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Today is September 11th 2022, my name is Kevin. Um, I'm with the Houston Asian American Archive. I'll be talking with musician and scholar, Dr. Julian Saporiti.

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He's toured with his indie rock band, The Young Republic, and he has a masters and a PhD in American Studies, which I think you recently received your PhD last year—or this year. This year. Yeah. Just got it.

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Congrats on that. Thank you. Thank you. So yeah—so thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to talk with me today. Oh, my pleasure. Yeah, happy to talk about whatever you want to talk about.

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So I guess I have a few quick questions about some of your, like, early experiences, um, tailored toward like music, of course. So you know, you were born in Nashville, Tennessee, you know, the Music City? Can you tell—tell us a bit about kind of some

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profound, I guess, like experiences you had there—maybe growing up and maybe some of your earliest experiences with music? Yeah, I mean, I–I think–I think it is a very profound experience if you're lucky enough to kinda be raised in the circles I was raised in, which was in the

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music industry. My dad worked as an independent, like country music radio promoter. So he would drive around—I mean, way back before the internet, and like just find radio stations by their big metal towers and drop off a bunch of records he was hired to promote and get them to play it

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on the radio, all these local DJs around the South, and then he worked for Warner Brothers Records, big record company, in Nashville, in the world, I guess. And so I had this really cool childhood of being around music all the time, by—around professionals like through my dad's job and stuff like that, and celebrity country music

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star people, but also just growing up in Nashville. Um, I think it's one of the few American cities that has like a really distinguishable culture, I think less so now, maybe cause it's gotten a lot bigger and then a lot hipper, which sort of evens things out—young professionals

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need some kind of like floor of culture, I think, but Nashville is like this weird little like, still kind of slightly farmy place in the 80s when I was growing up, at least right outside the city, but it had this cottage music industry that really wasn't that big of an industry, but it had, you

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know, some TV networks and radio presence across the country and then as my dad was in the 80s and 90s, it kind of grew to this larger international thing sort of mirroring and shepherding the growth of Nashville itself, and so I kind of came up in this weird–weird time in history, you know, looking back at it as a historian now.

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But as far as like the profundity of my childhood experience, I would say it was–it was very large, and a lot of that has to do with the artistic circles that I was raised in. My mom is a painter, she's a fine artist, and like I said, my dad's a musician, and so just having that—well, I always tell my songwriting students

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having that entitlement to creativity was really important. And I think especially when you get into, you know, my field of research of like Asian American culture, that entitlement to creativity, a lot of times for people like me who are like immigrant kids, or kids of immigrants and refugees, you don't get that.

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It's more of a keep your head down attitude. You know, like, my fiance is half-Asian as well, and her parents are bo—are doctors and lawyers, and—most of the Asian kids I met which wasn't a lot growing up in Nashville, but once I got to grad school, like, by the time I was 30, it's like, first

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time I was really around Asian people—Asian Americans. Most of their parents were like, investment people, or insurance people or doctors or lawyers. And a lot of them had played music the way that Asian Americans do, like piano or

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violin, but that was more of like a mode of economic mobility, you know? So even then it was kind of defanged from like the beautiful, dangerous, wonderful artistic passion that I grew up experiencing music as like.

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So yeah, I like your word, profound. I think everyone has profound childhoods, hopefully, in some way or another, but Nashville, the combination of being around art and music, combination of like Nashville being a place that was very unique and interesting, in the American city

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landscape at the time. You know, I thought those all kind of added up to a very rich childhood, as far as the arts go. Yeah, and um, there's a quote, I–I found somewhere that you said that you know,

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well I quote, "being a little bit of not fitting in–in Nashville, and then the burden of being an Asian kid in Tennessee." Can you share maybe some specific incidents where–where you're referencing this kind of experience, perhaps?

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Yeah, I think burden if I said that it's probably too strong of a word that sounds very academic-y. But like, uh, yeah, there's certainly some unpleasant experiences that happened from a very early age on. Just like I remember one moment in particular that will always scar me

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which I was like five years old going into the Walmart off Charlotte Pike in Nashville on the west side where I live, and I was with my, I think I was with one of my parents, I forget which one, but we were walking in the entryway, and the sliding doors

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opened, and I—we were either walking in or walking out, but I remember we crossed paths with another little boy who was like my age, like five years old, and his dad who was probably like, you know, 24, or something like that, but seemed very big to me at the time. And the little kid just took his fingers and pulled his ey-eyes back and

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slitted them and started, you know, doing all that like fake “ching-chong” stuff that kids do to make fun of other kids. And just it felt—like it felt like forever. It's probably 15 seconds, but still, in the presence of like, an adult like cause I don't

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remember my mom or dad, whoever was there like really intervening or anything like that. Maybe they didn't even see it, but like, to me that was like world defining, in a way and kind of world crushing at the same time. And I think I–I now I remember, just like, there was a man—there was like an adult man,

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who was supposed to be fathering this child who like allowed that, and, you know, who knows, like, perhaps thought it was funny and stuff like that, or—so that was like, very–very fundamental, a-and little versions of that would happen in my friend group and at school regularly, at least a couple of times a month.

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Just like little making fun of jokes or ignorance to like, make fun of like Chinese or Japanese people who were really the only Asians that people knew about back in the 80s and 90s, at least in Nashville. And just like, yeah, it was pretty–pretty regular kind of just getting these

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like, barbs or slings and arrows, not intentionally—I love my friends I grew up with I–I like the people of Nashville quite well, the ones that I grew up with, but like, yeah, that kind of stuff just builds up and it kind of like forces you to, you know, internalize a

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lot of like, disdain for yourself and how you look, and when I was a—when I went to my first or my second school when I was like six or seven, there was another kid named Julian, and so we were really good friends just because our names were Julian, but he was like white Aryan blond hair, blue-eyed, and

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having this like, namesake, or not namesake, but this shared name with this very good friend who was the epitome of like, the All-American boy was very difficult as well and made me just want, "I just want to disappear". And that manifested as far as a songwriter goes into—even at the beginning of my

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career, like you mentioned in that band, the Young Republic. All my songs were like white protagonist, even when they were from the first person, I never wrote myself, the way I look anyways, or that kind of experience of being different into those songs, and

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it was only ‘til later in life, where I sort of discovered a songwriting vein that actually went back and explored some of that stuff, but yeah, I mean, it wasn't the worst at all. I mean, I think a lot of what people call the anti-Asian hate thing kind of boggles my mind and flushes me a little bit these days because

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that's what I grew up with. And it's not really new. And if you are an actual historian of Asian America, like I am, you realize that things are not worse than they were in 1885, or 1924 or

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1942 or all these different times in American history for Asian people. And that was just kind of par for the course. It's like you get used to it, and it fucks you up a little bit. But also, yeah, I mean, it's–it's something that I'm dealing with and hopefully

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dealing with well at this point, but yeah, it's something that kids shouldn't have to deal with. But I mean, like any, like, the way worse to be a gay kid at my school growing up or something like that, or, I mean, it's like the whole black-white dynamic in Nashville was pretty fraught when I was a child and still is to a certain extent.

