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Boston's Other Asian Musicians

It's Tuesday night at Johnny D's, a nightclub in Somerville's Davis Square.Tonight's headline act is Kevin So, a high-energy singer-songwriter who's performing for a packed house. Urged on by a loyal following in the audience, So performs his unique blend of soulful blues and folk, leavening his performance with snatches of poetry and dance.

Accompanying So on bass guitar tonight is Jeff Song, who has recorded five CD's of improvisational jazz and played just about every genre of music from rock to classical. It was Song who last year founded the first Boston Asian American Creative Music Festival.

So and Song are just a few of the Asian American musicians playing jazz and folk music in the Boston area these days. While people may often associate Asian Americans with classical music, a growing number of Asians are challenging that stereotype by branching out into new areas of American popular culture. The number of Asians playing jazz has grown signficantly in recent years and So's sally into blues and folk is nothing less than groundbreaking.

One of the few Asian Americans playing blues and folk at clubs and festivals across the US, the Allston-raised So was nominated for a 1996 Boston Music Award for Best Contemporary Folk Act and was a 1997 New Folk Finalist. A graduate of the University of Southern California, where he studied music, the 27-year-old So says music has always been a part of his life. He remembers riding into Chinatown with his family to have dim sum and hearing his father singing Chinese songs to cheer everyone up if there was a problem or disagreement. It dawned on him that "music really has a healing power," he says.

Though So has been playing guitar and singing since he was 16, his earliest popular music interests leaned more toward late-1970s black music. The first record he ever bought was a greatest hits album by the Commodores. And he remembers the excitement of hearing Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall" album for the first time during a trip to his cousin's house. Earth Wind and Fire was also an early interest. In those days, he says, it was the drive and rhythm of the music that caught his attention. Music and dance went together and this was music you could dance to, he says.

Over time, So's musical interests grew in other directions as well. A turning point was his discovery of the work of the legendary Bob Dylan, America's preeminent singer-songwriter. Dylan's music "changed my life," says So, who identified with the Dylan persona for a number of reasons. Dylan, he says, represented the voice of the underdog. He was like a David fighting a Goliath, he says. "I felt a connection." Growing up Asian American, he says, could easily make you feel like an outsider. Maybe you weren't as big as the next guy; maybe you felt the other guy had an edge. Dylan was just a skinny guy. He wasn't very big, but he spoke for the oppressed, for the outsiders, he says.

Race is unavoidable in America, says So. It's always an issue. "I feel it every day." People tell him he shouldn't let it bother him, but sometimes it's impossible to ignore. Not long ago he was walking down the street when two white panhandlers approached him for money. They got angry when he didn't stop to give them money. They started hurling racial slurs at him. He hadn't done anything to them; he was just walking down the street minding his own business.

People say race relations in America are getting better, but sometimes he wonders.

There are still too many people out of touch with multicolored America, he says. In the white suburbs, people still don't know how to relate to Asians and blacks. White kids may be listening to African-American-inspired hip-hop but they feel uneasy around black people. The same isolation also applies to Chinatown, where people often remain isolated within their own group and sometimes suspicious of non-Chinese, he says. Racial isolation in America is rooted in lack of knowledge; lack of knowledge leads to fear, which in turn leads to anger. In reaction to anger, people try to isolate themselves even more intensely. But retreat never provides a permanent solution, he says.

So isn't one to stay isolated within his own race. He likes the diversity of America. His best friends include an Asian, a black, and a white. The audience at his concert at Johnny D's last week was mostly white and Asian. So says he always had Chinese friends when he was growing up, but he also liked to branch out and mingle with others too. "I was never in the Chinese clique," he adds. Even now, he says, he feels a genuine sense of power walking down the street with his racially diverse friends.

The lyrics of his songs tell the same story. In the title song of his CD "Individual," So hightlights the importance of tolerance. "Just because my hair is a little longer/Just because my skin is a little darker/Just because my eyes are a little smaller who are you to judge me...I see a white man in the middle/ Black man left and the yellow man right/ Though they are three strong individuals/They'll stand stronger side by side."

So says he's making a living playing music, touring the country and playing in clubs from Arkansas to Colorado to California. But he feels he can't waste any time now. He doesn't have a day job but making ends meet as a musician isn't easy. "I'm barely surviving. I'm working really hard," he says.

Even though he believes that race doesn't have much to do with the music he makes, he feels his race may make it that much harder to succeed as a musician. A friend recently told him that now is a crucial time for him. "He told me I have to go for it now." Why? "Because you're Asian you have to work twice as hard ... It's a white man's world and it's always been that way," he says.

