boston progress radio

Kristen Sajonas was one of the organizers for BAY09, the 2009 installment of the APIA (Asian Pacific Islander American) Spoken Word & Poetry Summit. She attended her first summit in Chicago in 2003 and has been ridin’ for the Summit since. She is 27yo, a sometimes-poet, and an all-the-time community organizer. She is on the board of directors for Liwanag Kultural Center in Daly City, CA and rolls with progressive, anti-imperialist Filipino alliance BAYAN-USA.

I am writing this at 7:04am PST, Monday morning, August 31. I had promised BPR I would get this recap to them last Friday, and before that last Wednesday. I made an attempt last week to write this thing up, but I got stuck. I felt everything I wrote was cliché and boring and not honest enough. As one of the organizers for BAY09, I want to effectively convey how wonderful, beautiful, amazing, inspiring, and empowering the four days of the Summit were, however, as one of the organizers I also know the insane amount of hard work and stress that went into making it a success.

The planning process for BAY09 began in preparation to make the bid to host the 2009 Summit in the Bay Area at the 2007 Summit in New York City. From my understanding, the decision to bid stemmed from a casual conversation amongst past Bay Area Summit participants over an afternoon BBQ. Not just shootin’ the shit they were, a written proposal was produced from that talk and was then presented that summer as the Bay’s formal bid. At that point and after the Summit was over, other Bay Area Summit participants, as well as some down ass homeys, joined the fray and thus the BAY09 organizing committee was born.

Fast forward two years to 2009, a few months before BAY09 gets on-and-poppin’, and there are seven organizers left from an original roster of 20+: Jasmin, Jason, Mesej, Danny, Adriel, Matt, and myself. We are working our culos off, meeting weekly, updating our blog and twitter constantly, promoting BAY09 with our snazzy flyers and by guesting on local community radio shows, and keeping faith that this will all pay off and BAY09 will be the ssshhhhhhhhh…… Read more

Tags: Community, spoken word.

I recently found out about the demise of Super 88 from a Google Chat status. Yes, it is a little bit sad that I get my news from Google Chat statuses (stati?). Anyway, this news doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Super 88 has been struggling for the past few years. Several of their locations had closed down and while they recently renovated the Allston-Brighton location, every time I visited, the shelves were always empty, there was no rice and there was not a whole lot of variety. I have been so disappointed with Super 88 that I started shopping at my local Korean grocery store, a little mom and pop store.

The sale of Super 88 to a New York based Asian grocery chain will likely be beneficial in the long run. The Asian food market scene in Boston was starting to look a little bleak. First, there were the Super 88 closures. Then, H-Mart decided to delay the opening of their Burlington, MA location (or maybe they decided to not open it at all). Of course, Boston still had Kan Man in Quincy and C-Mart. With the Hong Kong Supermarkets moving in, maybe the Asian grocery store scene in Boston will be rejuvenated. Sadly, though, it also means the end of a locally grown grocery store chain.

Okay, that’s enough about supermarkets. Thanks for letting me indulge in my Asian grocery store/supermarket obsession.

Tags: Food.

flier by jenn liang

If you are interested in submitting work, have questions, or want to volunteer, please e-mail bpaczine@gmail.com! The call for submissions and basic information form can be viewed or downloaded on the Boston Progress website!!

We are aiming for a March 2010 distribution date, in time for the 5th anniversary of the East Meets Words Open Mic series!! Spread the word, send in your submissions, get excited! Yep yep!

Tags: Zine.

Challenging ourselves and growing together.

A few hours before the fourth anniversary East Meets Words Open Mic got underway, I asked Beat Collective’s stank-ass rapper Victor Chien some questions about freestyling, Beat Collective, being a med school student and his family, aspects of his life that have definite aural presence at the East Meets Words Open Mic scene. This interview is spliced together with February 13th’s Beat Collective performance at East Meets Words and portions of Beat Collective’s performance as the 4th-anniversary East Meets Words feature.

