Now Li writes to express his views in the most authentic way possible, including all their complexity: “For me [the goal is] to accurately represent what’s inside of me. Everybody, what’s inside of them, it’s all kind of mixed up, and nobody really knows anything, and now [my goal is] nothing more than trying to accurately represent ‘I feel this way about it, I might have misgivings about it for this reason, or I might be fully behind it at this time.’”

“There was no that when we started,” Ikpi adds.

Tell ‘em B!

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“I’m not going to stand on the stage tonight because I want to look into your eyes and see what I mean to you,” slam poet Giles Li said when he visited campus on Friday, Oct. 24 and performed to an audience of approximately 20 people.

Li, originally from Boston, was a personable performer, generating laughs from the audience several times. He reflected on his own past Halloweens and Christmases in poems, asked the audience to “Facebook him” because of a battle he is in to gain the most friends.

“I just want acceptance, that’s all,” Li said.

Read the rest here. Man I didn’t realize what a knucklehead I was until i read this article!

Members of the Boston Progress Arts Collective plugged their mission of supporting Asian and Pacific Islander artists while undercutting stereotypes during a talk in the Granoff Music Center last night.

Guest speakers Giles Li and Eugene Shih told audience members that the aim of their group is to redefine the terms “Asian” and “artist” in order to eliminate preconceptions.

“We don’t necessarily have to be one specific type of artist or one specific type of Asian. We want to redefine Asian and artist in ways that are not static,” Li said. “I think we should strive not to fall into stereotypes.”

Li and Shih highlighted the organization’s projects, which create an environment to allow Asian and Pacific Islander artists to explore their creative endeavors. The organization has a radio station, an array of special events to showcase all forms of Asian and Pacific Islander art, and a monthly open mic night — New England’s only Asian-American open mic series, according to the speakers.

Students who attended the event were vocal about Asian and Pacific Islander artistic expression and showed interest in the organization’s various projects.

Sophomore James Lin, an artist himself, said the lecture piqued his interest in becoming more involved in the organization and in the Asian and Pacific Islander artist communities.

“I’m … into the artist scene, and being an Asian American myself, I found the lecture to be great,” Lin said. “I think their support is important, because the Asian American community isn’t always seen as creative.”

Tufts sophomore Erika O’Conor said she went to the lecture because it combined her interests in Asian Studies and music. Her class on Asian-American music prompted her to research the collective.

“I was already looking into the Boston Progress Arts Collective before the lecture, and I even have the Asian and Pacific Islander music radio station streamed into my iTunes,” O’Conor said.

O’Conor plans on getting involved with the organization. “I’m planning on going to open mic on Friday,” O’Conor said.

She said she admires the organization’s support for all types of Asian-American artists, as well as its mission to combat stereotypes.

“Asian Americans participate in all kinds of music, and I appreciate the statement that Boston Progress Arts Collective is trying to make,” O’Conor said.

Blackman Auditorium was a center for culture and choreography Saturday night when the Pan Asian American Council (PAAC) presented the second annual Celebr(ASIAN).

…

Li followed the opening act, cracking a joke about an automated voiceover that served as the show’s announcer by calling it “one of the whitest voices” he had ever heard.

Li performed poems with subject matter including the statistics involved in US wars (“Mathematics”) and a call to focus on helping people in need during this election year (“Obama Mania”).

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Lions, poetry, swords, a capella, hula—Bryn Mawr’s Asian Students Association Culture Festival had it all. “Night Market: The OccAsian of the Year,” held in Thomas Great Hall last Saturday, was well attended and a great success. The performance portion of the show was followed immediately by a Night Market, a beautifully decorated and eclectic “street fair” in the back of the Hall with food, games, and gifts.

Kelly Soudachanh ‘10 and Sandra Lee ‘10, Culture Festival co-heads and emcees, really had their act together, which made the show flow naturally and quickly. The first and last performances were by the Johns Hopkins University Lion Dance Troupe. Pounding drumbeats accompanied the five dancers, four of whom composed two huge, colorful lions with moving mouths, ears, and eyes. As part of the dance, the lion dancers pounced into the crowd, and later into the Night Market.

…

Giles Li’s performance was the finale to the program portion of the festival. Li is a spoken word artist from Boston who has founded the Boston Progress Arts Collective and works as an Arts Coordinator at the Neighborhood Center in Boston’s Chinatown. Comfortable and friendly with the audience, Li performed lyrical spoken word poetry about America’s international situation in “Mathematics,” the hypocrisy of commercialized Christmas in “A Crappy Xmas Poem in Seven Parts,” and a deeply respectful and heartfelt tribute to the women in his life in “Woman.” Li interspersed his poetry with funny stories from other performance experiences, and with an acoustic version of “Umbrella” on the guitar, which was pretty funny. His last poem involved audience participation; in three sections, we yelled “Okay!,” “Yeah!,” and “What?” at his direction and were incorporated into an ardent appeal for peace.

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While considering hip-hop and spoken word performances, Asian American performers are rarely the first to come to mind, said organizers of tonight’s “Beats Rhymes and Rice” event.

Three Asian American hip-hop artists from across the country will perform in the West Addition of the Curry Student Center at 8 p.m. The performers seek to examine Asian American culture through a medium not usually associated with Asian culture.

