Li, Shih redefine ‘Asian,’ ‘artist’
Geoffrey Gaurano, 10/09/2008
From the Tufts Daily

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.

Man this has been a looong week. Beats Rhymes and Rice did our final show of the school year by doing up University of Illinois-Chicago this past Wednesday. Man it felt crazy too for some reason. We all got into town that afternoon, and the show started at 4PM. So it was kinda tight, even though it wasn’t like we had mad stuff to do. We just had myself, Bao, and Kiwi come in from 3 different cities, into 2 different airports, with 3 different methods of ground transportation to campus. When we all finally got there like 30 minutes before showtime, we were understandably pretty beat up.

At the same time, we were pretty upbeat (see how I did that?), because the AARCC at UIC treated us really well, giving us our very own office within their office to hold court and read magazines. So by the time we got to the venue, I was ready to go.

Of course we did our thing the way we usually do it, which is to say we effin killed it. That’s just facts kid. Scientifical. It was unexpectedly good sound for a really large ballroom type space. And for a late afternoon event, it was a surprisingly huge crowd. Man, UIC folks had much in store for us, because it was lovely how responsive they were. Commuter schools yo. That’s where it’s at.

Bao did a new really dope and well-conceptualized piece, which he said he wrote the previous night. And Kiwizzo closed it out in style like he always does. This time a couple b-boys jumped out in front the stage to get involved.

I was thinking in my head though, you can’t get a bunch of Asians together without either breakdancing or a fight breaking out. Sometimes both.

This was the first time I remembered to specifically get the bombass Kiwi t-shirt, but they were sold out! Damn! Afterward, we walked to a Mexican joint to overeat. So that was nice, I like to end my show dates with mad food. At the end of the night, Jen asked Bao, Kiwi, and me to be in this video project that includes the likes of Helen Zia, Geroge Takei, and the Honorable Mike Honda (D-California). So that makes no sense. I’m thinking she’s trying to contrast what accomplished API folks look like and what big goofy idiots look like.

I have to give much thanks to Rachel Kim for providing me with a guitar on such short notice. Also to Corrine and Karen, Elvyn, Ramona, Jen, and AARCC student staff: David, Melissa, Aaditi, and Winnie.

Oh, this picture is courtesy of Jen Tsang’s Facebook. Holla.

Peace. Sorry for the lag in posts…I’ll get to Cuse soon!

This entry can be read in its entirety at BPRLive.org.

Ten long years ago, I was working as a delivery driver, passing the summer before college started up again wearing a tuxedo shirt and bow tie, drinking customers’s sodas, then telling them, “Sorry, we ran out of Sprite, do you want Poland Spring instead?” In other words, they were good old damn days. I could drive around the city – and surrounding areas – with my new license, my mom’s car, and a tape deck that worked most of the time. People sometimes ask how I got to know my way around Boston so well, and I tell them they can trace it back to the summer of 1997.

Getting sick of hearing Natalie Imbruglia and Eagle-Eye Cherry every 45 minutes on the radio, I turned to my boy A+ – shockingly, not his real name – for some music I could record onto a cassette that wouldn’t get boring through the grind of 10 hour days spent mostly behind red lights, counting out tips in coins, and looping in circles trying to find where Atlantic Ave actually starts.

A was ready for me. “These some West Coast Chinese rappers man,” he said. “Like a mix between the Pharcyde and Ras Kass – but Chinese!” A isn’t Asian, so please forgive him for not knowing that Key Kool and DJ Rhettmatic (formerly of Brotherhood Creed) – collectively known by some as Kozmonautz – were actually of Japanese and Filipino descent respectively.

Those who know, know that one of the standout tracks on their independently-released debut was “Reconcentrated,” Key’s dedication to the 120,000+ Japanese Americans unjustly incarcerated during WWII. I could write an entire post about what that song has meant in my life, but I’ll save it for another time. I’m really back in 1997 right now because I want to get to Day One of the Visionaries, the supergroup that first recorded together on “Visionaries (Stop Actin’ Scary)” off the Kozmonautz joint. In fact, they recorded the song two years earlier, but it didn’t make its way into my tape deck until 97.

Read the rest of this entry here.

This entry can be read in its entirety at BPRLive.org.

The photo you see here is pretty well-known: it’s of an anti-busing demonstration in Boston in 1977. Essentially, a white dude is using an American flag to attack a Black dude. It’s so deliciously perfectly ironic that it seems like a scene from a play.

Boston has a long history of violence, specifically as it relates to youth. The busing demonstration was made by people who didn’t want to see young Black children – we’re talking school-age children – going to school in white neighborhoods. Boston – both the city and the mindstate – are known to be racially and ethnically segregated. There is a lot of, I guess you could call them misunderstandings between youth from different neighborhoods.

