In this paper, I situate presentations of Asian femininity in Western popular music within the broader discourse of Asian transnationalism to challenge the construction and propagation of the so-called “yellow woman” (Cheng 2019): the Western representation of Asian femininity formed by colonial and transnational flows of power. Asian women have been historically framed as both hypersexualized and submissive in popular media; East Asian music popular music and media in its current and historical global spaces have also served to propagate and enforce the same gender expectations and standards (Seabrook 2012). Japanese-British singer-songwriter Rina Sawayama challenges and contradicts the perceived submissiveness, exoticism, and ornamental treatment of the “yellow woman” in popular music using feminist rage (Lorde 1981) and explicitly non-normative queer representation in her work. This paper examines Sawayama’s musical and visual artistic output to discuss how Sawayama’s public position as a person of Asian descent and her musical work point to and challenge dominant ideas and expectations of Asian American femininity and gender while situating itself within the “genre” of Asian diasporic music and its standards. Drawing on transnational Asian feminist critique (Bow 2022; Cheng 2019; Kang 2020), Asian diasporic music studies (Wong 2004) and global popular music critique (Taylor 2012), I argue that Sawayama’s complication of the rhetoric surrounding Asian American femininity provides a framework for understanding the construction of the yellow woman as a historical product of gendered racialization and how its legacy still informs current perceptions of Asian feminine aesthetics in popular music and media.

Chol Soo Lee is a Korean American whose unfair incarceration for alleged murder of a San Francisco gang member in 1973 incited activism. While Lee’s case has been covered extensively in the media, there remains a lack of attention on the music in the “Free Chol Soo Lee” campaign among the Korean American community. In addition to playing the Korean national anthem on the radio, Lee’s defense committee released folk rock and ballad versions of “The Ballad of Chol Soo Lee” (1979). This song served to raise awareness of Lee’s wrongful imprisonment in 1973 and arrived not long after the 1965 Immigration Act, which loosened policies toward Asian immigrants, and the Third World Liberation Strikes of 1968-69, in which pan-Asian students demanded greater academic representation in admissions and curriculum. Given this context, this paper asserts that “The Ballad of Chol Soo Lee” represents an Asian American anthem that not only challenges a single act of injustice, but also reflects broader societal unrest among Asian Americans at the time. I examine media presses, documentaries, and digital archives that record efforts of pan-Asian political coalitions and analyze 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 specific song during a time of solidarity among members of an inter-ethnic, inter-generational Asian America.

The 21st century has witnessed Asia’s growing influence on American contemporary music, marked by collaborative compositions blending experimental American elements with traditional Asian sounds. This paper explores this trend, focusing on Korean musicians in America through the lens of deterritorialization – a concept by Deleuze and Guattari. This term signifies the disruption of fixed structures and norms, empowering indigenous communities through a critical reevaluation of imposed traditions. Two case studies: A Ritual for Covid-19 (2021) by Korean geomungo player Jin Hi Kim, and Do Yeon Kim's 2023 NYC Roulette performance, illustrate this phenomenon. Through contemporary discourse analysis and ethnographic interviews, I argued that these collaborations reveal deterritorialized music-making through entangled musical identities and exploring global experiences. Kim's work combines the Korean shaman ritual with American art technology, symbolizing the release of pandemic-related suffering. Do Yeon’s performance highlights her musical journey beyond traditional boundaries, symbolized by her arrangement of the Buddhist seungmu. The study also examines Kim’s solo performances, showcasing her immigrant experiences from Korea to the US in her artistic development. Moving beyond sound-centric approaches, the study amplifies the performer’s role, 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, the paper proposes a new aesthetic paradigm for trans-Pacific collaborations, transcending orientalism and nationalism in contemporary music discourse.