So, nevertheless, remains optimistic. "I see a light at the end of the tunnel," he says, adding that his two CDs are sitting in somebody's home right now. "I'm probably the only CD in their collection [by a musician ]who is Chinese." He adds that he knows of only two other Asian Americans - one in San Francisco and another in New York - who are playing music similar to his. So is eager to get more Asians to support live music. "I would like to see more Chinese people in my audience," says So, who feels a responsibility to let non-Asians know that Asians can sing the blues and make it as singer-songwriters. He feels elated when people hear him singing and realize he's Chinese.

Alhough he has "been pegged a folk singer," he doesn't necessarily see himself that way. So says he doesn't like to restrict himself to one genre. He says he has even mulled the idea of adapting his songs and playing them as funk and R&B. He says he's comfortable sitting in Jordan Hall listening to a classical quartet or sitting in a church listening to gospel. He played violin for six years and still enjoys classical music. Classical music requires much discipline - an essential ingredient of long-term success.

So says it hasn't always been easy convincing his parents of the rightness of his career choice. His parents were born in China and ran a restaurant in Lynn for 25 years. Neither really liked the American music he grew up with and plays. His mother was often skeptical, telling him that it would be hard to succeed as a popular musician because he was Chinese. She said his voice wasn't good enough. He admits that some of the criticism was hard to take. "My mom says, 'I just don't like that music,'" he says.

While his parents often helped him financially over the years, they generally didn't approve of his career choice. His father supported his musical interests, but even he preferred other types of music. His parents listened to Chinese pop, "music that's from their childhood," he says. People listen to music that's familiar to them; they listen to the music of their youth, he says.

In the Chinese community in which he grew up, success often means financial rather than artistic success. The financial rewards of his musical career have been far less lucrative than those of his siblings. His brother is a doctor and his sister works in a bank. "Growing up in my community, success was about how much money you made," says So. "I have to constantly keep reminding myself that success is a word."

Scientist by Day, Musician by Night

Like many local Asian American musicians, bass player Jeff Song knows how hard it can be to earn a living as a musician in the Boston area. A "self-taught" research scientist at a Cambridge bio-tech firm by day, Song by night is a musician.

A Korean American, Song came to Boston from Des Moines, Iowa, in 1982 to study anthropology at Boston University and later music at the New England Conservatory of Music. He has recorded five CDs, and describes his improvisational music as avant-garde jazz. "I guess it's an acquired taste," says Song, who has played in jazz and rock bands and for a while made his living solely as a musician, often playing in wedding bands to pay his bills.

When his wife went back to school seven years ago, Song had no choice but to take a day job. And with the birth of his first child in September, a full-time day job became a necessity. Playing in wedding bands, he adds with a laugh, "was not that fulfilling for me."

"I feel I've been juggling day jobs versus music for much of my life," says Song, who began playing piano when he was 8 and started studying cello a few years later. A student of classical music for 10 years, Song discovered the bass guitar in the late 1970s. Like many youthful Asian Americans, Song found that his parents encouraged his interest in classical music but frowned on his interest in popular music.

"For my parents' generation, classical music is more legitimate," says Song, who adds that for his Korean-born parents it was OK to go to Juilliard and become another Yo-Yo Ma but unacceptable to play in a rock or jazz band. "It was not a happy time to make that choice," he says of his decision to explore popular music. Song believes that the parental "support will get better with each generation." If his son Jacob decides to be a musician, he adds, " he's going to have a sympathetic ear that I didn't have."

In an effort to show that "Asian Americans are really contributing to every genre of music out there," Song last year founded the first Boston Asian American Creative Music Festival. While most of the performers at last fall's festival were Asian, non-Asians whose music has been influenced by Asian forms also participated. Song says the music and the sprit of the playing was actually "more important than any actual race of the performers."

The Asian Music Festival "is not a 'world music' festival," says Song, who performs and records non-traditional music on the kayagum, a Korean 12-string zither. Song points out that musicians "performing on traditional Asian instruments should be doing so in a non-traditional context." One goal of the festival is to present musicians "who offer their own personal and often provocative visions of music that draw on Asian American experiences...Another goal of the festival is to break through boundaries of color and challenge cultural ideas about how we define identity and ity."

Ironically, the Asian character of the festival has turned off some Asian American musicians, who say they don't want to be associated with a "race specific" event. Musicians want to be considered good players above and beyond their racial identity, Song says.

