8 Asians

A new website for DJs, mixcrate.com, created in part by 8asians alumnus Genghis Mendoza, has a story about how the DJ scene in San Francisco Bay Area became large and influential.  Turntablism is now practiced worldwide, and many legendary DJs like Qbert and Babu are Filipino-Americans from the Bay Area.  CSU Long Beach Sociology professor Oliver Wang did his Ph.D dissertation at UC Berkeley on this subject.  “Spinning Identities:  A Social History of Filipino American DJs in the Bay Area” chronicles the history of the mobile DJ scene.  He has created the web site http://legionsofboom.com/ for sharing this work.

The Bay Area DJ scene definitely has had influence, even in my family.  My nephew Ryan Buendia, who is currently a music producer for the Black Eyed Peas, started out as a turntablist and is part of the Fingerbangerz crew .  This DJ crew has produced a lot of music for the dance crew Jabbawockeez.

As I mentioned, mixcrate.com is a site where DJs can share and promote their mixes.  Created by Bay Area DJs (Genghis is also a DJ), it too is part of the ongoing heritage that Wang describes.

There’s a ton of stuff going on in L.A. all the time, but if you love music & art, check out this awesome event “BY ANY DREAMS NECESSARY” featuring work by artist and designer Timothy Teruo Watters, a hapa, who was inspired by his grandfather. One of the singers is Jessie Malay, a super talented hapa. Don Chow Tacos, a Chinese taco truck, will also be there.

BY ANY DREAMS NECESSARY
LIVE ART. LIVE MUSIC. LIVE FASHION.
OPEN BAR. DON CHOWS TACO TRUCK.

Date & Time: November 14, 2009, 8pm – 1am
Venue: Gallery 1018, 1018 Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021

Artwork by TIMOTHY TERUO WATTERS
Live Music by JESSI MALAY, TERRA INCOGNITA, SIX REASONS and more…
Live Fashion by DANIELLE KELLY
JOSEPH GETTRIGHT, DJ IZM, TRUTHLiVE, BZ and ED GOLD spinning all night

OFFICIAL RELEASE PARTY FOR DJ SKEE MIXTAPE “ENDANGERED SPECIES” featuring BRIAN “DEEP” WATTERS, PROPHET and SIX REASONS

TERUO ARTISTRY debuting its Fall Men and Women’s line
COL.ABO presents KORRUPTION: A Vinyl Toy Project

Art raffle benefitting A PLACE CALLED HOME

Sponsored by EVERYDAY and JLP “The President’s Tequila

Want to learn more about what Teruo Artistry is about? Check out these videos by Skee.TV:

h/t: Koji

Jaden Smith, the next Karate (Kung-Fu?) Kid

Some fans of the original Karate Kid movie are appalled by the remake starring Jaden Smith as the new Karate Kid and Jackie Chan as his teacher.  Some are very explicit about their displeasure to a having a black kid play the role.    But as Jeff Yang points in this article, the story of an African-American learning self control and discipline from martial arts is “less of a perversion than it is a correction.”

Yang says that African-Americans were the first non-Asian community in the US to embrace martial arts, and without them, Asian fighting disciplines might never have taken root.  “The story of martial arts in black communities is part of a much bigger narrative of African American interest in Asian culture,” says Amy Obugo Ongiri, assistant professor of English at the University of Florida and author of the forthcoming book “Spectacular Blackness.”   White flight, she says, made inner city theatres become spaces for people of color, and cheaper, less marketable films like martial arts movies were often shown.  “We’d go and watch films all day,” recalls Warrington Hudlin, the producer behind films such as “House Party” and “Boomerang.”

Bruce Lee has been particularly influential.  In the documentary “How Bruce Lee Changed the World,” a number of African Americans, like Wu Tang Clan rapper and producer RZA and actor and rapper LL Cool J, talk about how Bruce Lee influenced them.  While filming certain scenes, LL Cool J thought about how Bruce Lee would have done the scene and acted accordingly.  Interestingly enough the new movie is being filmed in the Wu Tang mountains.

I am not sure that this new version of the Karate Kid (shouldn’t that be “Kung Fu Kid” if he is learning from Jackie Chan in China?) will be better that the original (although the reimagined Battlestar Galactica certainly has its plusses).  In any case, check out Yang’s article – it’s interesting, and I hope the Karate Kid remake is at least as good!

You read that right– anime hip-hop martial arts musical! It’s all that and a bag of chips!*

East West Players has gathered a creative team to develop a new musical that utilizes all three art forms and a 25 minute presentation of this work in progress will be performed on Friday, November 20, 7:30pm at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. A Q&A discussion will follow.

The working title for the production is KRUNK-FU BATTLE BATTLE.

