Conference Agenda

In 2016, Peter Horikoshi, a former member of the Asian American band Yokohama, California, re-released the band’s 1977 album Yokohama, California—arguably the second Asian American album after A Grain of Sand (1973), supplemented with several additional tracks recorded from the same year. Three years later, Horikoshi released another two albums featuring a 1979 live concert of two Asian American singer-songwriters, Philip Kan Gotanda and Charlie Chin, with bonus tracks included in each album. Organized by the Japanese Arts and Media based in San Francisco, this live event exemplified the collaborative spirit prevalent in the Asian American music scene during that era.

While scholarship on Asian American popular music, particularly on jazz and hip hop, has grown in recent years, the discourse on Asian American popular songs from the 1970s—an era characterized by the groundbreaking Asian American movement, remains marginal. This marginalization is largely due to the sparse recordings that survived from the time period. Therefore, Horikoshi’s re-release of three albums from the 1970s, accompanied by informative liner notes, not only offers a rare listening journey into the voices and sentiments of Asian American musicians from the past but also serves as a crucial resource for reassessing approaches to understanding Asian American popular music in the 1970s.

Through a musical, cultural, and historical analysis of over 40 songs featuring nine Asian American musicians in these albums, this paper reveals a rich tapestry of themes and musical styles present in these works. While some songs, especially those from Yokohama, California, echo the political fervor of the Asian American movement during the era by emphasizing anti-war sentiments, social injustice, racial oppression, and inter-Asian and cross-racial solidarity, others present a less politicized front, delving into personal and aesthetic explorations, as seen in Charlie Chin’s romantic ballads and Philip Gotanda’s evocative and poetic lyricism coupled with elaborate music-making beyond the folk music style. Recognizing the diverse themes and musical styles within these underexplored songs, this paper broadens scholarly discourse on Asian American popular music in the 1970s (Wang, 2001) and embraces a pluralistic approach to understanding Asian American music-making within this historically marked decade for the community.

Chol Soo Lee is a Korean American man whose unfair incarceration for alleged murder of a San Francisco Chinese gang member in 1973 incited great political activism. While Lee’s case has been covered extensively in the media, this paper addresses the lack of attention on the music involved in the “Free Chol Soo Lee” campaign among the Korean American community. Not only was the Korean national anthem played on the radio by activists, the Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee also released folk rock and ballad versions of a song aptly titled, “The Ballad of Chol Soo Lee” (1979). While this song served to raise awareness of Lee’s wrongful imprisonment, it also came at a crucial point in Asian American history. It arrived not too long after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, which permitted a loosening of policies toward Asian immigrants, and the Third World Liberation Strikes of 1968-9 at San Franciso State University and University of California, Berkeley, in which Asian American students protested for representation in faculty and student admissions and academic curriculum.

In this vein, this paper asserts that “The Ballad of Chol Soo Lee” serves as an example of an Asian American national anthem that not only challenges a singular act of injustice, but also reflects broader societal unrest among Asian American communities at the time. For this exploration, I examine media presses, documentaries, and digital archives that document efforts of pan-Asian political coalitions and alliances in America and demonstrate how such efforts parallel the rallying cries surrounding Lee. My investigation joins a conversation among scholars who have illustrated the diversity of “Asian American music,” ranging from jazz to taiko to pop (Wang 2001; Wong 2004; Wang 2015). Rather than illustrating the heterogeneity of musical practices, this paper highlights a song during a time of intense solidarity among inter-ethnic, inter-generational pan-Asian activists at a significant moment in history. The implication of this exploration expands beyond its historical situatedness and remains prevalent today. As lyrics to the ballad narrate, “This case is not uncommon. It reflects on you and me.”

In the 21st century, Asian influences have become increasingly prominent in the global music scene, particularly in the US., where traditional Asian sounds are blending with experimental American music through collaborative compositions. This paper explores the evolving influence of Asia in American contemporary music, focusing on Korean musicians in the U.S., such as Jin Hi Kim, DoYeon Kim, and Gamin, as examples of deterritorialization. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of deterritorialization, this presentation examines how these musicians disrupt fixed cultural norms, creating new forms that reflect personal and collective reinvention. The concept emphasizes breaking down of rigid structures, empowering indigenous communities through a critical reevaluation of imposed traditions. It also encourages a decentralized approach to music-making, where collaboration between diaspora musicians and communities leads to the creation of new, hybrid forms of artistic expression (K Shelemay, 2011).

A key case study is DoYeon Kim, a virtuoso of the gayageum (12-string Korean zither) and her 2023 NYC Roulette performance. Through contemporary discourse analysis, and ethnographic interviews, I argue that Kim’s collaborations embody deterritorialized music-making, shaped by negotiations of musical identities and personal selfhood. Her performance marks a shift from her background as a dancer to a musician, exemplified by her arrangement of seungmu, a traditional Buddhist dance, which challenges institutional norms. Kim’s improvisation on the 25-string gayageum reflects her immigrant experience in the U.S. and her transforming artistic identity, reshaping the traditional sanjo form in non-traditional contexts. This approach resonates with avant-garde movements of the 1960s, such as Fluxus, John Cage’s prepared piano, and Nam June Paik’s radical performance art. Her vocal performance also plays a central role in expanding interdisciplinary boundaries, maximizing the body’s range of vocal expressions and de-gendering the voice typically associated with Asian women. Shifting away from score-centered analysis, the study amplifies the performer’s agency, fostering interdisciplinary music-making (N. Rao, 2023) that promotes communication and highlights the potential for racialized Asian women to reclaim their voices in American modernity. Ultimately, this paper proposes a new aesthetic paradigm centered on the transformative power of traditions shaped by intercultural mobilities, transcending orientalism and nationalism in contemporary music discourse.