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So it was just one of one of many people who weren't white Country Club kids, you know, and certainly, at least for I don't know, maybe speaking on behalf of some the very small Asian American population that grew up in Nashville when I was a kid, like, as a little "Keep your head down".

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I got into a couple fistfights. I think they were predicated upon my race and stuff like that. And the worst incident was absolutely—I was driving. This was older, I was in high school or middle school, middle school, I think.

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Driving with my mom, I think in our Volvo Station Wagon on White Bridge Road, just off West end, also on the west side of town. And this–this SUV of like frat boys pulled up and they just started verbally abusing my mother.

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None of this like, childish—like, I can take the child as jokes and stuff like that, like I was talking about, but this was like verbal horrific abuse that, like is—should be prosecuted, like horrible stuff. And that really hurt me deeply.

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And I think back now and just thinking back, like I should have said something. Like, I know my mom called their school, like maybe they went to Vanderbilt, or Belmont or something like that. Might have even been high schoolers?

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I don't know. But for now, it would be probably a huge deal. But like, yeah, so that kind of, yeah, I don't want to overplay it and be like, this was this horribly traumatic experience, especially being the son of someone who lived

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through actual war and actual trauma and things like this. Because it wasn't that. It was, it was a tough time occasionally, like I said, maybe once a month growing up, and something that no kid should have to deal with.

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But that was a time we lived in, you know, and so that's what it was. And you mentioned how, you know, I feel like for some Asian kids growing up, you know, in whatever, like a predominantly white school, or like, white high school, in this, like educational system, like, you'll internalize these things about like being

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Asian or you know, Asian American. And then how, you know, in your songwriting, the protagonist was like, "No, I was like, white" or whatever. And then later on, like, in retrospect, you kind of look back and

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then kind of strayed away from that. So like, what, at what point did you first realize that, okay, like, it's not bad to be like Asian, or to think in this, like, or like, you know, encompass your background or your own ethnic heritage?

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Yeah, I think two things happened, one, time progressed, and I became, um—so that's one thing, just time moved on. And so we usually get more progressive about ideas of race, at least over the 20th century. So growing up, like being born in the 80s, growing up in the 90s, is

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very different. If someone was born in like 2010s, and is growing up this decade, like night and day, even in Nashville, even in Houston, and even in some of the southern cities and stuff like that. There's just way more cosmopolitan stuff, even if it's on the superficial level of

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food, you know, maybe you can get more in touch with your language. And it's less of a big deal to have an accent these days, which was huge, like my mom has a French accent because she grew up in colonial Vietnam. And I got made fun of for that, like, not even like the Asian thing, like just like an

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accent period, right? You know, for a bunch of kids in my school, who were all learning French and stuff. Anyways, I think time has progressed. And I think that it's massively better.

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And I wish people did-had a better perspective on-on that. I mean, maybe if you grew up in the South in the 90s, it's–it's more night and day about how–how far we've come on so many levels. Obviously, there's still a lot of, you know, two steps forward, one step back kind of

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stuff in our country. But aside from just the progress of time, kind of alleviating, and, like kind of creating moments of solidarity for me in media or on the internet and stuff like that, as I grew older. Location, and specifically moving to an academic

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space was very helpful because I had never really gone to a proper—I was always a musician first. I went to music College in Boston, Berklee College Music, really good school, but not a good like, well-rounded education. So I don't have any, like humanities classes, Intro to ethnic studies, certainly

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no Asian American history growing up in Nashville, like I said. I knew—personally knew like some kids in my high school, who were Asian, more Mid East and South Asian. One Korean girl I liked, I forget her name now who I was friends with.

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But that was like, it, was like maybe a handful. And I always wanted to distance myself from any kind of social interaction with Asian people because of those formative experiences when I was a child of like, I need to keep my head down. So if I'm hanging around these other people, I'm just gonna get

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more flak for it, right? And that was a real bummer. You know, I never really had any good Asian friends or my—a couple–couple black friends because it, like playing on basketball team and stuff as a young kid, but.

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Yeah, just mostly hung out with like, white kids. So location added on to just the progress of time was really important. I eventually went to graduate school, of all places, in Wyoming. You know, it's one of the whitest states in the country, but that's really where I joke

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around. I tell people I became Asian American because of my studies you know, I studied the internment camps, or people call 'em Japanese American incarceration camps—now the one up in Wyoming called Heart Mountain, which I've done a lot of research on.

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Got it like, into studying that culture. That was really like juicy, interesting topic as a historian, also very moving as a Wyomingite. Then also like—there's this Chinese massacre in 1885 I study a lot called Rock Springs out in Western Wyoming.

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And I've made pilgrimages to these places. And it was sort of like going back in time through history to get at the roots of like, some of these earlier—I mean, Asians have been here in the Americas since the 1500s, 1600s. But like, as far as I teach Asian American history, it kind of starts with the

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Chinese in the 1800s. And going back in time, through books, you know, grad school, and books and history. And then through conferences, meeting Asian American, like so called activists kind of stuff.

