:

Re-sign Mike Lowell! The dude is a cancer survivor and an across the board favorite. And now World Series MVP!

Method Man said RZA was the “sharpest mufucka in the whole Clan.”

Daisuke Matsuzaka just pitched 3-hit ball into the 6th (taken out too early!), knocked in two runs with a single in the 3rd, and flashed the leather to trap Kaz Matsui in a rundown between second and third base. So for tonight, that qualifies him as the RZA of the Boston Red Sox.

I know you don’t really care. But I don’t care what you say.

Also wanted to pass on this quote from Red Sox firstbaseman Kevin Youkilis, talking about not starting Game 3 of the World Series:
“It’s really not a big deal, to tell you the truth. We have wars going on over in the Middle East, and people are wondering if Kevin Youkilis is going to play first base?”

Say word Kevin. I would post some opinions about the way MLB has tried to market itself as the most American of major sports since 9/11, but I’m a little drunk. But do we really need to hear the Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America during every baseball game? If we had to choose one, could we just replace the former with the latter? It’s more pleasing to the ear and doesn’t glorify war.

Failing that, could we replace it with this?

I’m posting a message from my wife, please feel free to pass it forward.

Peace, Giles

Hello Family,

Many of you have heard of the young African-American sister who was held captive and brutally tortured and raped by six white assailants for a month in West Virginia. While this crime was shocking, it is only one of many unspeakable recent acts of violence toward Women of Color across the country.

In response, Women of Color are launching a campaign called “Be Red Be Bold Wear Red on October 31st Campaign.”

As an API woman, I am appealing to other APIs and encouraging us all to learn about these cases and to participate in the Wear Red Campaign. We know that sexual assault affects our communities. Asian women have been targeted in sexual assaults because of their race, have been trafficked, abused, and exploited because of their nationality and/or immigration status, and we know of many cases of American and European pedophiles and sex criminals vacationing in or fleeing to Asia.

We’re all part of the same communities as oppressed people and People of Color. The young sister in West Virginia is just one of the more high profile victims from our communities this year; even so, the mainstream media has given the epidemic of violence toward women in our communities short treatment. It is the sad truth that we cannot look toward the mainstream to support us during difficult times.

We have to show support for each other. We owe it to ourselves, our communities, and each other, and that is why I hope you will participate. Please read on for more information.

Sopheak Tek
Communication Coordinator
National Organization of Sisters of Color Ending

Hello Sisters,

Recent events in the United States have moved us to action. Violence against women is sadly, not a new phenomenon in our country or in the world, however, in the last year women of color have experienced brutal forms of violence, torture, rape and injustice which have gone unnoticed, received little to no media coverage, or a limited community response. We are responding to:

*The brutal and inhumane rape, torture, and kidnapping of Megan Williams in Logan, West Virginia who was held by six assailants for a month.

*Rape survivors in the Dunbar Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida one of whom was forced to perform sexual acts on her own child.

*A 13 year old native American girl was beaten by two white women and has since been harassed by several men yelling “white power” outside of her home.

*Seven black lesbian girls attempted to stop an attacker and were later charged with aggravated assault and are facing up to 11 year prison sentences.

In a Litany of Survival, Audre Lorde writes, “When we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” These words shape our collective organizing to break the silence surrounding women of color’s stories of violence. We are asking for community groups, grass-root organizations, college campus students and groups, communities of faith, online communities, and individuals to join us in speaking out against violence against women of color. If we speak, we cannot be invisible.

Join us and stand up to violence against women by wearing Red on October 31, 2007.

I have attached two important documents detailing the “Be Red Be Bold Wear Red on October 31st Campaign.”

For updated information, please visit our website.

Blessings and Peace,
Fallon

Artists express heritage
Lauren Paulauskas, 10/26/2007
From the Central Florida Future

Three talented spoken-word and hip-hop artists filled a packed Cape Florida Ballroom with words and music Wednesday.

The Beats, Rhymes and Rice Tour, starring Giles Li, Bao Phi and Kiwi Illafonte, breezed into UCF.

“They’re traveling from school to school,” said Cuong Le, chair of the Asian Awareness Council of the Multicultural Student Center at UCF. “This is the first school they’re stopping at.”

Members of the Asian Awareness Council, who put on the show, were really excited for their arrival and performances, he said.

“We asked one person, and they told us about this tour,” Le said, “so we jumped right on it.”

The three Asian men, all of different Asian heritages, emphasized their origins through their conversations with the audience and their descriptive pieces. They’ve known each other for a while and said their paths have crossed several times.

“We’re all community artists,” Phi said. “We’ve shared a lot of stages.”

The three men performed in a rotation because they said they didn’t want the audience to get bored. The audience’s response throughout the show proved that their plan worked. (more…)

Kiwi, Bao, and I never thought to really mention this to anyone, but I thought we should let folks know though, that from the moment we came up with the idea to hit the road together as Beats Rhymes & Rice, we knew we’d be donating a portion of our revenue to grassroots organizations of our choosing. It would never have felt right to funnel all of our revenue straight into our pockets, and so we’re doing it like this.

