Welcome to Boston Progress Radio! We're an Asian American blog and community-based online radio station focusing on independent Asian American music and art. Our goal is to build a space for Asian American artists to share their work, to offer their perspectives and to reflect on what connects us, what moves us, what powers us.
This is a collective effort: we hope that in this spirit, you will share your thoughts, give us feedback, and provide reactions as we try to grow this community. Read our blog, listen to some music and let us know what you think.
Boston Progress Radio is a project of the Boston Progress Arts Collective. BPR only plays tracks that artists have given explicit permission to play.
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East Meets Words Open Mic featuring BROWNSTAR
| July 10, 2009 | ||
| 8:00 pm | to | 10:30 pm |
Boston Progress Arts Collective presents another awesome East Meets Words Open Mic event. Get yourself down to 934 Massachusetts Avenue next Friday 8pm. It’s gonna to be hot. It’s gonna to stop raining, the sun is gonna shine and the words are gonna be fire. This month’s feature is BROWNSTAR!
Formed in 2007 BROWNSTAR is a two-man spoken-word duo bursting forth from the pens and dreams of emcee-poet-performers PUSHKAR NORTH STAR SHARMA and SATHYA SOUTH STAR SRIDHARAN. Grown in the Heartland of America but Flavored with the Masala of the Motherland, BROWNSTAR shouts what often goes unheard, giving BROWN a voice and song— presenting a fresh perspective and exploring the contradictions, complexities, and epiphanies of South-Asian identities.
Utilizing original performance pieces, BROWNSTAR walks the tightrope of hyphenation, their stage show ignites a conversation about South-Asia and its diaspora, exploring everything from Kal Penn to Rushdie to the legacy of Gandhiji and the contemporary politics of The-Louisiana-Governor-Formerly-Known-As-Piyush. BROWNSTAR reveals their unique perspective while asking those timeless, human questions about our world, our galaxy, and our universe.
If that last line doesn’t get you to the open mic, I don’t know what will. The meaning of life will be answered once and for all.
Tags: Open Mic.
No commentsShuffled! Theresa Hwang
Shuffled! is a regular column appearing most Thursdays here on BPRLive. Each column, we welcome someone from the API* community to share some thoughts about the music they listen to. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past articles. (Apologies readers, we are no longer linking to online playlists.)
Today’s Shuffler: Theresa Hwang
Theresa is constantly looking to find joy and create meaningful beauty in the everyday. Her work has ranged from youth educator to urban designer. Her goal is to build- community and architecture. She’s worked with a bunch of different community-based organizations in the Boston-area from Chinatown to Dorchester. and she’s studied a bunch of different disciplines from glass blowing to civil engineering. Her goal is to feel the city breathe.
She sometimes blogs at broadleafstudios.wordpress.com.
Her shuffled is 100% real, no skipping/deleting/advancing/ignoring of songs. She’s surprised none of the songs from Rockband showed up.
So we shuffle…
Tags: Shuffled!.
2 commentsDear BPRLive, Have you been Asian American in Asia?
Hey BPRLive readers, listeners and contributors, what are your experiences of being Asian American/API* in Asian countries?
For the most part, my visits to Japan largely have a feeling of quiet anonymity flecked with spurts of Asian American identity assertion; I feel like I usually blend in among the masses, my lack of bleached brown hair and en vogue threads probably dismissed as callous disregard for social conformity (or laziness). But there are times when I’ll be talking with someone who all too soon asks about my nationality or where I’m from, only to be unsatisfied when I say American/America/Boston and then draw out the discussion by asking about my ancestry. But irritatingly, my obviously “American” friends never get this kind of treatment. This has occasionally led me to the mildly disquieting feeling that some of these people have skewed notions of what it means to be American; I get the impression they think we’re Asians that simply grew up and live in the US but are (or should be) most strongly connected to and identify with the Asian nation(s) and culture(s) of our family history — or that we have an explicitly quasi-American biculturality, that we’re not really American. They probably just haven’t met enough Asian Americans to overcome these misconceptions, and personal encounters seem to be one of the only ways these misunderstandings can be dismantled since Asian Americans don’t seem to be especially visible in Japanese media (the only prominent example I can think of is the asadora Sakura which follows the experiences of a Japanese American from Hawaii working as a teacher in Japan). But maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance that they are interested in the greater complexities of the Asian diaspora, and that isn’t readily conveyed in the questions they ask; perhaps their ill-phrased inquiries of my ethnic composition and cultural orientation are an attempt to gain insight into the intricacies of immigration and multiculturalism…
Undoubtedly, there must be a lot of variation in how Asian Americans are perceived by people in Asian countries. In Taiwan, it feels like everyone and their cousin has a friend or family member who moved to or grew up in the US, so their conceptions of Taiwanese/Asian Americans are perhaps accurate in some ways. But again, Taiwanese media doesn’t seem to have much regarding Asian Americans. Or am I naively wrong? And are there Asian countries with greater awareness of Asian Americans? Do a lot of Koreans know who John Cho is? What about that K-drama Love Story in Harvard — did that provide some insight on Asian American experiences or mostly foster the consideration of Asians in America?
