People of Asian descent have settled in North America since the mid-18th century. The first known permanent residents were Filipino sailors; when the Spanish ships they were forced to work on docked in New Orleans, the so-called “Manilamen” fled and established fishing villages in the Louisiana bayous. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos, as well as smaller numbers of Koreans and Indians, came to the United States primarily to work on plantations, factories and railroads.
During the first waves of Asian immigration, racial tension was high as white laborers feared that they would lose their jobs to or have their salaries undercut by new immigrants. As the notion of a “Yellow Peril” gained prominence, Chinese and Filipino laborers in particular became frequent targets of mob violence and lynchings in the American West. Fear also led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (expanded into the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924), which barred further immigration from Asia, and Executive Order 9066, which gave the U.S. government the authority to relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II. One effect of all this discrimination was the growth of ethnic enclaves, where musical cultures that influenced both America and Asia thrived.
The Magnuson Act of 1943 repealed the Asian Exclusion Act, but the law that ultimately reopened Asian immigration to the United States was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Asian immigrants of the past half century have diverse backgrounds, and moved to the United States for a wide variety of reasons: to take advantage of educational and economic opportunities, to escape political persecution, to reunite with family members, and so on. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were, in 2009, approximately 16 million people of Asian descent in the United States (including almost two million who identify as multiracial); this was approximately five percent of the country’s population. The 2008 Census Bureau Population Projection foresaw the Asian American population exceeding 40 million (9.2% of the population) by 2050.
Given that Asian Americans come from different social classes and ethnic heritages, and have very dissimilar relationships with Asia and knowledge of Asian cultures, it is no surprise that they participate in a wide variety of musical activities. This article surveys several musical traditions with significant Asian American participation, but it is important to note that many would not apply the label “Asian American music” to any or all of them. “Asian American music” is a highly contested term that is used to denote anything from “any music made by Asian Americans” to “music made by Asian Americans about the Asian American experience” (Wong 2004)
Asian American Music Before 1965
Most of 19th and early 20th-century Chinese immigrants came from the coastal regions (particularly Taishan, located just west of Macau) of Guangdong province in southern China, and they brought with them their love of Cantonese opera (Yueju) and a narrative song tradition from Taishan called muyu (literally “wooden fish”). Often sung without instrumental accompaniment by one singer or a group of alternating singers, many muyu texts are based either on historical, mythical and folk romances, or on the immigration experience. A particularly popular muyu among Chinese Americans, “Xiu Hua Ge” (“The Embroidery Song”), depicts the sorrows of a wife who was left behind in China after her husband came to America (Zheng 2010).
To fulfill their desire for Cantonese opera, Chinese Americans not only formed musical clubs that put on operas, but also sponsored tours by well-known troupes from China and Hong Kong during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the 1920s being a particular “golden age.” It is worth noting that these tours took place during the Exclusion Era; the United States banned permanent immigration from China, but well-known performers were granted short-term work visas. (Bruce Lee’s father, Lee Hoi-Chuen, was a member of one of these touring troupes.)
Many non-Chinese attended performances of Cantonese operas in various Chinatowns. As a child, maverick composer Henry Cowell (1897-1965) lived in close proximity to San Francisco’s Chinatown and became fascinated with the sliding tones he heard in these theaters (Rao 2005). Later, he incorporated these techniques into his music and discussed them in his writings, which are still considered seminal in the American experimental music tradition. Cantonese opera performances in Chinatown also affected the course of Cantonese opera performances in Asia. Although the top performers of a Cantonese opera troupe are traditionally all male or all female, male and female stars began performing together in the United States. When they returned to China and Hong Kong, some of them began forming mixed troupes.
Because of the passing of the Asian Exclusion Act in 1924, the history of Japanese America before 1965 can be divided generationally (Asai 1995). The first generation, the Issei, moved to the United States between the onset of significant Japanese immigration in 1890 and 1924. For the most part, these immigrants continued to play, teach and listen to folk, classical and popular Japanese music in America. The second generation, the Nisei, were born in America between 1910 and 1940. Although they often learned some type of Japanese music as children, the Nisei increasingly turned toward American and European idioms, such as jazz (forming such groups as the Cathayans in San Francisco and the Japanese Sandmen and the Sho Tokyans in Los Angeles in the 1930s), glee club singing, Western classical music, and Hawaiian music.
This trend toward Americanization peaked after anti-Japanese hysteria during World War II led to the forced internment of 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent in ten camps located in desert/semi-arid areas in the western states or a swampy area in Arkansas. Although some Japanese music, played primarily by the Issei, can be heard at the internment camps, most Nisei wanted to demonstrate their American-ness. As a result, the sounds of big bands, the most famous of which was called the Manzanar Jive Bombers, permeated the camps. They performed at Christmas concerts, variety shows, camp dances and other events. After Word War II, several of these jazz musicians moved to Japan and helped launch the jazz scene there (Yang 2001).
