Documenting Asian American Community Music Ensembles
GBCCA Chinese Music Ensembles take a bow after a concert at the New England Conservatory.
About DAACME
In Summer 2019, MAARC launched its “Documenting Asian American Community Music Ensembles” (DAACME) initiative with the help of a grant from the Society of American Archivists Foundation. Led by Eric Hung, this project aims to help community members, educators and researchers understand and experience how various Asian American populations use music to preserve ancestral cultures, adapt to life in the United States, perform their senses of belonging and citizenship, create space in local music ecosystems and racial landscapes, and even reject elements of homeland cultures.
Ultimately, DAACME aims to benefit:
- Asian Community Music Ensembles by making them more visible to Asian American communities and beyond
- Participants in Asian Community Music Ensembles by helping them gain not only a sense of representational belonging, but also the knowledge that many people use music to work on identity issues
- Educators and presenters who are looking for local musicians who can do lectures, workshops, and concerts
- Artists who are seeking collaborators from specific traditions or locations
- Researchers who are seeking to study Asian American music and experience
DAACME’s primary deliverable will be a digital archival collection that documents at least 70 ensembles and collectives across the United States. We will aim for diversity in ethnicity, genre of music performed, ensemble structure, geography, and the length of time the ensemble has existed. The documentation of each ensemble involves:
- Collecting, preserving and making accessible a digital recording of one performance, workshop, gathering or rehearsal;
- Collecting, preserving and making accessible digitized surrogates of documents and artifacts that the ensemble is willing to share;
- Conducting and making accessible at least one oral history with the group’s key member(s);
- Creating an information page about the music tradition in which the ensemble participates; and
- If the ensemble desires, holding an online or in-person workshop on how to systematically archive their own histories.
Collaborating ensembles must have at least two of the following traits:
- Founded by Asian Americans, or led by Asian Americans for an extended period;
- Substantial Asian American participation in ensemble activities;
- Sustained connection to Asian American communities’ infrastructure (e.g., use of Asian American cultural center for rehearsal, performance at community events or festivals)
We will also put together educational resources and a variety of programs related to this initiative. DAACME will culminate with a traveling exhibit about music-making in Asian American communities. Researchers who have worked on this project include Victoria Huynh, Joe X. Jiang, Runchao Liu and Mandi Magnuson-Hung.
In late 2019 and early 2020, we started working with 15 collaborating ensembles in Arizona, California, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia. Other than a few oral histories conducted over Zoom, DAACME has unfortunately been largely been on hold since March 2020. Over the past 16 months, very few community ensembles have been running, and we certainly did not want to encourage unnecessary in-person meetings. As soon as the pandemic eases (hopefully the current surge won’t last too long), we plan to resume this initiative. We will also make decisions about how we will discuss the impact of COVID-19 and the associated wave of anti-Asian discrimination in the coming months.
Early Findings
Please find below works-in-progress pages for four of our collaborating ensembles/collectives.
- Awaaz Do (South Asian; Boston/Phoenix; fusion funk/metal band)
- N.C. Raga Revival (South Asian; Central North Carolina; Indian classical music)
- Orchids and Bamboo Chinese Music Ensemble (Chinese; Portland, OR; Chinese instrument orchestra)
- S.N.R.G. (Filipino; Northern Virginia; Hip hop and spoken word, song-writing duo)
Join the DAACME Initiative!
If your ensemble are interested in being a part of the DAACME initiative, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/Anb6tEmRNFYfwiD87