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That was really informative. And that kind of, like helped open up my eyes to, I guess, like, yeah, like a sense of like, you don't have to fear who you are. I'm not necessarily proud of who I am, because of how I

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look in any regard of being a man or being Asian or anything like that. I'm not sure pride and like, those kinds of features is where it's at. But I'm kind of a Buddhist. So maybe that's where that comes from. But I think like, yeah, going to grad school, in a more modern

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time was super helpful. And that kind of unlocked this kind of songwriting path that did shift my subject matter finally, back to myself and people who looked like myself. And then I kind of had this like, moment where I was like, Oh, maybe I should write

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songs that I haven't heard before. You know, and maybe that's a–that's a pathway to some kind of, like, feeling—not more authentic, I hate that word. But I don't know, just feeling comfortable in my lyrics and

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the stories that I'm telling. And that's kind of where we are now. I mean, that's—yeah. You mentioned, you know, moving to this, like academic space, and that kind of was pivotal

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in that–that journey. So, you know, before you went to Berklee, you studied jazz there. And for a period of time, you were, you know, you're touring, you're like, what's your—you form this band, the Young Republic.

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So what kind of, you know, pivoted this like shift to academia, kind of? Or what–what kind of spurred your motivation to pursue, you know, an American Studies masters in the first place?

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Yeah, the—well, the band broke up, as all bands do. And I found myself in my mid-approaching late 20s, with very little life experience, besides this one very deep well of like being a musician on the road.

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And all the knowledge I had accrued, as like growing up in Nashville, going to Berklee, being in indie rock and punk rock bands, and studying jazz, playing country music, and basically like being this huge reservoir of like American music. Like that–that was like an expert in that at that point, just through practice.

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And also just I always liked learning stuff and reading liner notes and books about music. But I was back in Nashville 2010. 2010 is when the Young Republic broke up—I was back in Nashville living in a recording studio that we had built with record company money, which was like a

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detached studio on my parents property. So basically, living at home, it was very sad. And I realized I wanted to learn stuff, because I hadn't, you know, I never finished a book, except for maybe Red Badge of Courage.

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And then my dad read me Lord of the Rings when I was a kid. But I always wanted to listen to records and watch movies, which I think are as equal forms of like learning and literacy. So I don't want to hate on that or say, I was like, under educated—educated in a

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different way. But I wanted to read some books, I wanted to read some history texts, and classic literature, and philosophy. So I went to the library, public library, just rotate around the city every day, and I'd always have a stack of four books every day.

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And I would pick like an art book, a philosophy book, a poetry book, a history book. And I just skimmed through and flipped through them. I did that every day for a year. And I would go to all these public lectures that I could, whether it's at like the Nature

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Preserve and bird walks or about the local wildlife, or plants and would go to the library for their free lectures. And I saw this guy named Mike Bess, who's a historian in Nashville at Vanderbilt University, like a modern French historian, but he's tenured now, so he's a

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futurist. That's exactly why I was so enthralled with him. because I saw him one week—this is two weeks apart—I saw him one week at the Frist Museum, this art museum in Nashville and downtown. And he was giving a lecture to accompany the Impressionist exhibit which was

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called like "A night in Paris", or something like that. So he's talking about like Paris in the late 20th century. And I did that because I'm a French citizen, the whole French colonial thing, and all my family lives in France, now my Vietnamese family.

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So I'm very familiar with that culture, I like art a lot, 'cause my mom was a painter. And then the next week I saw this guy, this Professor Mike Bess at the library, giving a talk about technologies of the future, like solar sails, like sending us through space and weaponry.

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And I went up to him afterwards Iike, "Hey, man, I just go to these lectures all the time, because they're free." And so it's like me and all these old people in Nashville. And I was like, "This is so cool. How do you know so much about stuff?

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It's like, what's your job?" He's like, "Well, I'm historian, but I have tenure. And so now I'm a futurist. So I study whatever I want, because I can do whatever I want. So that's cool." And we talked and he said, to come see him at office hours.

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And so I went to Vanderbilt University, and I–I talked to him and we–we chatted, and I gave him one of my albums. And then he emailed me, he loved the album, he like really, really loved it a lot and listened to it. And I went to his office hour, every week,

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for a year at Vanderbilt. He was like, so generous, and he really formed how I teach now. Like, I always remember that—it's always about the student first, whether they're in your school or not. Always take time to talk to a younger person who you might have some

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advice or can just like, you know, you know, help share that knowledge in a very democratic way. And he actually, like told me to go just Vagabond classes at Vanderbilt. So I was like, sitting in on philosophy classes, class on the French Revolution,

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early American history, French language. All this stuff—I was probably taking a full freshman year course load, which I had never gotten at Berklee. And so that's kind of how I drifted into academia from music. I just said, you know, I need to—I need to grow up.

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Not in any kind of financial way, because that still hasn't happened, but in sort of an emotional way, you know, I was very stunted and my relationships didn't work, like with women and stuff like that. Because when you're– start doing something at 17, like being in a rock band,

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and you don't do anything else till you're 25, you're still 17 years old, you know. So that's been a big project in my life is—eventually, you know, Mike Bess was like, "Hey, do you know about like getting a PhD or something?" And I–I had no idea because none of my dad's family on the Italian side had any kind of degrees, college degrees or

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anything. And then my mom, you know, was a refugee. So like, all the privilege she did have, an education her family had, like, went away when she came to the United States by herself. And so Mike explained to me and he led me through it, he walked me through and helped

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me apply to these terminal master's programs that I could get into with only a music degree, like–like, going to Wyoming. And then that eventually led me to this research. And that eventually got me into like a place like Brown University, which is a good

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school. Not my favorite, now that I've been through it. I must prefer University of Wyoming, I guess I'm a state school kind of fella. But like, yeah, it's really this path. And then eventually, just, I realized music is how I need to express

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myself. So it kind of ended up—how I shared my dissertation was through music. So it never went away, and I think has only gotten more interesting and stronger. At least my work as a songwriter.

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And that's that's where we are today. You know, 12 years after that 2010 Vanderbilt vagabonding. But that's how I got into academia. I was just—I was just kind of wandering you know, it's like that's–that's why I got into

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music because I was literally follow you know, follow the sounds and that's it. Yeah, I don't know. There's some—yeah, I really liked the wandering aspect of life and yeah, like I'm not much richer.

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I'm still like basically live in this little detached dwelling behind someone's house in Portland now with my fiance that's basically a music studio, so I haven't like, in a lot of ways, like moved professionally in a way that's probably legible to a lot of older Asian American people.

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But I've—man I've learned so much in the last decade and it's nice to be able to share it now and going back to the songwriting to–to put it into my songs and have those worlds kind of finally coalesce. It's quite the journey, quite the journey.

