Category Archives: pop culture & media

pop culture & media

Like an Ethic: What I Learned from Michael Jackson

During the first 12 years of my life in Taiwan, I was hooked to the practice of “keeping up” with the latest in pop culture in Taiwan and abroad. Through my connection to extended family in the U.S., I was able to obtain nifty cultural artifacts such as Ghostbusters model kit, Strawberry Shortcake blanket, Batman board game, Garfield puzzle set, and New Kids on the Block book covers (only then to find that American textbooks are much larger than their Taiwanese counterparts). The internationalization Toys “R” Us allowed me a more immediate access to American pop culture. I remember asking my parents to take me to the newly built Toys “R” Us in Taipei so I could pick out the items on my birthday wish list. The tremendous selection of made-in-U.S.A. toys in the store was both fascinating and overwhelming.

One day, my uncle, who’s only 12 years older than me, said that he had gotten tickets to see Michael Jackson’s concert in the largest indoor sports arena in Taipei. Well-versed in American pop music because of MTV (my parents were among the first people to install cable television once it became legal in Taiwan in the late 1980s), I learned of Michael Jackson’s high status within the American music industry. I was thrilled to experience the real Michael Jackson live. With our inexpensive tickets, we sat way up high in the stadium among not-so-hardcore international fans of Michael. Witnessing Michael moon-walking across the multicolored stage in his white outfit, although not understanding the lyrics of all his songs, bewildered me.

The King of Pop wielded magic that night. Without understanding the context of American society–racial dynamics, gender relations, etc–I was overtaken by the performance power of Michael Jackson at the age of 9. It was mesmerizing, not like a Disney-sque fairy tale but more like a documentarian snapshot of the American life. Maybe it was the spectacular stage production, the screaming fans, or the astronomical performance venue, or some combination of these things, I remember it as a quintessential “American” experience. Maybe it was then that I became obsessed with live music performances. Maybe it was my first ethnomusicological moment.

After I moved to the US with my family, one of the first things I learned about was the entrenched racial tension between the American blacks and whites. Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” suggested that there could be a middle ground, or least it was cool to celebrate social harmony across racial divide. Michael’s playful, anti-binary ambiguity in gendered and racial terms compelled me like an ethic. This was my secret identification with MJ.

Like the whole rest of the world, I am mourning the passing of Michael Jackson. I choose not to talk about his life as a celebrity and judge him based on the highly mediated information regarding his biography. Instead I focus on the effects of his music, dance, and artistry as they resonate with my experiences as an Asian American individual and a music lover. Rest in peace, Michael.

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This entry was originally posted on June 26, 2009 on Yellowbuzz.

pop culture & media

Afterquake Gives Voice to the Victims of Sichuan Earthquake

Afterquake is a musical collaboration led by Abigail Washburn and David Liang of the Shanghai Restoration Project, in cooperation with Sichuan Quake Relief. Washburn conceived of the project while performing American old time music in Sichuan after the devastating earthquake struck on May 12, 2008. She encountered children who were eager to share their songs with her during her performance trips. Together on a two-week trip in March 2009, they traveled to sites of earthquake destruction to record the music and ambient sounds of Wenchuan County in the Sichuan Province. Liang and Washuburn then joined forces to “remix voices and sounds from the China earthquake zone” with an aim “to raise awareness for victims still in need.”

Release on May 12, 2009, a year after the event, the Afterquake EP contains 7 tracks of electronica collages of field recordings artfully recombined. I especially recommend “Song for Mama”. Narrating the separation between youngster Chen Honglin and his family, this track features Chen’s heart wrenching vocal performance, his mother’s spoken lines, over a foundation rhythmically supported by the environmental sounds representing his family’s arduous work behind reconstructing their home. The entire track can be previewed as a slide show on the site.


Washburn, Liang, and the children (left front, Chen Honglin)

In particular, the ethnographic aspects of the project impress the ethnomusicologist in me. Afterquake’s ethics of representing the local participants departs from various cross-cultural collaborations under the genre label of “World Beat” or “World Music” (Micky Hart, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, etc). The project’s multimedia website contextualizes the sources of the music in a descriptive narrative. Field recordings, credits, and interview transcripts of the local participants involved in the making of each of the tracks are posted on the page to help the listener imagine the process of creation. Liang and Washburn carefully documented their collecting and remxing processes, evidenced by their “The Making Of” and “Interview” videos and photo gallery on the website.

The Afterquake album can be purchased from various China, Taiwan, and US-based MP3 vendors making the tracks available to an international audience. Audiophiles and humanitarian enthusiasts can purchase the special physical editions of the album with artwork from the Afterquake online store directly to benefit Sichuan Quake Relief, boosting their efforts “to provide much needed resources to individuals, schools and communities recovering from the earthquake.”