Asian American Music After 1965
After 1965, Asian American music was transformed by two developments. One is the large and continuing influx of immigrants. Some are laborers from China, Japan and the Philippines, but others do not resemble the early Asian immigrants. There are refugees from mainland Southeast Asia (Vietnamese, Hmong, Cambodian, Laotian) as well as well-educated professionals and wealthy entrepreneurs from many countries. The other is the emergence of an Asian American movement. Led initially by descendants of the early immigrants, the movement formed a multi-ethnic coalition to fight discrimination against and bring greater political recognition toward Asian Americans. Together, the two developments created active scenes for Asian traditional and classical musics in almost all major American cities and the proliferation of new Asian American styles that combined elements of different musical traditions.
Over the past four decades, numerous masters of Asian traditional and classical musics have moved to the United States. The most successful tend to perform not only canonical repertories from their homeland, but also new music and fusion works. While Ravi Shankar (North Indian sitar) has written three concertos for sitar and orchestra, Wu Man (Chinese pipa) has a longstanding collaboration with the Kronos Quartet and Kyaw Kyaw Naing (Burmese drum circle) has performed with the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Some, such as Sumarsam (Javanese gamelan) and Swapan Chaudhuri (North Indian tabla), have also spent many years teaching at the college level, but others, such as Wang Guowei (Chinese erhu) and Masayo Ishigure (Japanese koto), teach primarily within their own ethnic communities.
Today, thousands of Americans regularly perform on Asian instruments and in Asian music ensembles. While some groups, such as Chinese youth orchestras attract primarily participants from within their own ethnic communities, some others, such as Japanese taiko, are more pan-Asian in membership (Yoon 2001). Most of the over one hundred gamelans in the United States consist mainly of non-Asian Americans.
Asian Americans have been very active in Western classical music. Since East Asian countries adopted Western music education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most post-1965 immigrants from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan have at least some familiarity with Western classical music. Many of them also saw knowledge of this tradition as a kind of cultural capital that can lead to upward mobility, and booked piano and violin lessons for their children. By the late 1970s, Asian Americans began flooding major music conservatories in the United States. Today, major Asian American performers of Western classical music include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Sarah Chang, conductor Kent Nagano, the concertmasters of the Chicago Symphony and the Philadelphia Orhcestra, and members of the Tokyo, Ying and Parker Quartets.
Ever since Henry Cowell, American experimental composers, such as Lou Harrison, John Cage and George Crumb, have incorporated Asian philosophies and sounds in their works. The past three decades have also witnessed the rise of numerous Asian American composers, such as Tan Dun, Chen Yi, Chinary Ung, Bright Sheng, Zhou Long, and Bun-Ching Lam. They write mostly for Western classical instruments and ensembles, but many use aspects of Asian traditional musics in their works. This use of traditional elements and the ways audiences hear them have been a great source of debate among scholars of Asian American music (Lam 2000, Sheppard 2009).
Ever since the 1930s, jazz has played an important role in Asian American history. In the 1960s, jazz pianist/composer Toshiko Akiyoshi was among the first Asian American musical acts to achieve mainstream success. A decade later, a younger generation of Asian Americans, including Jon Jang, Mark Izu, Francis Wong, Glenn Horiuchi, Fred Ho, Anthony Brown and Jason Kao Hwang, began developing an experimental and hybrid genre that is rooted in jazz, but is also reflective of their ancestry and experiences as Asian Americans. They valued the balance between individuality and group cohesion in jazz and the music’s American-ness. Most involved in this movement are committed to building multicultural coalitions (reflected in the multiethnic lineup of many of their ensembles) and progressive politics. Many of their works attack common American stereotypes of Asians and, especially in the early years of the movement, reflect on the Japanese internment experience.
Numerous Asian Americans, especially recent immigrants, keep a connection to their heritage by listening to popular music from their ethnic homelands. Many sing these songs in karaoke, and some even compete in singing competitions (Lum 1996). A few of the top pop stars in Asia today, such as Wang Leehom, are in fact born and raised in America.
At the same time, many form or join bands that play a wide variety of music that has nothing to do with recent Top-40 hits in Asia. While some, such as happyfunsmile and Dzian!, are inspired by Asian popular music of earlier decades and incorporate Asian instruments in their bands, others have become successful singer-songwriters (Magdalen Hsu-Li, Rachel Yamagata), rappers (Jin, Mountain Brothers, Blue Scholars) and bhangra musicians (DJ Rekha) (Maira 2002). A number of extremely successful mainstream bands also include Asian American members (Metallica, Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins, Linkin Park, The Black Eyed Peas, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs).
In the early 21st century, Asian Americans make and listen to all kinds of music. Some are involved in traditional musics from their ancestral homeland or some other part of the world, others connect most with Western classical music, jazz or some form of popular music. As the experiences of Asian Americans are becoming increasingly diverse and entangled in the American fabric, the musical activities that they participate in are bound to become even more varied in the future.