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You got no idea brother, you got no idea. So I want to backtrack to, uh, Wyoming, where you mentioned how kind of you went to places of Asian American history, kind of got in touch with being an Asian. You know, like upon learning of Chinese massacres and you know, Japanese internment

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camps. Um, can you I guess, tell us a bit more about your reaction. The moment you kind of stumbled upon—or not stumbled but you know, came upon those sites and how it kind of influenced your work from there and you know, your No No— No, No Boy project.

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Yeah, well, obviously the name No, No Boys taken from a Japanese American novel written 1957, or published 1957 by John Okada, the sort of lost, what some called great piece of early Asian American literature. You know, so that was like, being enmeshed in those

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histories, and then meeting people from those cultures, specifically the Japanese American community who had lived through the incarceration. Like talking to, gosh, I probably met like 300, 400 people at this point and done interviews with a lot of them.

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It was like a safer way to get into my family's history. Um, 'cause, you know, like, the reason my mom came to the US is in part, because during the Tet Offensive, like she was in a house, or her grandfather was assassinated. He was like a politician in South Vietnam, and he got blown

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up by grenade and she—my mom was there. Like, that's what I mean, by the real trauma, you know, like, some kid slanting his eyes at me, like I can deal with that, like, it sucks. It's not cool. I don't want to like give that pass.

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But it's like, that's–that's the real stuff. And that's hard to deal with, it's still hard to deal with. It's just like, that amount of death. So something like the Japanese way of incarceration allowed me to look at the

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injustice of our society on a much more manageable level, right. Th-these are 10 concentration camps, real bad news, real miscarriage of justice, denial of constitutional rights.

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Stuff I've dedicated my life and part to teaching and singing about. I have many dear friends who were in these camps. But these were not death camps. This was not being in the middle of the Vietnam War, or the Khmer Rouge or any kind

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of like genocide. So it was a very accessible way into the shenanigans of the United States government that they've been pulling since the beginning. Whether that's like, obviously, Indian removal, or slavery, and

00:26:57.220 - 00:27:14.600

all this kind of stuff. And so seeing people that kind of looked like me, especially in a place where I was one of the very few—again, one of the very few Asians in this place in Wyoming, and then talking to people who had been one of the very few Asians, but there was 10,000 of them in a camp in the state, you know?

00:27:14.930 - 00:27:33.610

And then also finding kinship with people who played music in these camps while I was leading a jazz band around Wyoming at the same—you know, 75 years later, I just found this kind of connection, more through vocation and being a musician, again, than my race or the way my eyes look.

00:27:34.800 - 00:27:48.220

But there is something about you know, what it's like to be an Asian dude, in Wyoming, except for I didn't have to live in a concentration camp or a mining camp, or this Chinatown that was razed to the ground. So yeah, those kinds of connections.

00:27:48.220 - 00:28:05.390

And then also, I worked with this author named Nina McConigley, who's half Indian, who grew up in Wyoming, and she wrote this really great award winning book called "Cowboys and East Indians, which is, has some really mo—just moving short story collection. And a few of them, the ones that focus especially on being like a little brown

00:28:05.390 - 00:28:20.360

girl in Wyoming, I found like, particularly instructive as a teacher, but also just as again, like, one of the lone people of color, so to speak i-in this place. So yeah, I think, going to the sights, making these

00:28:20.360 - 00:28:40.060

pilgrimages—because I had learned about them first, right, I had studied, studied them in books, and at the museum on campus—but then actually going to Heart Mountain or going to Rock Springs, it was very moving. Because I would just spend hours on my own driving up there,

00:28:40.460 - 00:28:57.700

walking around the sights and thinking about what I had read. And you know, what–what some other scholars call, like activating the land, knowing these histories and, and then yeah, that just rubbed off on me. And then it kind of—you know that you internalize as an artist when it creeps into

00:28:57.700 - 00:29:17.190

your work. And so, yeah, that place Heart Mountain, that place Rock Springs, reading Nina's book, talking to my friend LuLing, who was a half Chinese master's student at Wyoming that time, great writer. Those are very formative Asian American experiences, and

00:29:17.190 - 00:29:35.700

also the kind of Asian America that I identify with. It's like, you know, I get lumped in a lot of times—I guess, because of my music or whatever—with Asian American like capital "AA" Asian American, which is largely defined by I'm sure, as you're well aware,

00:29:36.920 - 00:29:52.010

this 1970s movement of mostly East Asian college educated, multigenerational Asian American families who are pretty well off, you know, who used the Vietnam War, who used my country's war, as like a rallying point without actually knowing any of these people.

00:29:53.620 - 00:30:09.600

An-and that kind of strain has become the dominant narrative as far as how we teach Asian Americans Studies, my field, and how we sort of define ourselves and all these like, but that West Coast Asian stuff makes no sense to me. I didn't grow up with that.

00:30:09.600 - 00:30:25.220

I grew up as one of these island in the middle of the country, Asians, and those are the people I find community and solidarity with. So historically, when I talk to these people who, like my friend Jim, my friend, Jim Mizuta, went to Heart Mountain as a teenager,

00:30:25.770 - 00:30:41.660

and was 15 and did judo and stuff like that. He eventually moved to Eastern Oregon. Real redneck-y place called Ontario or he lives in Vail. He's an onion farmer—is one of my-my–my favorite people is the Mizuta family, this

00:30:41.660 - 00:30:56.630

kind of middle of the country, in this like Asian, small Asian American community of onion farmers, a lot of whom are like Trump supporters, very similar to how I grew up, like much more politically diverse. And I identify with that a lot more.

00:30:56.850 - 00:31:14.420

Just kind of having to be in the middle and having to negotiate that as opposed to having everyone's in the same echo chamber all the time. So I think like that is where I found a solidarity was through the history of these miners and these people who are stuck in these camps,

00:31:14.420 - 00:31:31.330

but like middle Americans truly, again, who are dealing with real actual trauma, you know, it's definitely that but I still found like, connection. Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, this like real, like actual trauma, does that ever,

00:31:32.220 - 00:31:51.580

impose any challenges on you to like, think through these things, or work through these things? And I guess that leads me to, I guess, another question, like, what sorts of challenges do you run to, I guess, like, frequently in your, like academic studies, or your project or your

00:31:51.610 - 00:32:03.470

music, especially with these topics? Are you asking like, just the heaviness of these topics? Is it difficult to deal with as an artist and an academic, like, just immersing yourself in them?

