boston progress radio

It’s already April, one-third of 2008 has gone in memories and this month’s open mic featured a familiar friend in L.I.F.E. This month’s open mic contained a short but entertaining list of performers. We had a wide range of genres in music from singing to poetry to rapping to beatboxing. We also had old friends and two new faces on the mic. Our resident doctor Victor emceed the night, and Ash opened up with a little song. That was followed by first timer Bill who came to the mic with his guitar and serenaded us with a song. Andy returned to the Open Mic accompanied by Dave and Joey B of L.I.F.E on the beatbox and performed an old song. The host of the night Victor ended the Open Mic with another entertaining freestyle with the help of Dave. Read more

Tags: Open Mic, Recaps, spoken word.

Recently, Planet B-Boy, a documentary film directed by Benson Lee and produced by Amy Lo and Benson Lee, rolled into town. I got a chance to peep the film—it is really good. The movie is about the urban dance form known as breaking. Jeff Yang and Angry Phil Asian Man both recently interviewed Benson Lee about this film. It seems as though everybody in the Asian American blogsphere loves it.

Now, right upfront, I’m going to say that I don’t know a whole lot about b-boy-ing. Like any outsider looking in though, I am amazed by the acrobatics and power of this dance form. While b-boying is cut from the same cloth as hip hop, DJ-ing, and graffiti art, it has its own space. Breaking and other urban dance forms provide youth with a medium for self-expression, to explore their identity, and to create something collaborative.

The film follows the story of five dance teams from four different countries as they try to become the world’s number one b-boy team. They end up competing at the world’s largest b-boying competition: “Battle of the Year.” I was impressed by the dance team from Chelle, France, who run workshops to teach youth about their art form. My favorite team, though, was Last For One, a team composed of poor kids from rural South Korea. I was particularly touched by the story of the boy who was raised by a single dad. While his father would rather his son be a doctor or professor, he seems to support his son’s efforts. On the whole, the interviews with the families helped to give a very human quality to the film—which I think was part of the point of the film. Sure, these dancers are ungodly on the stage, but off the stage, they have their teen / early 20s angst and they have their insecurities.

The one aspect of the movie that was slightly disappointing was the lack of gender diversity. It seems that b-boy-ing is indeed just about boys. The movie did briefly interview one b-girl. Granted, breaking, popping, and locking is dominated by male dancers, but still, only boys, really?

If the movie rolls into your town, you should make a point to go see it. Not because it is produced by Asian Americans, but because it is inspirational and because breaking, by any other name would still be as cool. So, check it out. Witness the stunning dance moves or the brilliant choreography and see the passion of the performers as they leave it all out there in the battle.

The last thing I would like to mention is that the original music in the movie was written and produced by Woody Pak of Chaos Music Theory.

[... and I actually prefer body popping, but that is another story for another time...]

Tags: Movie, Reviews.

Watch for Shuffled! every Thursday. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past shufflers.

Today’s Shuffler: Chee Malabar

Chee Malabar is one half of the hip hop outfit Himalayan Project. Unafraid to dispense social commentary that ranges from satirical to inflammatory, Chee Malabar represents the evolving voice of true-school hip hop. Firmly entrenched in the American experience, his music speaks on numerous issues such as the immigrant experience, love, relationships, politics, and art. Having released “Wince At The Sun” in 2003 and “Broken World” in 2007 to underground acclaim, Chee most recently released “Oblique Brown” with long time collaborator and producer Zeeb.

You can find out more about Chee and his two hip hop groups at www.himalayanproject.com and www.myspace.com/obliquebrown.

On to the shuffle… Read more

Tags: Shuffled!.

Over the past few months, my favorite pastime has been playing the video game Rock Band with whoever happens to be over at the time. This has become an unofficial official activity for the crew involved with BPRLive and Boston Progress. Peep the picture, in which Eugene sings while Theresa and Sophea back him up.

For those who are unfamiliar, Rock Band is a video game in which custom-made controllers allow gamers to pretend to play drums, guitar, or bass in a rock band, or even sing lead vocals. My initial reaction when I heard about this game was if you’re gonna waste that much money and that much space, why not just start a real rock band? But then, I played the game, and realized it’s way better than being in a real rock band. Last week, we won a jet and played a show in London! You know, without actually having to go to London.

