The Music of Asian America Research Center is dedicated to increasing the visibility of Asian American musicians. To fulfill this goal, MAARC is creating a collection of biographical essays to be housed on our website, and creating/updating Wikipedia entries on Asian American musicians.
To launch this project, we are seeking scholars who will create engaging biographical essays on Asian American composers whose presence on Wikipedia is currently nonexistent, out-of-date, or inadequate. Each essay (2,500-3,000 words) needs to provide a good profile of a composer’s life and their music. To draw the attention of readers, it should begin with a discussion of something that reveals an important aspect of the composer’s compositions or personality. This can be a special moment in one of their works, or a biographical detail. The body of the essay should narrate your subject’s life, relevance and significance. Readers should come away not just with a series of facts, but with a sense of who the composer is and why they should investigate their music further.
Musical analyses should give readers a good sense of the work’s affect. It should use minimal jargon, and contain no traditional Western notation. Embedded videos are encouraged. If possible, the essay should discuss works that are easily (or fairly easily) accessible online (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify, Soundcloud, composer’s website, Naxos). Citations should follow MLA format. Good model essays can be found in the anthology Women Who Rock and the “Artist Profile” section (Chapter 8) of How to Write About Music: Excerpts from the 33 1/3 Series, Magazines, Books and Blogs with Advice from Industry-leading Writers. We hope to publish 20 essays in 2020.
We will pay an honorarium of $100 for each published essay.
As MAARC is committed to helping to recover the earlier history of Asian American music, we are especially interested in essays on composers born before 1960:
- Dadap, Michael
- Ho, Ting
- Kim, Earl
- Lam, Bun-Ching
- Luo, Jing Jing
- Qu Xiaosong
- Santos, Jr., Rosendo E.
- Sur, Donald
- Ung, Chinary
- Wong, Betty Siu Junn Wong
- Ye, Xiaogang
- Yuasa, Joji
MAARC is also interested in commissioning essays on the following composers who were born after 1960:
- Chang, Yu-Hui
- Chen, Timo
- Choi, Da Jeong
- Esmail, Reena
- Jolley, Jennifer
- Kim, Jeeyoung
- Kim, Missok
- Li, Yan
- Liu, Anqi
- Nam, Sujin
- Phan, P.Q.
- Santos, Jr., Rosendo E.
- Srinivasan, Asha
- Sung, Stella
- Tang, Jeff
- Wang, Zhiyi
- Xi Wang
- Yamada, Reiko
- Zhou Tian
If you are interested in contributing or have questions, please email Dr. Jennifer Wilson. If you want to propose an essay on a composer who is not on our list, also email Dr. Wilson and explain why we should publish that essay right now.
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