00:32:04.260 - 00:32:17.130

Yeah, exactly. Do you ever get, I guess, lost in this trauma? Does it ever kind of like, take you away from I guess, like your end goals? Like is it hard to deal with ever?

00:32:19.150 - 00:32:35.890

It did—it was, yeah, it was overwhelming, when I first started with it. The way we teach ethnic studies of Asian American Studies, is super negative. And as someone who's like I said, become more and more just like, mindful and

00:32:37.960 - 00:32:51.690

I guess, adherent to Buddhist practices over the last few years, like taking that part of my Asian American-ness and taking that seriously, which is not really talked about in the political, Asian American circles. It's not very Buddhist space.

00:32:52.010 - 00:33:09.450

Very angry, kind of like self indulgent space, in my opinion. And I've been there, I've been there for sure. I think part of the reason why it's so angry is because you–you get a taste of this, you learn about Japanese internment, you learn about boat people, you learn about the Khmer

00:33:09.450 - 00:33:24.660

Rouge, you learn about all these refugees, you learn about the exclusion of Chinese people and all Asian immigrants until post World War Two. You learn about just the nonsense and the–the fuckery of the United States and how they've treated people from that continent.

00:33:25.800 - 00:33:40.630

How there was basically and still is, has been military occupation there for over a century straight, like no break in war occupation, in Asia by the US government. You learn about all that. And that's going to just—that's going to bother you.

00:33:41.080 - 00:33:58.270

And if you–if you take classes that only teach you the bad stuff, and don't necessarily celebrate the joy, you know, of those same incidents. So for instance, like for me as a musician, latching on to the–the jazz band that formed in this internment camp in Wyoming, finally stretching your agency,

00:33:58.820 - 00:34:16.110

and learning lessons from the past, not only how negative and horrible it was, how they treated people who might have looked like you, but also how those people even with limited agency, stretch their lives much further than you might be doing moping around in your college dormitory or in your office right now.

00:34:17.370 - 00:34:31.180

And that's what has become, that's what shifted right? I still obviously understand. And I learned and I continue to study the dark side of history, because that's important. I want to be able to be someone who people can ask about it, you know, and

00:34:31.180 - 00:34:44.890

keep–keep that knowledge alive. But at the same time, I want to tell people a more nuanced story. And that's been very helpful, to focus on joy because as I said, my family suffered catastrophic loss in a war that

00:34:46.910 - 00:35:02.870

is still mind boggling to think about and very hard for me to deal with. But my mom and my family when I talked to her and her sister, you know, they tell me about the moments of joy amongst the trauma and death, actual death, right?

00:35:04.060 - 00:35:17.120

And abuse, and all this horrible stuff. And that's so important for me to balance how I view history. So that's been very helpful. But I'll be honest with you, Kevin, like, when I first started doing the No No Boy

00:35:17.120 - 00:35:32.850

project, I was learning all this history, and then I was writing it into songs, and I was writing. So this stuff that overwhelmed me. And I was going through the archives every morning for like four hours a day like you do when you're a decent PhD student, and just collecting the stories and

00:35:34.050 - 00:35:45.460

I didn't balance anything out, right, there was no mindfulness, there's no middle path going on. So I just became overwhelmed by it. I started writing it into songs. And at my concerts, I project these archival visuals of internment camps and

00:35:46.240 - 00:36:01.200

refugees and stuff like this. And I remember I was literally down at the Mexican border because all this research really, it culminated in like, well, what does it matter to study the history when there's—if I'm—a family of refugees, if there's refugees today,

00:36:01.950 - 00:36:18.920

who are living in camps, the way that my quote unquote people were, you know, 50 years ago. So I went down to hang with those people and understand that more and try to help, not just by illuminating the past, but actually touching the present. And I remember, I was playing a concert for these people just gotten out of ICE detention

00:36:18.920 - 00:36:39.150

centers, all these women and children at this—it's called the holding center in Laredo, Texas, right on the border, right off the Rio Grande, and singing songs, and literally looking at these children from the Caribbean, from Central America, from West Africa, who had walked

00:36:39.420 - 00:36:54.220

some of them all the way up Mexico, or they've been captured at the border by coyotes and ransomed and seen people get killed and raped in these basement dungeons and then dropped across the border only to be picked up by ICE. And then I met them weeks after this, while they're seeking asylum, or trying to in the

00:36:54.220 - 00:37:07.870

United States and singing for these people. As well as like actually helping out and like buying clothes and stuff like that with some of my colleagues from Brown. And I just broke, I literally cracked in half at this concert.

00:37:08.360 - 00:37:27.590

I was hallucinating, I was seeing all the archival images of these horrific moments of history that I study, these kids faces from the internment camps, or refugee camps, or war mapped onto these little kids right in front of me, it was like a layer of translucent masks, like four or five deep, I

00:37:27.590 - 00:37:40.680

had so much stuff in my brain. And I had no balance because it's sometimes it feels more important to be angry than joyful, which is horseshit. I think it's important, like I said, you have to confront that trauma of the past and

00:37:40.680 - 00:37:49.890

be honest about it, that's how you learn to move on. But you can't live there forever. It makes you real negative person. A lot of my relationships disintegrated during this time:

00:37:50.560 - 00:38:08.020

romantic, friendship, professional. I was just like broken, I was-I've been in the hospital, in and out over a course of like three years because of this, just like physical manifestations of the stress and these ailments.

00:38:08.480 - 00:38:25.020

And so that's why now I'm so—I guess, on point about specifying to myself, the trauma that my family went through in the life of privilege that I can leave if I want, right.

00:38:25.560 - 00:38:42.470

This is a very in vogue term for my-for a lot of my students for the Gen Z kids of like inherited trauma to academic term, right. And I really latch on to thinking about the word inheritance in that–in that case, because you can do

00:38:42.470 - 00:38:58.940

what you will, once you get the—once you inherit something, financial inheritance or real estate or whatever, you can take that inheritance, and you can reinvest it, and you can grow it and build it and build it.

00:38:59.640 - 00:39:12.340

Or you can give it away. And you can like—once you actually have dealt with it. And I think the same might be true. At least in my case, for the trauma I inherit from my family or from this culture.