So! The game is fun, even though of the 60 or so songs that come included with it, I know roughly 5 of them. And of the default characters to choose from in the game, only one of them is clearly a person of color. The rest are white, or white-but-if-you-squint…

I guess the stereotype says Asians love karaoke and video games, so this hybrid of the two should be like the new hot Asian shit, like on the level with Korean soap opera VCDs, turning student organizations into dance troupes, and voting for Obama. Read more

Tags: Commentary, Video.

Watch for Shuffled! every Thursday. Also check out the Shuffled! archive.

Today’s Shuffler: Sham-e-Ali al-Jamil

Sham-e-Ali was born in Hyderabad, India and raised in both the UK and the US. She is a poet, a public interest lawyer and mother to one 5-year-old who is her inspiration. In 1997, she started a welfare rights program for survivors of family and intimate partner violence to challenge the devastating impact of “welfare reform” in NYC. From 1997-2003, the program provided free walk-in legal clinics at soup kitchens, food pantries, and domestic violence shelters throughout the city. She has moved a few times since then and currently works at a community arts and social justice organization in Philadelphia, PA.

All along, poetry has been a daily part of her life. Her biggest influence was her late father, who loved Urdu poetry. Sham-e-Ali’s poetry has appeared in publications such as, SALT Journal, SAMAR, Roots & Culture Magazine, and Mizna and can be found in anthologies such as, Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out (Olive Branch Press, 2005), Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak (Beacon Press, 2005) and “Shout Out: Women of Color Respond to Violence” (Seal Press, 2008).

Her son, H, wanted to do a shuffle too. Follow the link to peep both his and her shuffle… Read more

Tags: Shuffled!.

April showers bring May flowers. Flowers are nice, but I’ll just settle for warmer weather. April also means another Boston Progress sponsored open mic. (Can you believe that it is already April?) On April 11, 2008, the spoken word trio L.I.F.E. is featuring at East Meets Words Open Mic, the longest running Asian American open mic in New England. Come on down to East Meets West Bookstore at 934 Massachusetts Avenue at 8pm. Bring $3 to get in and something to share or just bring an open mind and open ears. All ages are welcome.

Tags: Boston Progress, Open Mic, spoken word.

Ten long years ago, I was working as a delivery driver, passing the summer before college started up again wearing a tuxedo shirt and bow tie, drinking customers’s sodas, then telling them, “Sorry, we ran out of Sprite, do you want Poland Spring instead?” In other words, they were good old damn days. I could drive around the city - and surrounding areas - with my new license, my mom’s car, and a tape deck that worked most of the time. People sometimes ask how I got to know my way around Boston so well, and I tell them they can trace it back to the summer of 1997.

Getting sick of hearing Natalie Imbruglia and Eagle-Eye Cherry every 45 minutes on the radio, I turned to my boy A+ - shockingly, not his real name - for some music I could record onto a cassette that wouldn’t get boring through the grind of 10 hour days spent mostly behind red lights, counting out tips in coins, and looping in circles trying to find where Atlantic Ave actually starts.

A was ready for me. “These some West Coast Chinese rappers man,” he said. “Like a mix between the Pharcyde and Ras Kass - but Chinese!” A isn’t Asian, so please forgive him for not knowing that Key Kool and DJ Rhettmatic (formerly of Brotherhood Creed) - collectively known by some as Kozmonautz - were actually of Japanese and Filipino descent respectively.

Those who know, know that one of the standout tracks on their independently-released debut was “Reconcentrated,” Key’s dedication to the 120,000+ Japanese Americans unjustly incarcerated during WWII. I could write an entire post about what that song has meant in my life, but I’ll save it for another time. I’m really back in 1997 right now because I want to get to Day One of the Visionaries, the supergroup that first recorded together on “Visionaries (Stop Actin’ Scary)” off the Kozmonautz joint. In fact, they recorded the song two years earlier, but it didn’t make its way into my tape deck until 97.

Read more

Tags: Appreciation, Commentary, Video.