With the help of Daren Mooko from One Of Agency, we’ve created a system by which we can make sure that some of the money from our fee from every single show is donated to folks we support who are doing the work in the streets, all of which happen to be API community groups in our homebase cities. This was always our intention, and a percentage of all monies we’ve collected so far and hope to receive in the future will be going back into our communities.

I’m including the names of our designated recipient organizations below. Please feel free to ask any of us about our choices, and if you’d like to know more about any of them, or want to go ahead and donate to them as well – whether money, time, supplies, positive energy – we strongly encourage that. All three of us are strongly connected to our communities, and moving a portion of our honorarium into these groups is just an extension of how we try to operate in our day-to-day lives.

Read on and check out the groups we support. Illustrations are the first pictures to come up on Google Image Search when you enter our first names. Yeah why not?

		Kiwi: Filipino Community Center - ALAY Program (Active Leadership to Advance the Youth) San Francisco, CA
		Bao: Center for Hmong Arts and Talent - ICE Open Mic (Innovative Community Elevation) St. Paul, MN
		Giles: Coalition for Asian Pacific American Youth c/o Asian American Studies, UMass-Boston Boston, MA

image ganked from concreteloop.com – obviously

I don’t want to be labeled a Lonnie-hater, because at his best, he’s one of my favorite emcees EVAR. More importantly, his artistic growth has been very apparent, something most solo rappers can’t claim. (After finding a certain level of success, a lot of emcees keep trying to replicate it instead of continuing to grow artistically.) It’s a straight line from Can I Borrow a Dollar? straight through to Be. I don’t mean to say the quality or listenability necessarily grew with each new album, but that you could see him adding new musical explorations and questions (huh, that’s what it’s all about) with each new release.

But that trend stopped with Finding Forever, which is straight wack. The first single, “The People,” was actually pretty bangin, until he called Kanye West “the new Primo,” and all the sudden, that song became kinda unlistenable. When I heard the album for the first time, I actually skipped over most tracks before they were finished, something I never do the first time I listen to an album. They were just so bland.

So what the hell do I know? Nothing really, but doesn’t something feel kind of awry in that picture up there? (more…)

You may want to skip this post if you don’t care about baseball.

First off: yes, I’m excited the Red Sox are headed to the World Series. I understand that investing energy in watching professional sports is probably less than optimally productive as far as community concerns go, but it’s a diversion, and one that allows for connections in new ways with folks you might never know otherwise. And although I cannot control the outcome of a sporting event, I also cannot control the outcome of a presidential election, the War in Iraq, the implementation of No Child Left Behind, the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, etc. But that doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention.

Now and then, I get shit from some folks for pulling extra hard for Asian athletes. This I cannot understand.

So. I’m a Boston Red Sox fan because I live in the Boston area and the Red Sox play half of their season here. Is that enough reason for me to root for the Red Sox? Because we share an area code? For most sports fans it is. Now apply that logic to the fact that both Japanese rookie Daisuke Matsuzaka and myself are Asian. Is that enough reason to root for my boy to do well? To me it’s obvious, but some API folks – in an effort to impress mainstream white America – are actually harder on Asian players than non-Asian players. Whatever. You guys are corny. (more…)

The Beats Rhymes & Rice Tour kicked off last night in style! Thank you UCF, we had a blast.

Yeah, there were some wrinkles here and there, but overall, I think we gave them a pretty bomb set. We held stage for about an hour and 15 minutes – a little longer than we had planned – but everyone was having a good time, and for real, I think the raw raw rawness of our first EVAR Beats Rhymes & Rice show was a very special feeling.

Also something that was unique to the first show was having Diasporatic on the turns. For those who are scratching their goatees, he was the cat who produced some of the illest beats you’ve heard Kiwi spit on over the past few, including “Drowning” off the Native Guns Barrel Men CD. Dude is a native Floridian, so he and his boy Gerard swung through and it was dope to have additional support for the show. In fact, the first Kiwi track I ever heard was Imagine, which was also produced by Diasporatic, and hearing that song spurred me to contact Kiwi just to introduce myself. So the fact that Beats Rhymes & Rice is even going down is partially due to D. (By the way, if you haven’t heard that song, head over to Kiwi’s myspace to peep it.)

I get the feeling that every show is gonna be different, because that spontaneity was energizing, and if we get over-rehearsed, we’ll start just going through the motions and not giving our best effort on the mic. So if you happen to be in the same town as the BRR tour more than once, just know that you won’t be seeing the same show twice. Well…parts of it will be the same…but you know, not all of it.

We also had a very minor confrontation with a white dude on some ignorant comment he made when we went to eat dinner. Bao – who is very articulate – did most of the talking for the group, which was fun. The guy turned very swiftly from obnoxious drunk to apologetic drunk. By a strange stroke of luck, he was actually staying at the same hotel we were, and when he saw me in the hallway, he apologized again profusely, said what he did was “fucked up,” and I just had to laugh, because he was probably thinking, “Shit! These dudes followed me to my hotel! Asians do not play!”