00:39:13.050 - 00:39:28.620

Once I deal with it, once I actually inherit it and take it on, who's to stop me from giving it away, other than my own pretenses about being an important academic or artist, and "I must be sad" or I must like be meaningful by dealing with you know, heavy stuff.

00:39:29.420 - 00:39:43.060

The work I do now is much more—yeah, focused on joy because it has to be. I remember this one woman Marcela, who's a journalist in Mexico. I was at some writers retreat.

00:39:43.060 - 00:39:58.700

They asked me to come sing some songs for the writers at this fellowship, like very like Pulitzer Prize winners, amazing people. I don't know why I was there. And Marcella covers mass graves in Mexico of migrants.

00:39:59.490 - 00:40:15.090

The cartels just like kill people on mass if they can't pay ransoms and stuff like that—it's a whole, whole thing. Awful. Like real bottom of the Earth, human experience stuff. So she's there finding mass graves, like dozens of people buried and hidden

00:40:15.460 - 00:40:24.800

in the Mexican desert. That's what she does for work. I said, I told that story. I tol—I was down in Mexico down in Texas, and I had this like, panic attack.

00:40:25.170 - 00:40:37.230

I couldn't deal with it. And I just like—all these histories overlapped, and they hit me like a tidal wave all at once. What do I do? You know, do I just quit? She's like, “I don't know, we got quit if you want, but like, the way I deal with it,

00:40:37.230 - 00:40:47.540

I–I want to keep doing this work. I think it's important. And I go see them, I go to the movies, go to the movies once a week. Just turn off that brain. Not everything has to be heavy and important all the time.

00:40:47.540 - 00:41:02.520

And in fact, you're not going to be doing sustainable good work.” This is why all the hippies became yuppies. And, you know, the baby boomers sold out because like, they had all these great intentions, much like these Gen Z kids like, and they were angry and they had like,

00:41:03.320 - 00:41:19.200

you know, had their fists in the air and whatever. And then they all became capitalists, because life's fucking hard. And you can't just be revolutionary, hardcore all the time. Especially when you have privilege as an option, like most of those

00:41:19.410 - 00:41:39.570

activists do in America, myself included, and so I've tried to lean in more to like, Okay, what would—would I be better served, screaming into the echo chamber of my fellow liberal academic artists, friends, or would it be better to serve, going into the forest, and

00:41:40.190 - 00:42:00.000

playing some music, and appreciating the companionship of the love of my life who I get to live with or seeing my family. And I've chosen the latter. It's just—yeah, I'm a–I'm a horrible Asian American activist now, which I think is quite funny, 'cause I see my music pop up on like,

00:42:00.210 - 00:42:24.870

Asian American activist playlists and stuff like that, so. You know, so your-your journey with–with this project, of you know, going through all of these experiences really took a toll on your [unintelligible] and parents.

00:42:25.530 - 00:42:41.200

So did people around you, you know, notice the kind of effect it had on you? Like, how about your parents? What were their reactions to I guess your studies and also your entrenchment

00:42:41.300 - 00:42:51.250

in–in your work. Well, I don't have a very close relationship with my family. I talk to them quite often. But um, you know, when I haven't lived at home

00:42:52.170 - 00:43:04.560

in–in Nashville—my mom was in Portland now. It's probably a reason why my fian-fiance and I are out here. But I haven't really talked to my parents regularly for a long time. Neither of them come.

00:43:04.790 - 00:43:17.700

They both come from very, like, not–not horrible, not great families. My mom literally comes from a family that got broken in half by war. So that's a thing. My dad's not very close with his family.

00:43:17.700 - 00:43:27.160

And so we grew up in Nashville. The closest family members were 800 miles away down to Florida. There was no—on in–in the south, at least when I was growing up, like I was very envious. All my friends had cousins.

00:43:27.160 - 00:43:41.930

Their cousins were their best friends and stuff like that. I didn't really have that. Saw my French cousins maybe every other year, going over to France and then family in New England, not very close with on my dad's side. So yeah, I don't have a great support system.

00:43:42.610 - 00:43:55.840

I have a wonderful partner now. But while I was starting this project, I was like in a very bad relationship. Which I would attribute to myself as much as this other person.

00:43:55.900 - 00:44:07.650

Relationships are very hard, I'm sure you know, this, it's a very difficult thing to be human and try to live with other people, at least from me, because I'm like, weird artist person. So I did not really have a place.

00:44:07.650 - 00:44:24.050

You know, I talked to some therapists. But it really wasn't until I think that trip—those trips to Mexico, which is what I was doing the year before the pandemic really straightened me out a lot, to see again, people really going

00:44:24.050 - 00:44:43.030

through it. Now I remember coming back to Providence after one spring break where me and some of my boys from Brown were down at the–the border helping out or just observing and my buddy Juan who was doing his PhD with us at the time. We're at the train station. I remember him saying like, how–how do we go

00:44:43.030 - 00:44:57.650

back? How do we go back to this university after like—when there's so many people down there who need help, like what is the point of all this? I don't know if it's related, but he's subsequent—he's in the Air Force now. He wanted a life of service.

00:44:59.520 - 00:45:10.010

Not necessarily the life of service I would choose but I love the kid and I would support him. I do support him. But that's kind of how I felt. I kind of, I don't know, I got straightened out by that.

00:45:10.040 - 00:45:28.070

It's hard to go back to seminars and chandeliered ballrooms at the Hilton and whatever city for your academic conference and argue with people about the plight of marginalized people while you eat finger foods at the reception and–and not think about like, oh, I, you know, I

00:45:28.070 - 00:45:46.350

saw some people like, living in tents for a year at the Mexican border, like just and got to know them and made friends with some of them. It's like, that straightened me out a lot. It put things in perspective, sobered me up about the whole activism

00:45:46.350 - 00:45:58.810

thing quite a bit. It's like, I just don't march anymore. I don't do that stuff. Like, I give my money. Give my time. Like, Amelia, my partner, she's in law school trying to help

00:45:59.740 - 00:46:13.880

in this kind of way. I still read books, try to educate, try to teach, but I–I pick my battles, so I don't get stressed out. And then the other thing was Buddhism. I went to Thich Nhat Hanh, he was like this Vietnamese monk.

00:46:14.160 - 00:46:29.020

He died recently, but as my mom's generation—older people, I guess, a generation above, but he was a very famous Buddhist monk. MLK nominated him–nominated him for a peace prize. And I went to one of his monasteries in upstate New York for a week.

