Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | pop culture
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May 16, 2011

Dengue Fever It's a curious conceit of rock critics that we love being the early adopters who discover great new talent, but we want that talent to stay exactly as we found it, as if the music is some sort of archeological treasure, suspended in amber for the ages. We can't imagine a musician might continue along an evolutionary progression and grow and mature artistically. Or worse, we dismiss artists we like when they become too popular, as if being adopted by a wider, mainstream audience taints artistic credibility. I know I've been guilty of both. I dismissed Joni Mitchell past "Miles of Aisles" as becoming too arty (as if her earliest, brittle folk gems weren't also arty to the extreme). I blew off Bruce Springsteen once he sold a bazillion copies of "Born in the USA." The fact is, most music critics are snobs, and we're proud of it. Over the years since I "retired" from being a full-time music critic, I've mellowed and accepted that I have biases (old-fart biases at that), and see how I blocked out good music by being an obstinate butthead. So I was surprised when I realized I still fall back on snob instincts with new music from time to time. These days I rarely write about any music unless it's related to my interests in Asian culture or Asian American community. I've written in the past (here and here), for instance, about Dengue Fever, an alt-rock band from California that was formed by a pair of white brothers who fell in love with Cambodian rock of the 1960s, and found a Cambodian singer to help them meld that sound with surf and psychedelic music. For years I've been intrigued by the band's globe-hopping musicality and especially enchanted by singer Chhom Nimol's slinky, elastic vocals, which snakes through melodies with the tonality and scale of traditional Cambodian folk and pop songs. In a word, though I hesitate to use it because it's such a loaded symbol of Orientalism, objectifying Asian culture and people, my attraction to Dengue Fever is in large part because of Nimol's exoticism. There, I've said it.
May 10, 2011

Quarter Pounder with Cheese: A Taste of American-style Heaven?Immigrants to the United States strive to gain the American dream.... and manage to gain American weight at the same time. It makes sense if you think about it: You want to fit in as a newcomer to the U.S., and you know the cliché, "when in Rome do as the Romans do" -- you eat like people in Peoria or Poughkeepsie. McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Fattburger, Inn-N-Out, White Castle.... and that's just the burgers and fries. There's pizza, shakes, funnel cakes, onion rings, fried chicken, tacos, burritos, hot dogs, brats, chips of all kinds and candy out the wazoo (though, to be honest, Asians eat a wider array of strange and wonderful candy than the typical American chocolate bar). It's not just the high-calorie, high carb, high-sugar diet of Americans, it's that immigrants embrace this diet with gusto to prove their American-ness. According to an article on Futurity.org, "Immigrants get supersized in U.S.," a study published in Psychological Science that compared Asian Americans with white college students found some facsinating data about their childhood food memories:
May 3, 2011

Erin and I are celebrating the second anniversary of our talk-show visualizAsian, and I've been writing my Nikkei View musings since 1998 (check out the Nikkei View archives). But it boggles my mind to think that Phil Yu has been writing his Angry Asian Man blog for 10 years. Why? Because he's so frickin' dedicated that he writes multiple times...

April 28, 2011

Maggie Q and Albert Kim on the set of "Nikita"Wow, we're excited to announce our Second Anniversary show in honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month: A one-hour conversation with Albert Kim, a writer and co-producer for the hit CW network action series "Nikita" starring Maggie Q! We'll be speaking with Albert on TUESDAY, MAY 10 at 7 pm Pacific Time (10 PM ET). Just register with visualizAsian (it's free) and you'll get the information to dial in to our conference line, or listen on our live webcast. If you've already registered for visualizAsian calls in the past, you'll automatically receive the dial-in information via email. Remember, you can always submit questions to our visualizAsian guests in advance and during the livecast. You missed our show with Albert Kim! But for a limited time you can still register to hear the archived replay MP3 of the conversation. You may not recognize the name, but if you watch "Nikita" or have watched "Leverage" in the past, you've seen him in the front credits. Here's Albert's bio: Albert Kim is a TV writer, producer, and award-winning journalist. Before his stint the staff of "Nikita," Kim spent three seasons on the hit TNT show "Leverage," and has also written episodes of FX’s "Dirt." But his roots aren't in television scriptwriting.
April 8, 2011

