10-09-08
Li, Shih redefine ‘Asian,’ ‘artist’ (Tufts Daily)
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.
04-01-08
Appreciation: The Visionaries (from BPRLive.org)
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.
03-19-08
Hard to Escape Violence (from BPRLive.org)
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.
12-06-07
It’s like Kiwi is John Malkovich or Something
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!