00:46:29.790 - 00:46:43.470

And that sobered me up too and I met a lot of people who changed my life with what they told me. And so yeah, I find myself now. I'm still involved in a lot of these projects that

00:46:45.160 - 00:46:58.550

I was really into when I started the No No Boy thing like deep into Asian American academia activism. But I've changed so much and for the better, because it's manageable. And I think I can write these songs or at least, you know, put out some of these songs

00:46:58.550 - 00:47:14.920

for the rest of my life. It's more sustainable, and I can teach for the rest of my life and do this kind of like, I don't know, joy-centered living, which will hopefully permeate, like, what other people call activism.

00:47:18.480 - 00:47:35.400

Yeah, I was gonna ask a question about, you know, well you kind of touched on this already, you know, how there's this, we say there's rising anti-Asian sentiment. However, you know, we're always focusing on you know, the hate and the negativity.

00:47:35.670 - 00:47:52.460

I was going to ask you, you know, how–how, you know, music and scholarship can help, like, rectify this issue, but like, now, you know, it's–it's not so clear, you know, like, you can't just focus on negativity or, you know, trauma, there's also joy in that.

00:47:53.840 - 00:48:11.780

So like, alternatively, you know, like, you're bridging this gap between cultures to music and scholarship. But what kind of advice do you have, for individuals who are, you know, interested in doing the same thing, really?

00:48:14.290 - 00:48:23.290

People who want to make sad, depressing music? Like, or, like, specifically, who do you want me to give advice to? Like, what's the project? Like?

00:48:23.950 - 00:48:37.270

Um, I guess, just— Using history to inform art or like, makes— Exactly. Using hi—using music to inform history or, you know.

00:48:37.370 - 00:48:51.330

Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, for–for one, make sure your art is really good. Or at least I don't know if my art is good, but it's the best that it can be. Because I practice for a long time.

00:48:52.780 - 00:49:09.790

Don't position your subject matter first, before the craft isn't there to really do it justice, I guess. I feel like I get lumped in with a lot of this. representational or activist art.

00:49:10.700 - 00:49:25.760

And I can't stand most of it, because most of it is about like, it's hollow, it's shallow. And I feel like the skill is not there. A lot of times, it's not about the art first, it's about the message.

00:49:28.240 - 00:49:43.510

And I think that stuff will fade. I think we're in a moment in history, that people will look back on in 50 years, and be like, Wow, that was quite embarrassing the way that people were politicizing the internet and just yelling at each other constantly, liberals and conservatives

00:49:43.990 - 00:49:59.490

and I, I've seen a lot of what's happening as far as like media, in artistic practice, and people who like use art to sell stuff like using this representation moment that we're in. So that's like my first advice.

00:49:59.530 - 00:50:13.590

Make sure your art's really good. Like, follow your muse first, like detach yourself from your identity, whatever you think it is. And make sure it's just like you're in touch with, like the craft of what you're doing, whether that's storytelling, or whether that's music, making your painting

00:50:13.590 - 00:50:32.570

or moviemaking, make sure just like the fundamentals of your craft, like narrative, or light, or sound or rhythm, are practiced and done well. And then apply that to these very important stories that have not been told from maybe your community or other communities that you study or, like, in my case, digging

00:50:32.570 - 00:50:47.270

up oral histories to–to then share in a way that more people will will hear them than just digging through an archive and stuff like that. But I think like craft has to come first. And I can't stress that enough, I can't tell you how many like performance art pieces I've

00:50:47.270 - 00:50:59.150

seen have, like, some sophomore in college behind barbed wire, you know. And that's supposed to mean something. But it's just like you read like a book.

00:51:00.210 - 00:51:14.870

And, you know, maybe you're Japanese or maybe you're like, from a another marginalized community. And—but really, you're just a preppy college kid with a big ego and not well enough craft. And it sounds very harsh.

00:51:15.520 - 00:51:30.160

But that's like what I want to teach people, make sure that whatever medium you're using, and this is all I do, when I teach, I say you cannot write me a paper because I don't want to read it. I want you to create a final project that you would actually share with your friends,

00:51:30.530 - 00:51:49.640

when you're doing that engaging in that on a professional level, like I'm lucky enough to, I really want people to not just like—like I have the–the dishonor of being diversity wallpaper a lot. So like white people at a museum gallery, or a college will need something

00:51:49.640 - 00:52:03.540

for Asian American month. So they Google "Asian American music" or something like that, and maybe I come up, and then they hire me without ever really listening to my fucking shit. And it sucks. I take the gig because I need the money to pay my bills, and maybe help

00:52:03.540 - 00:52:22.090

out some people and stuff. But it stinks. And a lot of the academic industry right now, music industry, a lot of people are getting gigs like myself because of that. And I guess like if I have that opportunity, I want to make sure that like,

00:52:22.700 - 00:52:35.930

the music speaks for itself. And it says good on its own. Regardless of this moment of like diversity representation that we're in, which hopefully becomes just like, not even an afterthought in the future.

00:52:35.950 - 00:52:48.570

It's just, we're there. But also, I want it to be well researched, on the other hand, right. So I want the music to be very good. But then I also want it to be deeply researched.

00:52:50.530 - 00:53:05.160

So it's like taking both parts of the equation very seriously. And again, balancing those things, making sure that the craft is as good as the research and the research is good as a craft and both are done to the best of your ability.

00:53:05.850 - 00:53:25.760

Because while I might, you know decry this diversity wallpaper stuff that like a university will hire me, regardless of my art just because of my face, and my mom's story or something like that, which sucks on their part. There's also musicians who are very good, who I've worked with, who will just write a

00:53:25.760 - 00:53:41.120

song and then slap a title on it about like, Oh, this is about like, you know, this–this–this horrible event, you know, or this is–this is like about like the patriarchy or this is about like, oh, whatever buzzword, you know. But the research isn't, though, there.

00:53:41.600 - 00:53:54.630

Like the way that I've approached it, and my colleagues approach it in academia, like knowing what deep, deep research is, like what you're doing collecting oral histories, like getting these human stories and piling them up. That's how you sit with the history and sit with the culture.

00:53:55.130 - 00:54:11.140

I want more people who—I want more archivist, you know, to be involved in making art and writing books and things like this and making movies because—yeah. But it's–it's that–it's that blending of the two, that is so important to me.