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This entry was originally posted on May 27, 2009 on Yellowbuzz.

pop culture & media

Dodging Bombs, Playing Heavy Metal: Reflecting on the Film Heavy Metal in Baghdad

What’s it like to be an Iraqi musician playing music of “foreign”, “Western”, or American influences? How does one live as a musician or an individual in contemporary Baghdad? Produced and Directed by Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi and presented by VICE magazine, the documentary film Heavy Metal in Baghdad offers some answers to these questions contributing to a much needed public discourse about the social life of Iraqi citizens living on the cusp between life and death. The film premiered on the Sundance Channel last month.

The film documents the story of an Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda tracing its transformations from rehearsing in the basement of a commercial building during Saddam Hussein’s regime, through dodging bombs while facing death threats after the U.S. invasion and the reactive insurgences, to fleeing to exile in Syria. The story focuses less on the band’s music than on their lives as musicians and Iraqi citizens living in tumultuous war violence and tribulations. It also shows the emotional centrality of this music in the lives of these musicians and fans. Acrassicauda’s drummer Marwan Riyadh describes his powerful connection to heavy metal succinctly: “If I didn’t play drums as hard as I can, I’m going to kill someone.”


Acrassicauda perform a show powered by a generator at the Al-Fanar Hotel in Baghdad, 2005.

One member of Acrassicauda says, “It’s so amazing that we’re still talking and breathing.” Since the making of the film, Firas al-Lateef, Marwan Riyadh, and Faisal Talal of Acrassicauda have fled to Istanbul, Turkey. Recently, they resettled in the United States, with the help of International Rescue Committee and the director/producer of the film Alvi, now living in New York, New Jersey, and Michigan. They’re working hard to get their ends met, finding instruments.

In Iraq, the band identified with the West and the United States singing in (North American) English, listening to Metallica, and wearing Slipknot tshirts. I’m anxious to follow the band after their relocation to the U.S. How will they survive in the U.S. declining economy as Iraqi refugees and musicians? How long would it take before they have sufficient time and funds to start playing music again? How will they distinguish themselves from all other U.S. metal bands? What will they write about in their songs? Will they change their sound?

A couple of weeks ago, Terry Gross of Fresh Air on NPR did a 40-minute interview with lead singer Faisal Talal, drummer Marwan Riyadh, and director/producer Suroosh Alvi. The interview highlights the in-between status of their political existence and the experiences of their forced migration. On the NPR story page, one can also screen the entire film. For those interested, VICE has made a page for those who consider making donations to the band.

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This entry was originally posted on April 13, 2009 on Yellowbuzz.

pop culture & media teaching

Race and “Air and Simple Gifts” at the Presidential Inauguration

I’m teaching a 400-level seminar called “Music in Asian America” this semester. Last Tuesday, instead of a class meeting, I created an “inauguration assignment.” The objective of the assignment is to ask the students to examine the musical representations at the inauguration ceremony in light of the current media discourse about Obama’s politics with regards to race and ethnicity. The assignment first asks the students to read SF Gate’s “Asian Pop” columnist Jeff Yang’s controversial article: “Could Obama be the first Asian American president?” and explore a slew of responses to Yang’s article. Then it asks them to post their analysis to the class blog.

The class did a marvelous job discussing the representational politics of multicuturalism exuded by the classical music performance at the ceremony. Immediately, they noticed the seemingly contrived selection of four minority musicians: Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman, Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma, African American clarinetist Anthony McGill, and a U.S.-based Venezuelan national pianist named Gabriela Montero.

Introducing a Puritanesque theme, McGill plays the familiar “Simple Gifts”, 19th century Shaker hymn most notably known for American composer Aaron Copland’s citation in Appalachian Spring. Combined with the “Air”, a popular song form of the 16th and 17th century England, this arrangement by pop classical music composer John Williams presents a continuity of the American ‘folk’ culture from its European/English roots. Most explicit part of the musical message perhaps is couched in the role of “Simple Gifts” in the arrangement. In this section of the performance, the musicians, working in intimacy and collaborating with a performed (lip-synched!) vigor, displayed Obama’s politics of social unity in a literalist and sensational way. Also, the reference to Appalachian Spring is no coincidence. Similar to the effect in Copland’s ballet, the “Gifts” citation symbolizes freedom as promised by living a hardworking and simplistic life. Associated with the American ideology of meritocracy or the American Dream, the themes of freedom and hard work, also are evoked by Obama during his inauguration speech.

In his controversial article, Jeff Yang links Obama’s belief in educational achievement and work ethic to what he calls “Asian values,” the impetus to pull up by the bootstraps as perceived to be adopted by Asian immigrants. One student pointed out in class that Yang’s assumption risks reinforcing the model minority myth. Yang’s thesis is better argued in his NPR interview. In it, Yang claims “race more as a metaphor”, as a transmigratable concept away from biological and cultural essentialism, away from the binary and toward the multiplistic approach. I think he’s onto something here. Obama’s multiracial ethnicity and transcultural/transnational upbringing could embody a more fluid way of conceptualizing race and ethnicity. Yang finds these qualities in the present Asian American communities.

