Sounds of Asian America

Not a style or genre, just a space for inclusion and visibility. Not either/or, but both/and. (See the very 1st blog post for a 'hasn't been updated in years' index of artists.) [avatar: JeTi fanart]

[asianamsmakingmusic]

A Vinyl Found in San Francisco Contains Echoes of a Filipino American Love Story | KQED

Cora and Santos Beloy were talented local AAPI musicians, who played regularly at the Fairmount Hotel’s Tonga Room in the 1970s. But their m

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Arturo Sandoval ‘There Will Never Be Another You’ | Live Studio Session

January 13, 2012

Zane Musa (tenor sax)

Mahesh Balasooyria (piano)

Truly amazing.

[asianamsmakingmusic]

Ron Isa (bass) with the Grumblers [x]

[asianamsmakingmusic]

Non La is a reclamation of his identity, named for the traditional Vietnamese conical hat. “I used to be embarrassed when my parents would go out in the sun and wear their non la,” he explains. “It’s this cultural item that I had a complicated relationship with when I was younger, but I love it now.” Pushing away negative thoughts about his self-worth as he began writing songs about himself, On says “it took me five years of being active in the local music scene to decide to start taking up space.” from Xtra*

[asianamsmakingmusic]

[asianamsmakingmusic]

How Producer Ariel Loh Made Trans Music History at the Grammys and Beyond

After winning a Grammy for producing a pro-Palestine anthem, Loh is working to archive trans music on vinyl.

excerpt: So it’s really something that is important to me now as I consciously try and participate in more of my Asian community. Especially queer Asian folks. I don’t think I’ve really had access to that; I wasn’t open to that, I think, and now it feels very hand-in-hand with everything else that I’m doing. Being trans made me feel so much better about my Asian-American identity in a way. You just end up being really proud of who you are.

[asianamsmakingmusic]

"An essential part of my identity is that I am a child of colonialism. If it weren’t for the British Empire, I wouldn’t exist. My parents would never have met. I think about what are the struggles that they went through in terms of being a multicultural couple, an interracial couple, and my father as a South Asian man (who moved) to the UK to live and make a life and then emigrated to the U.S. So these ideas have a direct impact on my life and the life and experiences of my ancestors." - Arun Luthra, saxophonist [source: The Cap Times]

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[asianamsmakingmusic]

Journey to a unique soundscape that blends contemporary jazz with East Asian instruments and styles, all performed by this path-breaking ens

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Journey to a unique soundscape that blends contemporary jazz with East Asian instruments and styles, all performed by this path-breaking ensemble of the late 1990s. Composer, and violinist Jason Kao Hwang subsequently earned best-of-the-year listings in Downbeat, Jazz Times, Jazziz, and All About Jazz. His chamber opera, The Floating Box, A Story in Chinatown, was named among the top ten recordings of 2005 by Opera News. This early experimental quartet also features multi-percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, jazz tuba artist Joseph Daley, and Sang-Won Park on Korean zithers (kayagum and ajaeng). The notes include essays on Asian American jazz and Jason Hwang’s new introduction. Their performance took place at the Freer Gallery of Art in 1999.

site features download link to an mp3 file of a Far East Band concert recorded on January 16, 1999

[asianamsmakingmusic]

Visit Original Link

*music (and most images) from the Calgary Cassette Preservation Society archive

[asianamsmakingmusic]

New message from Mark Redito (via Bandcamp)

This song was written around the end of 2022. I met Levi through a musician community called Songcamp. I spent many hours talking to Levi about music and musician sustainability. I always knew at some point I would collaborate with him. Levi is not only a talented producer but also a skilled saxophonist, flutist, actually any kind of wind instrument! I shared with him a sparse idea as a demo and asked if he could create a top line melody for it. He came back with a full brass arrangement! "Loss Entropy" explores how musical traditions evolve and transform - a different kind of 'generation loss' where each iteration adds something new while echoing the past. This mirrors my work with AI, where entropy and information transformation create new patterns from existing data. In both realms, what might appear as loss actually becomes a creative force. This collaboration represents the beautiful unpredictability that happens when you share your creative space with others - sometimes what returns is far richer than what you sent out. "Loss Entropy" is my exploration into jazz and afro-inspired sounds, where tradition and experimentation dance together, much like the algorithms and artistic intuition that shape this entire project.

[60s-musician-tournament]

ROUND 3, MATCH 2

Who's more attractive?

Syd Barrett

Norma Tanega

Voting ended onJan 13, 2024

[asianamsmakingmusic]

[asianamsmakingmusic]

an excerpt:

A contact zone like the Los Angeles metro area played a key role in the creation of what we call the “DNA of K-pop” because many K-pop artists hailed from that area. To many 1990s Korean youth, LA was both a place of fantasy and threat, reflecting Hollywood-produced popular culture. H.O.T was a K-pop boy band in the 90s, and one of its members, Tony Ahn, hailed from L.A. Because of his fluency in English, Korean youth were fascinated with Ahn and his hip image. In addition, Lena Park, Tiffany Young (from the group Girls Generation), and Tiger JK are some other examples of K-pop pioneers from LA. Furthermore, as Young Dae Kim points out, many K-pop performers were not Korean Americans; rather, many would be better described as gyopo, a Korean term that “…broadly embraces people with Korean descent who lives (sic) abroad, with or without a foreign nationality of which they chose to live.” 6  This term perfectly describes those Koreans who study abroad in the US or have lived there for a period. One prominent example is Lee Soo Man, the founder of SM Entertainment, one of Korea’s major entertainment companies. He studied as a graduate student in Southern California in the 1980s and came up with the idea of SM Entertainment through watching MTV in America. SM Entertainment also played a key role in the growth of K-pop, revealing yet another connection to Los Angeles.

[asianamsmakingmusic]

Riley Mulherkar: The Value of Slow Work

The first time trumpeter/composer Riley Mulherkar met his longtime mentor Wynton Marsalis, he was in the third grade. It was after a Jazz at

[therecordchanger62279]

Sugar Pie DeSanto Dies at 89: Remembering the R&B Legend | KQED

The dynamic singer known for her smoldering hits and on-stage backflips died in her sleep on Friday.

Sugar Pie DeSanto (1935-2024)

One of the great, but lesser known Soul singers has passed away. Recording for Chess she was, perhaps, overshadowed by the label's bigger names - Etta James among them - but she made dynamite records, the best of which are collected on a record titled Down In The Basement: The Chess Years issued in 1989. She's left us, but the records are still there, and they'll live forever. If you're not familiar with her work, treat yourself to something special.

[asianamsmakingmusic]

“I had never envisioned myself in country,” says Nicolette. “Why would I? I had never seen anyone who looks like me in that world. But now that I’ve found my voice, I want to see what it has to say.” [x]

[sexartdesigncrime]

RIP Zakir Hussain

One of the greatest drummers the world has ever known.