00:54:13.310 - 00:54:32.490

And it's balancing both and making sure that you're not just, you know, have an interesting project that like will get in a museum gallery because of the subject matter. But also because the art is excellent. And unimpeachable. And well past the time of the moment that we're in, people will still

00:54:32.490 - 00:54:47.130

like it because of the form. And likewise, these great artists who want to get in on the like, Oh, I feel something right now. Do a little more research. Go to an oral history archive and sit for a week and just dig and listen and listen,

00:54:47.550 - 00:55:01.740

and then do your art. Does that–does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, makes sense. I feel like you keep bringing up this like recurring like theme of you know, balance and also not like just jumping the gun and really

00:55:02.920 - 00:55:16.060

going deep, digging deep and mastering craft before, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's all very Asian. Like if you go to like, the real, the real stuff, right like like going back

00:55:16.060 - 00:55:32.770

across the ocean like all that Buddhism stuff, all that practice stuff, all that like, you know. I mean a lot of my biggest influences are these like wild Chinese lunatic monks who like roamed—like Han Shan. All these dudes who wrote like, you know, poetry scrawled on mountain sides, like, I

00:55:32.770 - 00:55:42.850

don't know, like, that's going deep. That's like really knowing your stuff and like literally walking a path. So yeah, I mean balance. I find it—you know, I-I'm always very reflective.

00:55:43.680 - 00:56:02.270

And I think about how five, six years ago when I was in the throws of like, being an early academic and an angry academic, and like, I've got to be, I've got to be angry, to, like, prove a point or to get like, people to accept my paper to a conference or get likes on social media.

00:56:03.180 - 00:56:17.590

That stuff just doesn't float with me anymore. Like, I find it so embarrassing. There's, we, I think we waste our energy so much. There's–there's better ways to create the change in society that we should

00:56:17.930 - 00:56:35.720

and ought to–to aim to create. And—but it's hard to let go of that again, because like, you know, so much of it is just marketing and media and like, feeling important. Maybe not even other people, but to yourself, and—I am a

00:56:35.720 - 00:56:43.470

little bit scared. It's like with my new attitude, it's like, I'll just float away. But I think that's the point of Buddhism. So maybe that's a good thing. Yeah.

00:56:45.990 - 00:57:01.280

You mentioned you know, this, like, angry, scholar like, academic. I guess like one last quick question I have is, is there a snobbery in, I guess, your academic field of study as well? Did you ever face that?

00:57:01.280 - 00:57:17.180

Or is it—because I know that's present in a lot of other fields? Hm. Maybe. I mean, I just—I—coming to academia, from a–from a, you know, unclassically educated family, and from the south,

00:57:17.390 - 00:57:35.840

which I don't find many other Southerners in like Ivy League PhD programs for some reason. And also, having a whole different career that I defined myself by, like I am much more of a musician than academic. Academics are a means to an end of just learning stuff.

00:57:35.840 - 00:57:49.450

It's not a profession for me. I like to teach, but it's like, you know, my–my soul is that of a musician. But I'm very happy for academia to have educated my head. I don't know about snobbery, I found people pretty cool.

00:57:49.850 - 00:58:03.120

It was the angry people, myself included, that I look back on with embarrassment and disdain. And I think they're–they're sort of growing in the ranks, as this new generation comes up. And that's–that's all they know.

00:58:03.120 - 00:58:16.970

And just constant negative feedback through their social media is everything's—everything's a thing all the time. And there's not enough time to be calm and think, and–and disagree, and hear people out.

00:58:17.820 - 00:58:29.480

And let people learn from mistakes. I mean, again, like I said, you asked about my–my–my awkward path from musician to academic. So much of that was having space-giving myself space to learn.

00:58:30.050 - 00:58:44.250

And to undo a lot of the negativity that had either been done to me, like I said, as a child through racial stuff, or growing up in a patriarchy, growing up in a homophobic society, especially down south. All of these like kind of gnarly, not great cultural

00:58:46.270 - 00:59:04.510

strains that were thrust upon me and how that inhibited my emotional growth as–as a man, as a person, in relationships, both platonic and romantic. A lot of my life has been trying to learn more, so I can reset, empty out, undo and do better.

00:59:04.820 - 00:59:17.250

And that's a long process and you keep making mistakes, and you hurt people's feelings, and you get hurt by people. That's what it is to be human. But I feel like I haven't felt that there's room for me in

00:59:17.250 - 00:59:30.650

academia. I still teach occasionally, I'm teaching online course for Wyoming just because I love that university, and no one else will teach an Asian American studies course. It's the one Asian American studies course at the whole university. And the person who started it last year quit.

00:59:31.460 - 00:59:47.300

So they were like, if you don't teach, it's not going to happen. So I always want to teach, but as far as like my issues with academia, it's not snobbery, like, I'm sure that's there. But I think to be affected by snobs, you have to really take them seriously.

00:59:47.460 - 01:00:05.090

And I just don't take academics as seriously because I'm not an academic. I'm a musician. Like the stress of writing a dissertation was really not that tough compared to making an album for me, which I've done my whole adult life. And so I had already done projects like this that were this big and important.

01:00:05.090 - 01:00:21.690

And so yes snobs like I'm sorry. It sounds like maybe you've had to deal with some in your field and that sucks. But like, it's more of just the, I just want us all to calm down. You know, I think sometimes it's very righteous and cathartic to

01:00:21.690 - 01:00:36.860

be very angry, but it's not a space, I feel safe and ironically, right now. So I'll do my little music meditation thing and try to I don't know, help–help people here in Portland, or wherever I go. And yeah.

01:00:39.970 - 01:00:50.760

Yeah, thanks so much for sharing. It's all I have. Absolutely. Kevin, thanks so much for doing this. I appreciate like teachers, historians, archivists, people who do oral histories,

01:00:50.760 - 01:01:09.180

like, that's how I built, you know, all this repertoire of songs that I now get to share with people and I can't thank people like y'all enough for, you know, collecting this material. And yeah, it's–it's– it's deeply important, you

01:01:09.630 - 01:01:21.410

know, deeply important what you're doing. So I appreciate you taking the time to talk and I don't know if I helped in any way if someone will listen to this and find anything. But yeah, pleasure to talk to you.