During my senior year in college, I won the lottery.
Well, not the actual lottery, but perhaps one even better than that. After a rigorous application process, I was selected as a recipient of the coveted Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a grant to pursue an independent study project of my own design in 5 different countries for an entire year after graduation. This was better than the lottery because it was an entire year devoted to personal growth and developing a better understanding of the world. A few months later, I would be on my way to study the spread of Hip Hop music and its effects on youth culture across East Asia.
I spent most of my time in big cities, as those were the places where Hip Hop culture was most likely to pop up. Looking back on it, it was a rather silly project, because there’s only a few ways you can really “study” an emerging hip hop culture. You befriend the people who are making it, and then you just hang out. Most of the time you party. So that’s what I did. I spent my time trying to seek out locals who were involved in Hip Hop in one way or another, and once I found them, I spent as much time with them as possible. I wasn’t super interested in trying to meet celebrities. I was more interested in the everyday person for whom Hip Hop was perhaps relatively new. I wanted to know what the regular Joe (or Zhou, or Cho, or Go) thought about Hip Hop; how they interacted with it, and how it influenced their daily lives. In Taiwan I took Hip Hop dance classes and hung out at Luxy, a popular nightclub. I also joined the staff of an international nightlife blog and was able to interview a handful of smaller-name rappers and DJs. In Korea I joined a local Hip Hop dance group and performed with them. In Hong Kong I visited an afterschool program that had produced Hong Kong’s very own B-Boy team that went on to compete in the “Battle of the Year”.
No matter what country I was in, I always saw the same thing. I saw Asian youth taking Hip Hop culture (the music, the dance, the art), and making it their own. Yes, they were often simply trying to mimic American style and swagger, but it was when young people started to add their own flair to the dance, their own sound to the music, and their own style to the art that they really engaged with it and it started to mean something to them. It was in the creativity (not the mimicry) where I saw real passion. Young people were using Hip Hop not as a vehicle, but as a catalyst for their own raw talent to express itself. And it was during this process where the Hip Hop started to change. It looked different and sounded different. In many ways, a Hip Hop aficionado from the US would look at it and say that it was not Hip Hop at all, but something completely different, and this was what was amazing about it. Through this process of cultural synthesis they had created something that was altogether completely new. If you looked at it in the right light, you could see the Hip Hop influences. But like a hologram, if you cocked your head and looked at it slightly differently, you could see the influences from traditional Asian culture, Asian pop music, and the milieu that surrounded them. This was identity formation at its best. Young people taking the culture around them, changing it, and making it their own.
I absolutely loved watching this process happen in real-time. There were kids in Taipei choreographing dance moves on the steps of the National Concert Hall, using the gigantic windows as makeshift studio mirrors. There were kids in Saigon practicing handstands and freezes on the concrete in dumpy little parks. What an exciting process of creation, I thought…the creation of a new, modern identity. One that is at once a repackaging of their timeless cultural traditions, and at the same time completely new and unique. This culture was their way of shouting to the world that this is who they were.
I turned my gaze toward America and wondered if this process could be found in my own country. As it turns out, examples abound. When examining American history, I found numerous instances of this process of cultural identity synthesis. Every generation goes through it. In fact, in some communities, it happens every few years (I was never an ethno-musicologist, but I was slowly becoming one). Searching through the history of the African American community, it was easy to see the types of cultural synthesis that have been taking place for hundreds of years. Even just starting with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and moving forward, we can see how Jazz music turned into Bebop and Soul, which then turned into Rock ‘n’ Roll, which then turned into Funk and R&B, which then turned into Hip Hop, etc. And the same was true for all types of cultural expression, not just music. Dance, literature, fashion, art…the list goes on. If you looked closely enough, you could see the evolution of culture changing right before your eyes. This was also true in the White American community. Even though much of their cultural inspiration involved consuming and copying Black culture, they would take it and make it their own, and the styles they created would evolve over time (by taking Funk music from Black people, they created Disco, which then turned into Electro, which turned into Techno, etc. etc.). Then I looked at Latino Americans, and it was fascinating to see how even this community, which was made up of dozens of different nationalities, was creating new culture for themselves and forming a clear and unique identity in this modern world.
It was with this great excitement over this newfound discovery of cultural synthesis that I then turned to my own community and asked, “So what are Asian Americans doing to create new culture for the purposes of reimagining their identities for the modern world?” We had been in this country for hundreds of years and had endured incredible pain and hardship to establish our families and communities here. There were a plethora of stories and experiences coming from dozens of different cultures and histories rich in tradition and cultural expression. It seemed that the Asian American community was ripe for the type of cultural synthesis that I was looking for. When it comes to inspiration for cultural synthesis, we have so much culture to choose from. And we come from a lineage of creative minds that have invented so much of the coolest and furthest-reaching styles and trends that stretch back for millennia (the silk road! The spice trade! Even world religions!). So what was it? What cool, new, unique things were we creating for this new age? What was my generation inventing?
I searched and I searched, and what I found was this: Not much.
…That’s not entirely true. There are small pockets of Asian American artist communities in cities across the nation where people are creating exciting new forms of expression. That being said, however, the majority of Asian Americans appeared not to be engaging in any form of cultural synthesis that was rooted in their own culture. What I saw were Asian Americans actually doing away with their own culture in order to participate in the cultural synthesis of other communities. In an effort to assimilate, the children of 1st generation immigrants had compartmentalized their Asian-ness into two distinct categories: traditional or undesirable. The “traditional” parts of their Asian culture were reserved only for large family functions and were considered largely a formality relegated to the sidelines of another community’s traditions. For example, during weddings, “traditional” Asian outfits were worn during one part of the celebration, but during the actual ceremony itself, the White American wedding dress and tuxedo were preferred.