I came of age in what is considered by a lot of folks as the Golden Era for Boston youth: the late 1990s. The dip in the youth homicide rate was so profound that it received national attention: the media dubbed it “The Boston Miracle” and President Clinton even swooped through the city’s roughest spots and congratulated community after community for keeping kids alive.

But as most folks in this region surely know by now, the miracle didn’t last. Youth violence has been – and continues to be – on the rise. The people who are in charge of discouraging this kind of thing have made references to how much it’s starting to feel like the early 90s again.

Read the rest of this entry here.

After I had a solid night of sleep Saturday at the Doubletree and everything, I wrote my recap of the Pomona show nice and early in the morning. Apologies for not writing the recap of Sunday night’s show until now. I haven’t had a good night of sleep yet, what with the flying back East, and the daylight savings, and the busy work days. But it’s already Wednesday, so it’s about time I commit my thoughts about UCLA to the blog before I forget what happened altogether.

So we had a Beats Rhymes & Rice business meeting in the afternoon in Little Tokyo. Since I’m an idiot, I ordered katsu-don with chicken, which I guess is like ordering “fried pork made with chicken.” I figured I’d relay that information since Daren felt the need to clown me for the next 5 hours.

So we hit up UCLA that evening, and after much aimless wandering and Girl Scout cookie-buying, happened upon the venue, where students had been hard at work all day painting. Not like the walls, but there had been sessions earlier to encourage UCLA students to explore their ideas on small canvasses. So when we got there, they already had this community-style vibe in the air, where folks were already ready to do what they do all day. CAPSA looks like they put on a real inspired event, where folks had a chance to participate on multiple levels.

There was something going on with me in that I think I kinda rushed through my set. Usually I like to take my time and get real comfortable on stage before getting off, but I don’t know what happened. I think it had to do with the clock jumping an hour ahead, and so it was still light out when I started, and that kinda threw me off. Luckily, Bao and Kiwi are not similarly idiotic and so after my set – which was decent – those two tore it the fuck up. Man, I’m in awe knowing I’m on a bill with those two. I can’t think of any other dudes who I’d rather watch that many times (except Prince).

Gotta send shouts out to Pathanapong, Julie, as well as Anna B and AJ for coming out. And of course to CAPSA – specifically Sahra – for making it happen and getting us there.

That night we hit up Roscoe’s (minus Kiwi), which has become a BRR tradition. We’re getting together for two shows in Chicago in early April. Hope to see you all there.

The Pomona show was off the hinges! (Or some other slang phrase that makes me sound less lame.)

First I have to state the biggest thrill of the night was that Eddy Zheng was there, and he performed a poem in which he even namechecked Beats Rhymes & Rice. Bao, Kiwi, and I had never met him in person before, but of course we all know his story. Man, I can honestly say that sharing the space with him last night was one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had as a performer. I’m blessed that I was in the presence of a man who has done such great things, and if I ever lose my way and get too full of myself, someone please remind me there are people like Eddy in this world who can be described with no other adjective than ‘amazing.’ Those of you all who aren’t familiar with his story, I urge you to check him out at eddyzheng.com and at his blog.

So in addition to Eddy, there was performances from Claremont Colleges students Mary Rose, who shared an emotional piece about New Orleans that I remember from the 2007 Summit in NYC, and lead student organizer for the event Patricia and her homegirls (sorry didn’t catch names!) doing a joint I can only assume was entitled “Phenomenal Woman” and was well-conceived and executed.

So by the time I got up to open the BRR portion of the show, the crowd was loose. They were ready to come with us wherever we went, and man it was a lot of fun. I actually prepared less for this show than I usually do, simply because the past couple weeks have been packed back-to-back-to-back with thing I had to do and I just never got a good chunk of time to sit down and go through what I planned to do. Even sound check and pre-show rituals (mine include coffee and a nap) got a little thrown off because of the hectic-ness, so by the time I hit the spotlight, I was less ready than I usually like to be.

But something about it just happened to work last night. I think the vibe of the crowd and being around so many friends both old and new just kept me feeling like no matter if I messed up on stage, that wouldn’t do anything to mess up the energy in the room. And in the end that’s what’s important, because I’ve done shows where I hit every cue the way I planned it, but the energy I try to put out doesn’t echo back to me. That can be kinda tough to deal with, but there was none of that this time.

I know the other dudes felt it too because Bao’s set was as sharp as ever, doing poems from the Nguyen series to a crowd with maybe the smallest percentage of Vietnamese people ever and he still had everyone nodding in agreement and understanding. And Kiwi just killed it. I coulda watched my man rock another hour the way he was going. Maybe it was something about being in the LA area or maybe the vibe I mentioned earlier, but Kiwi was just at home. I wish yall coulda been there.