Curt Yagi"Live My Life," the lead track from the new album, "Close My Eyes" by Curt Yagi and The People Standing Behind Me (great band name) grabs me right away. It reveals Yagi's wide-ranging musical palette with dabs of color -- Yagi's funky acoustic guitar, then a drum flourish -- before he splashes the canvas with bass and very cool horn section riffing, and then Yagi's vocals and grungy electric guitar add a sonic signature that has me tapping my toes and nodding my head to the catchy melody. The album (which is officially released on April 12 but is available for advance purchase online) is full of such sweet pop confections that take diverse musical elements and mashes them together into memorable hooks and melodies. "Sweep Me," the second track starts with a ballad intro but kicks into an acoustic ska arrangement pushed along by that horn section. Yagi, who's a Yonsei, or fourth-generation Japanese American born and raised in the Bay Area, credits the reggae and ska influences to his love for the genres when he was in high school. He added alt-rock influences when he was in college. He became a musician relatively late in life -- he started writing songs after his father died of a rare disease 10 years ago -- and started singing at open mics. He holds down a day job as executive director of a non-profit, Real Options for City Kids (ROCK) that serves at-risk children with enhanced public school and after-school programs. He started as a volunteer in 1998 and was also a board member before taking on his current role. So he's an artist who already invests his heart and soul in his day-to-day life and is talented enough to also express it musically. Yagi's now 40 (he looks 25) and he and his band were voted "Best of the Bay" by the alt-weekly SF Bay Guardian, and they regularly play Bay Area venues. I wish I could see him live just to experience the intriguing mix of acoustic, electric and horns in person. It's tempting to pigeonhole Yagi's music as steeped in R&B because of the horns, funky rhythms and his often soulful vocals, but after a few listens to the album, I've decided he's a musical omnivore, who likes a lot of different sounds and is able to call on them all as elements to mix in like pigments a painter might use to get just the right shade, the right tone, the right light and shadow.
March 24, 2011

Lynn ChenUPDATE:Due to a scheduling conflict, our conversation with Lynn Chen is now scheduled for Monday, April 11 at 7 pm PT. Lynn Chen is a woman after Erin and my own hearts... and stomachs. She's a foodie as well as a talented actress and musician, and she writes one blog, "The Actor's Diet," about "the life of a Hollywood actress. Meal by meal," and recently launched another, "Thick Dumpling Skin," about Asians' diet and body issues, with Hyphen publisher Lisa Lee. We're thrilled to announce that we'll be speaking with Lynn for our next visualizAsian show on TUESDAY, APRIL 26MONDAY APRIL 11 at 7 pm PT (10 pm for you folks on the east coast). Just register here for the free dial-in and webinar information -- if you've registered for previous visualizAsian calls, you'll already receive the info. Wow, you missed a powerful conversation with Lynn on April 11, but you can still register to hear the archived MP3 of the call for 30 days. Lynn Chen, whose "excessive beauty makes us want to rip our eyeballs out," according to the ladies of the Disgrasian blog, was born in Queens, New York in 1976 to a mother who sang at the Metropolitan Opera and a father who is an ethnomusicologist, and she was raised in New Jersey and attended Wesleyan University. As a child, Lynn sang with the Children's Choirs at the Metropolitan and NYC Opera Houses, and made her acting debut in the NY State Theatre production of "South Pacific" at Lincoln Center. Television credits include "NCIS: LA," "Numbers," guest roles on almost all of the "Law and Order" shows, and recurring roles in "All My Children" and "The Singles Table," opposite John Cho and Alicia Silverstone. Of her films, Lynn's best-known as "Vivian Shing" in Sony Pictures Classic's feature film "Saving Face," a role for which she won the "Outstanding Newcomer Award" at the 2006 Asian Excellence Awards. Since then she has appeared in over a dozen films, most recently starring in "White on Rice," "Why Am I Doing This?." "The People I've Slept With," and the just-released "Surrogate Valentine," which is making the rounds of film festivals. "Surrogate Valentine" was directed by Dave Boyle, the young filmmaker who also wrote and directed "White on Rice," a terrific indie film, and it's a fictionalized story of the real-life experiences of singer-songwriter Goh Nakamura. The film was the closing night selection of the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, and just screened at SXSW Film in Austin. But Lynn isn't just limited to acting. In fact, she took some time off from acting to deal with her eating disorders, and started "The Actor's Diet" in 2009 as a way to write about food and to hold herself accountable for eating healthy (with the burgers and fried thrown in). Here's how she explains the blog:
February 22, 2011

The Monsters of Shamisen rock, even though they're playing a traditional Japanese instrument, a three-stringed lute that's plucked with a plectrum that looks like an windshield scraper. The shamisen usually is heard playing traditional Japanese folksongs, and as accompaniment for kabuki and bunraku theater. It has an instantly-recognizable single-note sound that's similar in tone to the banjo. It's a folk instrument. But the Monsters of Shamisen don't play just old-time folk music. You won't hear only a Japanese version of banjoey, bluegrassy songs. Sure, you'll hear that, but the MoS puts their instruments to use on Western classical music, pop and rock and roll, European folksongs, and yes, bluegrass too. Where else are you gonna hear Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" payed on two shamisen (above)? Last night, two of the three Monsters, Kevin KMetz and Mike Penny, performed at the King Center on the Auraria Campus in a concert sponsored by the Japan Foundation and the Consulate General of Japan in Colorado. (The third, Masahiro Nitta, is in Japan.)