“It’s a spoken word hip-hop event featuring three Asian American performers,” said Delia Cheung Hom, director of the Asian American Center.

The event, a collaboration between the Asian American Center, the Asian Student Union, the Korean-American Student Association and the Vietnamese Student Association, will showcase Asian American performers, a demographic not usually associated with hip-hop, Hom said.

Beats Rhymes and Rice is named after a line from Seattle-based hip-hop duo Blues Scholar song with the lyric: “Beats rhymes rice be the breakfast of champions.”

Both members of Blues Scholar are second-generation Americans whose parents worked hard to send them to college, according to their website.

The three performers are Giles Li, Bao Phi and Kiwi, each hailing from a different region of the country. According to promotional material for the Beats Rhymes and Rice tour, they deliver a unique combination of social commentary, self reflection and painful comedy, all to challenge established assumptions about the Asian American community.

Hom said few people are aware of Asian American hip-hop performers, but the three performers at Beats Rhymes and Rice have all made names of themselves in their local communities, as well as on a national level.

“You ask people, ‘have you ever heard of an Asian American hip-hop performer’ and they say no,” Hom said.

Li is from Boston and has performed both locally and nationwide. In 2002, he founded the Boston Progress Arts Collective and is the Arts Coordinator at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. Li released his first spoken word CD in 2002 and his poetry has been published in an anthology of political poetry, The Quotable Rebel.

Phi, who lives in Minneapolis, Minn., has performed his poetry since 1991. He is a two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion, a National Poetry Slam finalist and his work has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry and in the 2006 Best American Poetry anthology.

Kiwi, who lives in San Fransisco, has been a figure in the New York and California independent hip-hop scenes for the past decade. He has performed with Common, the Black Eyed Peas and a number of other prolific performers and was part of the Filipino hip-hop group Native Guns until the group broke up earlier this year.

“They’re really representing a diverse perspective on Asian Americans,” Hom said. “[We're bringing Beats Rhymes and Rice to Northeastern] to showcase Asian American performers. These aren’t the people you see in mainstream media.”

The event is funded through the Student Activities Fee and, on his website, Li said the three performers will give some of the proceeds back to Asian American organizations in their own communities.

“I think their music is good. I think it’s coming from a perspective you don’t typically hear,” Hom said. “And it will be a lot of fun.”

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.

Illafonte kicked off the show and pumped the room full of energy. He rapped a song with hip-hop music in the background and involved the audience.

Li, who performed during Asian-American Heritage Month in April, said he was nervous about coming back because he hasn’t performed since then. He talked about issues relating to his Chinese heritage and his family.

Phi, a Vietnamese-American, performed pieces that addressed issues in Asian-American and, specifically, Vietnamese communities.

The first thing he talked about was the Vietnamese last name “Nguyen,” joking about how many people pronounce it incorrectly or assume that everyone with that last name is related.

His first piece was about Vietnamese people with different occupations. He said it was “to show that it’s fun and interesting that our community is different.”

Illafonte, being Filipino, performed the first part of his next song in the Filipino language and engaged the audience again by telling them to say “unity.”

Phi’s next poems were first-person pieces about two Vietnamese individuals. The first was about a Vietnamese girl pretending to be one of Gwen Stefani’s Japanese Harajuku girls, whom she always has with her in videos and on tour.

The next person was a Vietnamese man who was a Prince impersonator named Quince Nguyen, and the poem highlighted his struggles with acceptance.

Li then performed another new piece that he wrote after his second trip to China with his family, and it centered on his father’s influence on him.

“You taught me not to believe in God, Dad,” he said. “Your life has been a miracle if ever there was one. So how have you made it this far?”

Another piece he performed was called “Mathematics” and focused on the corruption of people in power.

After that, Illafonte brought hip-hop to the room again with an upbeat song for the ladies.

“Sisters in the house this evening,” he said, “[Say] ‘right here, right now.’”

Phi’s next pieces were about two sets of Vietnamese people who can’t talk to each other for different reasons. The first set can’t communicate because they stereotype each other, and the second can’t communicate because a boy can’t tell his friend that he loves her.

Toward the end of the show, Li pointed out their different heritages.

“It’s really not about exclusions,” he said, “it’s about inclusion.”

The same piece he ended with at his spring performance ended the harmonious lyrics the three men delivered and included the audience reciting Lil’ John’s famous phrase, “Yeah, what, OK!”

Illafonte ended the show by expressing his feelings about coming to UCF.

“We really appreciate being invited out here,” he said. “Just sharing each other’s experiences.”

Some students who attended the show said they enjoyed having visitors from different parts of the country.

“It was actually way better than I expected,” said Teresa Chan, a business junior.

“It was astonishing, breathtaking,” said her sister, Tiffany, a high school sophomore. “It was killer.”

Tom Nguyen, a digital media senior and officer of the Vietnamese-American Student Association agreed with them. He said he saw Li at his spring performance, and thought it was better than he expected.

“It was a breath of fresh Asian air,” he said.

The vice president of the Chinese American Student Association, Daniel Mendez, said he enjoyed it but felt differently about it because he is Colombian.

“At one point, I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be here because they talked about Asian heritage,” he said, but when Li referenced different countries in one of his pieces, “it made me feel more welcome.”