Other than the traditional aspects of the culture, all other aspects were deemed undesirable and therefore discarded. The only cultural aspects of our identity that were kept were the language (barely) and taking your shoes off in the house. A few minor ones here and there, but other than that, Asian-ness was deemed as something of the past. Mostly uncool, and only useful for large family gatherings when the Asian-ness would be taken off the “traditional” shelf, dusted off, and used for one day, before unceremoniously being locked away for another year. To be sure, individuals in other communities in America sometimes did the same thing with their culture, but this was an epidemic. A huge portion of our community was doing this. And across the board, the story was the same, whether it was music, dance, or anything related to expression. We then threw ourselves at other communities, elbowing our way into their own processes of cultural synthesis, asking (sometimes demanding) to share in the identities that they had built for themselves. Studying the styles of other communities so well that we could even out-perform them at their own inventions (breakdancing comes to mind). We learned the language, we practiced the steps, and we even changed our names and married into other communities in the hopes that they would accept us as one of their own. But we weren’t changing anything; we weren’t contributing. It wasn’t like in Asia where the Asian youth were taking Hip Hop and changing it. No, here in this country we would take things like Hip Hop and try very hard NOT to change it, in a desperate attempt to be taken seriously. But what we didn’t realize was that this type of assimilation would leave us with an identity crisis of epic proportions.
This dismissal of our own culture has left us empty inside. And when we are not accepted into the identities of other communities, we double-down on that dismissal by blaming our Asian-ness and working even harder to erase it. This is the very definition of self-hatred. And it’s a never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction with our lack of acceptance, our feelings of emptiness and isolation, and self-blame that leads us further and further down into the abyss. Paired with parental pressures to succeed (the immigrant mentality), societal pressures to perform (the model minority myth), and just the regular pressures of daily life, this can lead to mental health issues and even suicide, of which our community boasts some of the highest rates in the nation.
We are an entire community with a psychosis. We are suffering. But I argue that there is a cure.
I don’t claim to know how to end racism. I don’t know how to put an end to the systemic oppression of White supremacy or to the economic entrapments of cut-throat capitalism. I also don’t know how to alleviate the concerns of immigrant parents that cause them to Tiger-Mom their children into empty automatons. I do not know how to stop the onslaught of external pressures and obstacles that prevent us from building a positive cultural identity. But I do know how to stop the internal obstacles. And that is through the embracing of our very own culture.
Just as Asians are doing in Asia, and African Americans, White Americans, and Latino Americans are doing here in this country, we must also embrace who we are and view ourselves as valid. Instead of letting it rot on a dusty shelf, we must take the culture and traditions that were given to us and live them out loud. And by embracing them and living them, we will naturally start to change them, allowing them to breathe and evolve. And in doing so, we will create a new, modern identity - one that is at once a repackaging of our timeless cultural traditions, and at the same time completely new and unique.
Again, there are small pockets of Asian American artist communities in cities across the nation engaging in this process of new identity formation. We should be seeking them out, supporting them, trumpeting their creations far and wide, and following their example in our own lives. My organization, Rama, sees this as its mission. But it should be the mission of our entire community. To stop searching for our identity in other places, but rather, to search within, find what’s beautiful inside of us, to let it live and breathe, to share it with our families and friends, to let it change us, and to ultimately allow us to change it.
There is a Filipino American musician in the San Francisco Bay Area named Ron Quesada who plays the traditional Filipino instrument called the “Kulintang”. It is a row of bells laid out on a small table that he hits with a pair of sticks. Played by itself, the sound hits our ears as if traveling through time, originating thousands of years ago and across an entire ocean. But being the modern Filipino American that he is, Quesada prefers to play this instrument along with electronica tracks of his own creation. The resulting sound is both traditional and modern, and altogether infectious and mesmerizing. He calls his style of music “Kulintronica”.
There is an Indian American band from Brooklyn, New York that calls themselves “Red Baraat” and who mix a brass band sound with the rhythmic stylings and energy of the Indian “Baraat”, or wedding procession party. An 8-piece band that includes a Punjabi Dhol drum, this band is pure energy and their performances almost always result in an instant dance-party.
Also in New York, producer Dave Liang has been remastering and remixing old Chinese jazz standards from 1930s Shanghai, creating brand new tracks that feature incredible vocalists, rappers, and other modern musicians. He calls it the “Shanghai Restoration Project” and it is yet another example of a young Asian American embracing his culture in a way that has allowed him to make it brand new and extremely cool.
And of course it isn't limited to music. The entire food-truck movement happening in cities across America was started by Roy Choi and his now infamous Kogi Truck, which put Korean meat in Mexican tacos...again, two things that we are familiar with but when put together it creates something completely new. Contemporary artist and calligrapher Aoi Yamaguchi performs live calligraphy painting as part of her effort to preserve traditional arts in the modern world, and the results are stunning.
Examples abound like the ones above, but there should be more. A lot more. There should be so many examples that they should be everywhere you look. And the more we engage in this process of creation, like a rising tidal wave, the force of positive energy will be inescapable. It will bring about a new era of positive identity, and will give us a voice. A movement like this may not end racism or oppression, but it will give us dignity, purpose, and confidence. A movement like this will ensure that our culture and traditions do not die out, but rather will live on in the constant churning and transformational process that is evolution. We need this movement, this Asian American Renaissance.