Category Archives: pop culture

Charmaine Clamor, “Queen of Jazzipino,” coming to Colorado Jan. 29

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Charmaine Clamor, Queen of JazzipinoThe music is straight ahead jazz — the classic, swingy stuff with lots of space between instruments and a smoky, sultry voice caressing the lyrics. It’s jazz, the classic American artform. But the words… aren’t… English. The words to the lovely “Dahil Sa Yo (Because of You)” are sung in Tagalog, the native language of the Philippines. It’s a jazz standard nonetheless, written for a Filipino movie in 1938 and better known for an English-Tagalog version recorded in 1964 that made the charts in the US.

The singer is Charmaine Clamor, the self-described “Queen of Jazzipino,” who sings with a lovely voice in both English and Tagalog, a range of songs from traditional jazz to a fine jazzy version of the U2 rock hit “With or Without You,” to traditional folksongs of the Philippines in her jazzipino style.

Clamor’s built a loyal following of Filipinos worldwide by bringing her jazz chops to songs in Tagalog, updating her cultural heritage with a modern sheen. She was born in the Philippines and started singing when she was just 3, entertaining bus riders. She later learned to play the piano and accompanied her mother, who sang Filipino torch songs called “kundiman.” Her family moved stateside when she was 16 and she retained her cultural ties to the Philippines.

She’s released four albums, including the wonderful, low-key “My Harana: A Filipino Serenade” that’s almost entirely in Tagalog, and mostly sparingly accompanied with just a guitar or percussion. For fans of Brazilian jazz and samba sung in Portuguese, sitting back with Clamor’s Tagalog songs has the same lilting, lulling effect.

Clamor kicks off her 2007 album “Flippin’ Out” with a wonderful take on “My Funny Valentine,” “My Funny Brown Pinay,” a powerful affirmation of her ethnic identity that starts out with a spoken poem backed by piano, bass and drums before she breaks into the melody:
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It’s official: Banana 2 conference of Asian American bloggers set for Feb. 26 in LA

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Banana 2 is scheduled for Feb. 26 in LA

The Banana 2 conference of Asian American Pacific Islander bloggers is now officially set for Saturday, February 26 at CBS Studios in Studio City, Calif. If you haven’t heard of Banana, you can check out my blog post and photos from the first Banana gathering, which was an informal affair in late 2009. It was mostly one very large panel on the USC campus in LA, with most of us meeting up for dinner afterwards near Little Tokyo.

This year’s Banana will be an all-day conference with a handful of panels and breakout sessions, as well as a reception afterwards with entertainment (more details to come). And it’ll be held at CBS Studios in Studio City, with (I think) the reception planned for a New York street set for “CSI:New York.” Cool, huh?
I’m organizing a panel titled “Bananas, Twinkies, Coconuts & more: The rainbow of the AAPI blogosphere.” Here’s a draft description:

The Asian American blogosphere (as represented in the richness of Banana’s panels) covers a lot of ground, from the political to the whimsical, from foodies to Asian pop fanatics to bloggers that focus on specific communities. AAPI blogs can be about the Asian experience or exclusively about the Asian American experience.There are even blogs by Asian Americans that have nothing to do with Asian American culture, values or identity. What does it mean to be an Asian American blogger?

Other panels include:
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Happy New Year, Japanese-style

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Japanese New Year

Unlike other Asian cultures, the Japanese don’t celebrate Lunar New Year. Instead, they celebrate the Western calendar New Year, January 1, and some of the special traditions for the holiday, called “Oshogatsu,” have been handed down to Japanese Americans over the past century.

Japanese New Year’s traditions are different from Western (or at least, American) ones: First of all, New Year’s Eve isn’t the big holiday, and the focus isn’t on partying and waiting until midnight on Dec. 31 to watch the Times Square ball slide down, or to see fireworks or make hearty toasts. A lot of us do, because we go to parties to celebrate with friends — after all, we are Japanese American.

In Japan, New Year’s Eve and the days leading up to it are all about cleaning house, cleaning yourself and your soul, putting your business in order to prepare for the new year. It doesn’t sound like much fun. And traditionally, people spend New Year’s Eve quietly at home with family or friends. There are events, such as the release of thousands of balloons at Tokyo’s Zojoji temple to pray for world peace — pretty different from Times Square, huh? My mom’s hometown of Nemuro is at the easternmost tip of the northern island of Hokkaido, and thousands of people gather on Cape Nosappu outside of town past midnight on January 1, to see the first sunrise of the new year in Japan. Buddhist temples ring their bell at midnight to mark the start of the new year, a very spiritual sound.

There are other festive events throughout Japan too, with live music and fireworks just like in the US — it’s not all traditional.

By the time the clock ticks over into the new year, Japanese have spruced up their house with traditional decorations made of pine, bamboo and plum trees to bring good luck. On New Year’s Eve, families settle in with special toshikoshi soba noodles to bring long life, and watch Kohaku Utagassen, a men versus women singing contest that’s like karaoke on serious steroids featuring the country’s biggest enka (a traditional style of pop music) and J-pop stars. This show has been aired on New Year’s Eve since the end of World War II, and for decades it was Japan’s equivalent of the Super Bowl in popularity. Denver’s Japanese community has held a Kohaku Utagassen competition for many years too.

The main event in Japan isn’t New Year’s Eve and the midnight celebrations. It’s New Year’s Day, or Oshogatsu, and not because of college sports contests. The first days of January represent the start of a clean slate for everyone, and a time to celebrate family and friends by visiting people and wish everyone well. January 1 is also the day for a family feast that can put American Thanksgiving to shame.
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Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai releases 2nd spoken-word album, “Further She Wrote”

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Slam poet Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai I met spoken word artist Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai when she performed in Denver during the 2008 Democratic National Convention (you remember, the cool one where Obama was nominated) for an APIA Votes gala for Asian Americans. She rocked the room with a too-short set, and I bought her first album of slam poetry from 2007, “Infinity Breaks,” that night.

She released her second album, “Further She Wrote,” in early December and it’s available online via Bandcamp. Through January, you can name your price for the album (I suggest a minimum of $15 — we gotta support our peeps), to download the tracks to your computer. The CD version will be available in January.

Tsai’s a Chinese Taiwanese American born and raised in Chicago and now living in New York City. New York is a palpable presence in some of her poems, especially her sharply observed ode to her neighborhood, “he Ballad of a Maybe Gentrifier” in which she bemoans how the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood is changing as new diverse residents move in and the established black population gets pushed father into the margins. She notes the irony that she’s part of the new guard that’s changing the tenor of the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. I know the hood, since it’s where I went to college in the ’70s, at Pratt Institute. It was a mean-ass place then and it’s way different now. Sometimes changes — even “gentrification” is a good thing. She also draws a terrific picture of her hood in “Betp, Bed-Stuy Sketch #1.”
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Author urges women to date diverse men (good), then stereotypes men of color (bad) and says stupid stuff on NPR

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JC DavieHoly cow — I just read about this on Jezebel.com, and it goes way beyond the pale.

J.C. Davies, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and blogger who’s published a book about inter-racial dating, “I Got The Fever: Love, What’s Race Got To Do With It?,” was a panelist on the NPR show “Tell Me More” for an episode about dating unemployed men. The other panelists on the program were Danielle Belton, author of the blog “The Black Snob“, GQ magazine Washington correspondent and TV pundit Ana Marie Cox, and the host is Michel Martin.

Davies began riffing off the topic at hand, and spouted off some incredible stereotypes as if they’re indisputable facts. Here are some passages from the NPR transcript:
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