As is their custom, UCF folks showed us a good time last night, even though they’re in the middle of exams right now. That is love; we mad appreciated how welcoming everyone was. Also true to form, the show started half an hour late because Asian people can’t show up on time for a damn thing. Folks were apologetic, but that’s how every Asian event is everywhere. It would probably feel weird to start at the stated starting time. Keep it real yo.

All in all, I don’t think our first EVAR Beats Rhymes and Rice show could have gone any better.

Photo courtesy of Bao Damn Phi of some Florida folks – Nayo, Cuong, and Sachi.

BTW – I noticed Angry Asian Man shouted us out! We didn’t even ask him to either. We’re happy that folks think that news of Beats Rhymes and Rice is worth passing on.

I gotta send highest props to the students at University of Central Florida. I performed there in like April, and they somehow found it in their hearts to have me back again just half a year later! The UCF folks said I was the first API performing artist ever to be brought to campus by students. And now I’m privileged to be the second ever too – along with my mellows Bao Phi and Kiwi. Florida folks, catch us tomorrow – meaning Wednesday, October 17 – at 7P in the Cape Florida Room at UCF.

I always had this stereotype in my head that Orlando would be an all-Disney town, like I went to college in Amherst, and during the summers, when college students weren’t there, the entire city was basically a huge farm and half a strip mall. It was and still is so dominated by college students, it doesn’t really seem to have an identity outside of being a college town. So I assumed Orlando must be similarly dominated by Disney shit.

Turns out I’m an idiot, because the folks I met there were some of the realest, most enjoyable folks I’ve been able to spend time with in a while. In fact, the only thing Disney about my trip was meeting a dude who was an extra in “Pirates of the Caribbean 3.” (I see you Scott.) No pretense or nothing, and they treated me like one of the family. Maybe it’s a southern thing…

After my set, we were supposed to do a large group discussion, but what happened was way better. We took some time to chop it up about some issues facing API communities, but there was also a spur-of-the-moment open mic with folks just getting up and sharing their creative works and I’m hoping there’s gonna be a similar energy tomorrow.

Sometimes I get caught up in work and organizing and community and life, that I forget how much I love this shit. And sometimes folks ask if it’s a rush being on stage, but f-ck a rush. I like connecting with folks, however it goes down. I dig the conversations after the show as much as I dig the actual performance, maybe more. So much thanks and love to all those students who bust their collective ass to bring performers like me, Bao, and Kiwizzo to their campuses. There literally would be no reason to do this if not for yall.

See you tomorrow Florida!

First off, let me say the name “Lupe-gate” is ridiculous. I’ve never understood the practice of putting the word “gate” after other words to denote that the subject is a scandal. The Watergate is the name of an actual hotel, but Lupe-gate isn’t the name of anything. There is also a much more natural name for this situation, and that would be The LupeFiasco. Read on for more unsolicited opinions.

For those who aren’t hip hop nerds, here’s what went down. At the live taping of the fourth annual Hip Hop Honors Award show in New York City, rap artists Pharrell and Lupe Fiasco were performing a cover of the dope-ass golden era hip hop song “Electric Relaxation” by A Tribe Called Quest. Lupe was an awkward choice, because although he seems one of the natural modern-day heirs to Tribe’s abdicated throne, he has stated in the past that not only has he never listened to a Tribe album, he wasn’t interested in the idea of doing so, and probably never would. Now, I know a lot of skinny-jeaned hipsters and dudes who think BIG was the most influential rapper of all time will leap to Lupe’s defense on this, and they got a point. Just because something is part of the hip hop lexicon, should it be required listening? Does a playwright need to read Hamlet to craft innovative work? Does a golfer need to study Jack Nicklaus’s swing to elevate his or her game? I guess the answer is no, at least, no not necessarily. So as much as Lupe’s “I will not fucks with Tribe” attitude rubs me the wrong way, it’s not automatic grounds for dismissal.

But then everything else happened. We should have got a clue when Lupe said in an interview that he was listening to a lot of Johnny Cash. (I don’t begrudge that per se, because Johnny Cash was like the Muhammad Ali of country music, and listening to the Muhammad Ali of anything is probably the right thing to do.) The same guy who refused to listen to his hip hop ancestors – stylistically, aesthetically, sonically, there would be no Lupe without Tribe – because he grew up listening to only gangsta rap, was now listening to Johnny Cash? He wouldn’t go out of his way to learn about some legends in his own field, but would bump Johnny Cash in Chicago projects?

So when Lupe messed up Phife’s lines during the Hip Hop Honors show, it was unfortunate. Truth be told, it wasn’t much of a mistake. He messed up the order of some words in the first line, then later he botched a couplet, laughed to cover it up, and got right back on track. No harm, no foul. I used to listen to Tribe nonstop and I still don’t know what the hell Q-Tip is saying on the hook on that song. (“Relax yourself girl, reset clear”…?) So messing up is forgivable, even if Lupe has shown a little bit of snark when talking about them in the past, you know, shit happens.

But of course it didn’t end there. (more…)