December 2, 2008
Meiko and the new ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ folk music: dreamy and world-weary
Meiko, a one-quarter Japanese American, or "quapa," from Georgia by way of Los Angeles, is at the vanguard of the new folk music. At least, that's the category where you'll find her on iTunes. She strums and picks an acoustic guitar, so she fits the folksinger/troubadour image.
But her music isn't based on the traditional "folk" music of the 1960s folk boom. Meiko's the latest in a long line of singer-songwriters who came out of that earlier folk boom. Starting with the likes of Bob Dylan, and peers and disciples from Tom Rush and Eric Andersen to Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne, singer-songwriters have skirted the edges of the rock-pop mainstream, playing their own music instead of traditional songs, with acoustic instruments as their foundation.
Their subject matter is mostly introspective and personal (hence, anti-pop by design) but when it clicks commercially, singer-songwriter music, like alternative rock, can hit the sweet spot and rise up the pop charts.
It's a style of music that in recent years has become quieter and quieter, almost a whisper instead of the declamatory protest music of, say, early Phil Ochs, or Peter, Paul and Mary, in the '60s, or the folk and country-rock of the '70s. The new folk music can be mopey (then again, weren't Jackson Browne's songs mopey too?).
And, it's become a signature style of television soundtracks. Although many shows now, from "Bones" to the "CSI" franchise, feature this type of music, I think of "Gray's Anatomy" first and foremost when I hear the new folk. The genre fits perfectly with the introspective spoken narration that closes each episode of "Gray's."
"Boys with Girlfriends," one of the best songs from Meiko's first full-length recording, "Meiko," was featured on "Gray's Anatomy on November 20. Once you know the song, you'll chuckle at how perfect it is for the romantic tensions that are at the heart of the series: "I know better not to be friends with boys with girlfriends," Meiko sings.
Boys With Girlfriends - Music VideoMeiko has a handful of equally terrific songs, the kind that get in your head and bounce around like a superball, keeping you humming for days. She's perfected the new folk sound, a dreamy, world-weary singing style that's colored with just a hint of a husky rasp. But it's her way of fitting words and phrases into cadences that stretch and contract to conform to her lilting sense of melody that stay with you.
Asian Americans are finally showing up in American pop culture at large, but Asian American fine artists are still mostly invisible. Only a few have had notable -- or rather, noted -- careers in the art world.
When I was an art student, I didn't think much of my heritage. You might say it was my "Banana Period." As an artist, I didn't appreciate my ethnicity, even when I was included in a group show of Japanese artists and my painting was bought by a famous playwright (keep reading below).
I simply didn't identify myself as an Asian American artist. I was simply an artist, and the art I made was informed by my 8th grade art teacher, Julie Maiolo, my high school art teacher, Jay Filson, and all my professors (especially color theorist Mary Buckley), as well as the art history teachers and books I soaked up. Which meant my awareness of art was all Euro-centric.
In all of that art history and theory, what I knew of Asia in art was that calligraphy was beautiful, ink painting was hard but similar in process to watercolor, and that Japanese woodblocks inspired the French Impressionists that I loved so much.
So it's understandable that I assumed any artist with an Asian name was Asian, not Asian American. For instance, for years I thought the sculptor 
Erin and I have great respect for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders' need to preserve our traditional heritages -- they enrich our lives and help give us our sense of identity with the countries of our ancestors. I think too few young Asian Americans hold on to their ethnic heritage.
At the same time, we're not just about kimonos and martial arts and traditional music and dances, and don't appreciate that outsiders (white people, mostly) view us through the exoticized filter of our cultural and social traditions. That's why, during her tenure as editor-in-chief of 
For Veteran's Day, 2008: Hoang Nguyen, 37, knew as a kid that he would join the U.S. military. “I wanted to repay back the United States for helping my family after the fall of Saigon,†he says.
He remembers the chaos of the end of the Vietnam war in the late ‘70s. “We took a boat from Vietnam to Guam, then flew to the U.S. with the help of American troops,†he says. “The military had a big impact on me at a young age.â€
That’s a common feeling among younger Asian Americans, he says, if they came out of the Vietnam War experience.
Hoang attended the Air Force Academy, earned a Bachelors of Arts & Science, and went into pilots training at 22. “My parents were initially slightly cautious†about his decision to join the military, he says. “My father did not want me to go through the rough times he went through. But my mother was elated.†(He's shown above, with his mother, Hanh Ha, at the ceremony when he was promoted to the rank of Major.)
Luckily, the closest he got to combat duty was conducting fly-overs in the Middle East between the two Iraq wars. He left the Air Force in 2000 (the official word is “separatedâ€) and joined American Airlines.
After 9/11, he said, his patriotism led him to join the reserves. He’s now a full-time active guard reservist and reached the rank of Major in 2005.
AAPIs fighting for America
When the subject of Asians fighting in the U.S. military comes up, the first thought is the Japanese American 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II. Many of those soldiers enlisted even though their families were incarcerated in American concentration camps. 
Erin and I got to see a really interesting traditional Korean dance and music performance last week.
Think about it -- you've seen taditional Japanese dancig in kimonos, and heard lots of traditional Japanese music, with the wood flute, koto and taiko drums. You've seen Chinese dance and heard Chinese music. And at events such as the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, audiences have been intorduced to the traditional dance and music of Bali, Vietnam, Philippines, India and more... but not that much from Korea.
During the early years of the CDBF, a troupe of Korean seniors used to perform, but their act was mostly 20 minutes of the large group in traditional dress, circling the stage to no particular rhythm and randomly beating on drums. The festival has also featured a solo Korean dancer who did a slow and meticulous mask dance. Abd last year during the Miss Asian American Colorado pageant, one contestant performed a Korean fan dance with a bunch of cute kids helping out.
I'm not sure why, but there hasn't been much exposure, at least in my world, of a lot of traditional Korean performance. Maybe the noisy, sometimes chaotic nature of traditional Korean dance just doesn't appeal to Americanized tastes.
Whatever the reason, though, we got plenty on Saturday, Sept. 6, when the Korean Consulate General in San Francisco sponsored a rare U.S. visit by a Korean dance troupe, Festive Lands, for a performance at the DCPA’s Temple Buell Theater titled “