"Frankly, I'm still not sure it's a good thing or not," he says of the Festival's Asian emphasis. Song says he's still unsure if an Asian venue helps Asian Americans or reinforces their status as novelty acts. Song, nevertheless, believes that providing local Asian musicians with an opportunity to perform is a good enough reason to hold the festival. In a more perfect world, such a festival would perhaps be unnecessary, he says. "If race issues didn't exist then we wouldn't need to have an Asian American Music Festival," he says.

Like So, Song says race continues to be an issue for many Asian Americans and sometimes for Asian American musicians. And while many people may suggest that race relations have been changing for the better in America, Song says he's not so sure that's true. "I don't think it's changed too much at all," he says, citing a recent MSNBC Internet headline suggesting that figure skater Michelle Kwan wasn't an American. "It's very disturbing," he says.

"In America you are treated a certain way because of the way you look," says Song, who adds that So "wrote this great song" about the Kwan incident.

While Asian American musicians aren't necessarily playing music that has a specific Asian musical influence, many may be drawing on their experiences growing up Asian in the US. So, for example, plays music that is American to the bone yet his lyrics explore his Asian-American experience, Song says. It's this crossing of racial and cultural boundaries that seems to intrigue Song and other Asian American musicians.

Though there are few Asians performing folk and blues, Song says "it's not unusual to see Asian jazz musicians" in Boston, in part because there are many Japanese musicians who study at the Berkeley College of Music. "I think it's growing a lot and that's a good thing." As the number of Asian jazz musicians grows, race tends to become less of an issue, he says. And while Asians are slowly making inroads into rock and hip-hop, there's always the danger that Asian performers will be turned into novelty acts. "Can musicians be considered just good performers and good artists" and "rise above novelty status"? asks Song. Being unique can work for a performer but it's also a "kind of bittersweet recognition," he says.

Changing Careers .

For jazz musician Jane Wang, her background has almost nothing to do with her music. When she was growing up in the Boston area, she says she would cringe when she heard Peking Opera and generally rejected much of her cultural heritage. "I think a lot of Chinese people hate Chinese culture," she says. Her own rejection of Chinese tradition and culture had much to do with "the way women were treated in Chinese culture,"she says.

Her parents, she says, also were critical of Chinese culture and appeared eager to start new lives here. And while she still has "problems with it (Chinese culture)," she says a recent concert piqued her interest. "I'm just starting to feel there's something there I can enjoy," she says. "I actually went to see Fred Ho's show in New York and he had a Chinese singer and I really like it."

Wang believes Chinese families have complex attitudes towards music. "My brother and his wife really want the kids to study music like violin or piano," she says. "But it's like, god forbid you want to make it your profession." And while classical music is generally an acceptable genre to pursue, jazz and rock are often held suspect. It's acceptable to carve out a musical career likeYo-Yo Ma's, but playing jazz in a lounge is a different story.

"I think classical music is almost like a more white thing," she says. "It's more upper class - or, at least, it's perceived that way." Popular American music - much of which has been inspired by African-American rhythms - is less likely to be accepted, she says, adding that many white parents may hold similar views.

Sacrificing a secure career for the unpredictability of the life of a jazz musician wasn't a decision Wang's mother applauded. "She feels it's a very insecure way of making a living," says Wang, who adds that jazz and other popular musical forms may be associated in her mother's mind with drugs and alcohol. In Chinese culture, "painters are respected, musicians are almost prostitutes" or "street people," she says. Her mother, she says, "has an idea of what a respectable job is."

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1979, Wang worked for seven years as a software engineer. She left that job to become a boom operator in the film industry. Nine years ago she decided she wanted to return to music. For years she had played piano and had long been interested in jazz. Wang studied acoustic bass and now plays improvisational-style jazz regularly at the Malimo Restaurant on Massachusetts Avenue (between Harvard and Central Squares) and at Spontaneous Celebration in Jamaica Plain.

She has also created her own record company (Hao Records) and produced three Cds. On "In a Stranger's Hand," she performs with a group of Japanese musicians; and on "Laundry for the Nineties," she performs as a member of the Lydian People's Front. Leaving secure jobs and a steady income was a big risk for Wang, who has been living largely on her savings since venturing into her new career.

As an Asian jazz musician Wang says she has never felt discrimination. Sometimes she believes being Asian can be an advantage. "Asians are a little more acceptable in certain kinds of black circles," she says.

Wang says a recent article in the music press highlighted the growing profile of Asian jazz musicians. She speculates that the growing number of Asian jazz musicians she sees now could be connected to Asians' growing participation in American life and culture. "As Asians become more assimilated into the culture they get more into the music of this culture and that includes black music," she says.

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