Description: The heart of hip-hop is in the battle. Young Norman Lee must learn this if he hopes to survive his new high school life as an Upper Westside import now transported to Bushwick, Brooklyn, after his Mom loses her 6-figure salary job. After being bullied, beat-down, and watching his Mom swallow her pride by accepting a job as a fast food fry cook, young Norman Lee enlists the guidance of Sir Master Cert to help him learn the ways of b-boy to compete against the baddest crew in Bushwick for respect, honor, and a chance to prove to his Mom that this life away from material wealth can and will work.

The creative team includes: bookwriter Qui Nguyen, lyricist Beau Sia, composer Marc Macalintal, hip-hop choreographer Jason Tyler Chong and anime consultant Jane Wu. The presentation is directed by East West Players’ artistic director Tim Dang and reunites Dang, Chong and Macalintal after their successful collaboration of the 2008 hit run of PIPPIN.

The Writers’ Gallery offers public readings of works that are being considered for the mainstage at East West Players and are presented in conjunction with the Japanese American National Museum and The National Center for the Preservation of Democracy. This workshop is made possible in part by The James Irvine Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts which believes that a great nation deserves great art; and by the support of individual donors.

The Writers’ Gallery presentation of KRUNK-FU BATTLE BATTLE (working title) will be on
Date: Friday, November 20th
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: National Center for the Preservation of Democracy
111 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Admission: free

For more information, please call East West Players at (213) 625-7000 or visit www.eastwestplayers.org. Dates and details are subject to change.

*Ok, I lied. No chips– no food and drink allowed inside at National Center for the Preservation of Democracy

The curse of a great song like Jay Sean’s “Down,” the kind which hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, is that it gets played it like a million times on the radio until you don’t want to hear it anymore.

The flipside of a great song is that it might get covered by a talented artist like Dawen. So even though you’re listening to the same song, it’s really not the same song after Dawen works his magic on it.

Want more Dawen? He’s performing twice at Breaking the Bow this weekend in L.A. Check him and all the other cool artists of The 1st Annual Independent Asian Pacific Islander Performing Artists and Writers Festival out at the Miles Memorial Playhouse through Sunday.

The wonderful Broadway revival “South Pacific“, directed by the brilliant Bartlett Sher, is on tour right now in San Francisco. Written in 1949 by Rodgers and Hammerstein, most people remember this musical as a lovely romance during World War II with memorable songs such as “Some Enchanted Evening“, “There’s Nothing like a Dame” and “Wonderful Guy”.

The setting of this musical is in the islands of the South Pacific, where the Americans are stationed during wartime to protect their allies from the “Japs”. This story of war and prejudice holds such relevance today, which I found refreshing.

One of the main love stories in the musical is between Lt. Joe Cable, the American military man played by Anderson Davis, who falls in love with Liat, a Tonkinese native girl, portrayed by Sumie Maeda. Fighting racial prejudices he grew up with, he is conflicted between his love for Liat while realizing he can never really take her home to meet Mom and Dad in Philadelphia. He sings a compelling song, “You’ve got be carefully taught,” about racism. Joe Cable starts the song by saying “[Racism] isn’t born in you, it happens after you’re born!”:

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught
From year to Year
It’s got to be drummed
in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught
To be Afraid
Of people whose eyes
are oddly made
And people whose skin
Is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught
Before it’s too late
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8
To hate all the people
your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught

In the original production 1949, Rodgers and Hammerstein were continually advised to take this song out of the show, claiming as the song was too controversial for a show. Against pressure, the song remained. During a touring production in 1953 in Atlanta, South Pacific created a frenzy among local legislators, as they introduced a state bill banning entertainment that supports “philosophy inspired by Moscow.” During this time, Sen. David C. Jones of Georgia stated that this song justified interracial marriage, which was an implicit threat to the American way of life.

Pretty heavy stuff for a retro Broadway musical, but I highly recommend this show, with its humanity and optimism — but it makes me wonder, have we come that much further in racial relations than this 1949 musical, a show created ahead of its time? I can only hope!

PS: For those Glee fans out there; Matt Morrison (Will Schuester) played the Lt. Joe Cable in the Broadway production of South Pacific in 2008, here is a video of him singing “Younger than Springtime,” which his character sings to Liat in the show.

Even though my parents came to the US from Taiwan in the 70s, I’m not a fan of Taiwanese pop music; maybe it’s because so much of it seem to come from Boy Bands from mainland China or consist of numbingly slow love ballads with videos of forlorn looking couples looking sad at each other in some random-ass wheat field. (Seriously, why are there so many Taiwanese ballad music videos of someone standing in a field? They have buildings, right?)

But this music video by Taiwanese indie-pop band WonFu — not to be confused with Asian American product company Wong Fu Productions — I can get behind, mostly because it takes all of that bubble-gum cheeriness that Taiwanese people love so much and puts it behind a bassline; imagine the catchy hooks of Puffy AmiYumi put through the wringer of a Taiwanese variety show, goofy sound effects and all. If you think they’re good enough to catch live, they’ll be touring cities and venues up and down the West Coast, including Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and schools like Cal Berkeley and UCLA.