Present-day identity politics is not one-dimensional as once it had been in the 1960s and 1970s. Identity politics could work in such a way to allow room for identification “as” and “with.” Many individuals of social groups identify with Obama. And Obama’s unity politics seems to allow him to breach various social divides. Yang’s article should’ve been more accurately titled as “Could Obama identify with Asian America?”

I asked my students, “are there any dangers in conceiving of race as a metaphor? Is race really transmigratable?” Histories of oppression associated with race are still around us. We decided that only parts of race can be deconstructed through cultural criticism, although we hope that someday that race as an social institution and ideology will transmigrate completely and sublimate into thin air.

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This entry was originally posted on January 27, 2009 on Yellowbuzz.

pop culture & media

On Race and Obama

Presidential candidate Barack Obama explicitly discusses the issue of race for the first time in his campaign speech last Tuesday (3/18/08). He does so in part responding to a speech made by Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama puts forth his definition of race as a color-based ideology that leads to inequalities and social divisions. Recognizing the history of black oppression – slavery, Jim Crow, Brown vs Board of Education, Obama makes clears that he is aware of the fact that minorities in the United States still experience the social, political, cultural and even psychological consequences from this racist history. Obama taps into the current discourse regarding social emotionality as he diagnoses the causes of “black anger” and “white resentment.” He then attributes the conflictual sentiments to the issue of race “that we cannot afford to ignore right now.”

Obama is quick to point out the racialized response to the presidential election campaign, i.e. the bipolarization between African American and white votes split between Obama and Clinton, the prediction of white majority’s favoring McCain. This conspicuously leverages his campaign strategy of promising a “union” across the racial and economic divide. This union is a union of “the people,” particularly for and from the children, with the central issue being education. Pitted against the “people” are implicitly the immoral corporations and political lobbyists with self-interested motivation and power to advance for profit. I like that he targets the corporations and the politicians. But I ask, who are these “people”? The American people? The citizens? I dare asking, what about the non-citizens? What about the immigrants?

The compelling effects of Obama’s speech have much to do with the colorblind discourse presently dominating the American public. He’s right to say that there is much cynicism in the current cultural and political atmosphere, and not enough serious discussions about racial equality and justice. He is even progressive-hip to censure the neo-conservative contradiction in “reverse racism” and American public’s compulsory to be politically correct. But unfortunately, this is where he stops.

A good student of American history perhaps, Obama draws the cause-and-effect relations between the historically known facts about African American oppression and the current racial inequalities in the U.S. Obama understands the “white resentment”, particularly toward pro-minority policies such as the Affirmative Action, as a reaction to white American citizens’ claim to their “immigrant story” and the American Dream. Obama criticizes the majority’s blind faith in “equal opportunity.”

The immigrant story is not just a story, it’s a reality. In the resolution portion of his campaign speech, Obama advocates for a sense of hope for change. To the African American voters, he promotes hope and stands behind their grievances for justice. He conflates the conditions of an economically disadvantaged “immigrant father” to the minority side of the divide.

It seems, the immigrant figure can flip-flop from the white majority to the African American minority side of the picture rather conveniently. Obama apparently side-steps the issue of immigration most pertinent to Latinos and Asians living in the U.S..

Race is not just only an issue related to the domestic black-white relations. Race is also central in the polemic about immigration and foreign policies. When Obama denigrates corporations for outsourcing, he ignores an important part of the story: both working Americans’ animosity toward “foreigners” working within the border of United States as migrant workers, or working for an U.S.-based company. The discourse around the War with Iraq and anti-terrorism is undeniably tainted with racializing ideologies about the people of the Middle East and the Islamic faith, both abroad and domestically. Immigrant rights as well as race-based profiling and hate crimes against American citizens and immigrants of Central Asian ethnic and religious affiliations have been downplayed in presidential debates.

Race and Racism come in various shapes and colors. Some are black; some white. And some are brown, some yellow. Whiteness (or blackness) is sometimes defined by while being pitted against brown-ness, yellow-ness, or Muslim-ness. Obama’s “new politics” fails to address an age-old problem about the interethnic and interracial tensions within the United States and abroad. Until the issue of race is addressed multi-dimensionally with nuances regarding citizenship and border, race remains a stultifying divisive force. There is conceivably no true union, if the union is based on hate and exclusion across various borders within and along the U.S., and not on the domocratizing ideals of this country.

If you haven’t watched it yet, please do:

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This entry was originally posted on March 28, 2008 on Yellowbuzz.