What have your experiences visiting Asian countries or talking with people from Asian about being Asian American/API* been like? Please tell us in the comments section!
2 comments“Sleep” – Deep Foundation (Music Video)
We’re mad late posting this. But I figured every other API* blog on the Internets had put this video up that there was no need for us to…but it’s just too ill not to shine, so peep this crazy ass video from Deep Foundation with the homie Jay Legaspi making an appearance.
API* Artists — Vinh Hua
Last week, Vinh Hua and I meet up at the East Meets West bookstore before Open Orchestra to record a set of Vinh’s pieces for this podcast. Vinh has since set off on his journey across the US to the APIA Spoken Word Summit by various forms of locomotion, including hitchhiking. You can follow his adventures on his blog.
Tags: Podcasts, spoken word.
No commentsShuffled! Taiyo Na
Shuffled! is a regular column appearing most Thursdays here on BPRLive. Each column, we welcome someone from the API* community to share some thoughts about the music they listen to. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past articles. (Apologies readers, we are no longer linking to online playlists.)
Today’s Shuffler: Taiyo Na
Born and raised in New York City, Taiyo Na is an MC, singer, songwriter and producer who has performed nationwide at venues such as Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, Knitting Factory and many more. Hailed as “undeniably soul-rootsy” with “storytelling through music at its finest,” his critically acclaimed debut album Love Is Growth (Issilah Productions, 2008) features the song “Lovely To Me (Immigrant Mother),” an ImaginAsian Entertainment Original Song Contest Winner.
He is also Artistic Director of the monthly Sulu Series at the Bowery Poetry Club and Entertainment Series host for the PBS-syndicated TV show Asian America. Learn more at www.TaiyoNa.com.
Check the shuffle…
Tags: Shuffled!.
No comments…a revolutionary man of color like Jesus Christ…
When I was a little nerd kid (as opposed to big nerd adult) the first thing I really loved about hip hop was its swagger. I know that term has been jacked in 2009, but it was not like that in the late 80s. Cockiness has always appealed to me, from David Bowie to Prince to Usher to Brandon Flowers, I just love performers who think they’re better than you. In hip hop though, what got me about it was the vulnerability embedded in the cockiness. When Special Ed said he “got it made,” he was just a poor teenager from Brooklyn – it was fantasy. When Milk D said he stole your girl while “you were in prison…for MC assault” – as if anyone ever went to prison for assaulting a rapper! My favorite emcees talk plenty shit, but for no grander reason than to show they can.
So, I’m gonna expose myself here and admit my favorite track off Bambu’s last album (read our review here) was “Quit” – not any of the other much more explicitly political songs. The standout track to me was the one where Bam shits all over rival emcees, in case you forgot he could.
So now that his last video for “Crooks and Rooks” is on rotation on MTV (Weird, right?), it makes sense for homie to drop his next video. And which joint did he choose? Yeah you guessed it.
Every other line is Twitter-worthy.
Bambu – “Quit” Produced by iLLMind from LightWork Media on Vimeo.
Tags: Video.
No commentsThis Saturday: Open Notebook writing workshop
| June 20, 2009 | ||
| 11:00 am | to | 1:00 pm |
Join us at the East Meets West bookstore to share writing, discussion and the company of fellow writers! Bring your own notebook (and lunch, if you’d like).
Tags: Open Notebook.
No comments