Afterward, we had BOMB Indian food buffet, and I promptly ate way too much and then felt really gross. I am a man of extremes. And I was feeling the naan, yet I felt I had to get rice on my plate too, or else I’d be betraying the name of our tour. I feel like that contributed to my overeating. I should sometimes just try to be less stupid.

So I gotta give shouts to Patricia for putting the whole thing together, which took many many months of back-and-forth emails. Also love goes to Daren and Sefa, Yen Ling for swinging through, and the other students who I met throughout the day and evening. It’s too many mention, but I gotta mention that Joyce gave us a ride afterward, and I caught a ride from Howard, Clark, Emi, and Anita earlier in the day. Also I have to thank Doug and Dharma for helping my sleepy ass throughout Saturday. And of course Eddy Zheng.

We finish out the weekend with another BRR show tonight at UCLA. See you there. (Oh, a photo of the Pomona show will go up once I get access to some.)

Bao, Kiwi, and myself hit up Southern California for the first time together at the most recent stop on the Beats Rhymes & Rice tour. UC Irvine played host.

Logistically, this might have been the most convoluted collection of schedule details we’ll ever have to deal with. Bao flew into LAX, rented a car, and picked me up when I landed in Long Beach. Kiwi came into Burbank and drove down to Irvine in his own rental. Not to mention the fact that we all three stayed in different parts of Los Angeles County with various friends or family, plus we had to make sure to get together with our boy Daren Mooko of One Of Agency, who’s been our agent from the minute we conceived of putting the whole tour together. Crappity crap!

The students took care of us real good. Allowed me to borrow Kristen’s guitar for the show and gave me a place to nap before it got started. Actually, I think I was still napping when the show started because these folks started ON TIME. I’ve never seen nobody – definitely not Asians – start as promptly as the UCI heads did. I was telling friends in the area not to worry about getting there until closer to 8:00, even though the start time was listed as 7:00. I guess I’m an idiot because by like 7:02, Kiwi was spitting the first joint of the evening.

I was also mildly shocked by the on time start because Jana and Jesse were just chilling and talking to us five minutes before the show and they weren’t freaking out at all. A lot of the time, you can tell when the show is about to start by how hectic the student organizers start getting. None of that this time.

I think the combined factors of a somewhat chilly night and outdoor show kept the crowd a little smaller than what Facebook had led us to expect. It was cool though. I usually get nervous about outdoor venues because a lot of us have had difficult situations with sound or passersby in the past. But the crowd was all love, repping Irvine well. Oh, as well as San Diego, because a few people made that drive to check out the show too. Say word to Cali freeways! (more…)

Many of the 3 people who read this blog are unaware that I also blog on BPRLive.org, a website/podcast/streaming radio station started up by a few dedicated smartypants volunteers at Boston Progress Arts Collective. I jumped on that bandwagon pretty early, because it’s pretty unique. I’m gonna guess there is no other site on all the Internets where you can hear a stream of independent API musicians 24/7, plus read and hear interviews with API artists, CD reviews, watch video of API performance events, and more and more and more.

But coming up with blog content is hard, even with a team of folks. So to give our tired fingers a rest, we developed a new feature over at BPRLive.org called Shuffled!, which allows our loyal readers to take a little stroll around the brains of notable API artists and find out what’s on their playlist nowadays.

So this feature makes its debut today! And who should play Malkovich to our collective Craig? None other than my brother-in-arms (and on tour) former Native Guns emcee Kiwi Illafonte. Click the link, read, and enjoy!

Last night, Beats Rhymes & Rice did it up again. This time at Northeastern University in Boston, and all I can say is thank you to the folks there for everything, from the hard work it took to find space, to removing that oddly-dressed – yet surprisingly nice – frat out of our green room, to getting us water, to providing us with Jamaican food after the show. (Know this: if you’re running low on funds but need to eat, Jamaican food is one of the best options out there, because you will stay full for hours on only a couple bucks. Thank all that’s good for the beef patty.) Much props to Delia at the Asian American Center and Long.

I have to admit, we had our doubts about the space when we first started scoping it out, because it was a food court, complete with a Wendy’s, a D’Angelos, and a Taco Bell (speaking of which, did anyone notice that the only thing Royce Clayton did during the World Series was talk about getting a free taco at Taco Bell? He didn’t even get on the field, yet he was wearing a mic for the cameras. I have to say, that is somewhat suspicious, I wonder if the league is going to force every team to have one guy they don’t play but wears a mic every game for product placement. Like Carlos Gomez be sitting on the Mets bench asking other players: “have you seen that new Harry Potter movie? You know he can fly!”)

But so, we had our reservations, but by the time everything was set up for the show, it was cool. They had a wall up to block us from having to look at the restaurants the whole time, plus they had given us 5 mics. 5! We only had three people performing, so I tried my best to move from mic to mic and use all of them, because I didn’t want that set up time to have been in vain. (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

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!