Here are a couple things you’ll hear about in this podcast:

How Victor got started freestyling: “I would freestyle in the shower… because the acoustics in the shower are phenomenal.”

Victor’s feelings about the sharing of artistic experiences at East Meets Words: “Anytime anybody comes to this space and puts their work in front of a crowd, that’s a small act of courage. And it says a lot that every open mic there are people that have not shared their work before coming up and feeling comfortable enough to just put it out there.”

and in the Beat Collective: From Victor’s description of the dynamic in Beat Collective sessions, my tentative conclusion was, “So you’re all constantly challenging each other in some ways.” To which Victor said, “Yeah. And growing together.”

Thanks to Eugene for the Feb. 13th recording, to all Open Orchestra and Beat Collective members for the music in this podcast.

 Victor Chien - Beat Collective and Life [31:08m]: Download

Tags: Aural Presence, Open Orchestra, Podcasts, Victor Chien.

Three years ago, in the summer of 2006, two unsuspecting guests at my wedding would meet for the first time and start down the road toward intense awesomeness.

Those guests were Theresa Vu of Magnetic North and Taiyo Na. I was pretty busy that evening, but I did notice the smell of partnership was in the air. (It was a wedding after all.)

So the fact that Magnetic North and Taiyo would soon start making music together should have been no surprise. The picture up top was snapped when they rolled thru Boston together earlier this year.

And before our beloved Theresa (Hwang, not Vu) moved away, one of her last BPAC-related proclamations was that Boston should be actively claiming credit for that working partnership between the folks collectively known as MNTN.

Fast forward to the summer of 2009, and they’ve released this collabo single: Summertime, which is super hot and available for free download!

In addition, it has the most adorable hip hop artwork in history. Get it now!

Tags: free download, music.

On a Monday afternoon, I’m sitting in a Chinese restaurant eating some “garlic sauce” broccoli near the college I attend, Berklee College of Music. Disappointed that an excess of cornstarch mixed with overly sweet, reddish sauce, instead of fresh garlic pieces, is what covers each decent piece of vegetable and has infiltrated the brown rice, I slowly work at finishing my lunch.

Before this semi-nutritious, slightly tasty meal, I had just come out of a piano private instructor’s office at Berklee. Prior to attending Berklee, I had studied piano under private instruction for twelve years without the experience of any noteworthy pain or soreness. However, sometime after I stopped private instruction and perhaps started using the computer more I had developed a neglectful attitude towards my relation to the piano, leading to inconsistent practice and consequently poor technique that culminated over several years’ time. Since studying at Berklee, I have become vulnerable to soreness, pain, and discomfort during practice and have been inhibited by this, avoiding frequent or intense practice so as to prevent developing a potentially burdensome “injury” or condition. A few friends have related similar experiences, but for the most part, we were all finding out on our own the causes and solutions to these obstacles. However, prior to my lunch, the private instructor I chose for the semester finally shed some serious light on my current technique and offered a strategy for, as well as a new outlook, on practice.

In discussing practice habits, other lingering, philosophical questions necessarily arose, along the lines of what I want to do with music, whether it is worthwhile, and why I am not investing more into my own musicianship. To make the glaze-y lunch a little more interesting, I call the person most committed to my happiness and development, my mother. Read more

Tags: art, humility.

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 don’t always link to online playlists anymore; this week’s playlist was compiled voluntarily by Sham-e Ali al-Jamil. Scroll to the bottom to play it while you read!)

Today’s Shuffler: Jerry Ma

Jerry is a fulltime graphic designer that has his own line of tee shirts as well as is the artist and creator of a indie comic book called BURN.

For more on that stuff, you can check out his site at www.epicprops.com.

Just recently Jerry was a part of the Asian Superhero Anthology book Secret Identities as the Art Director, in which he also drew two short stories for the book. Fore more on the book, you can go here www.secretidentities.org.

Jerry does not like long walks on the beach, but does love to snowboard and is a diehard Mets, Jets and Knicks fan.

Let the shuffling begin…. Read more

Eight Questions for… is a new feature that we’re starting on BPRLive that shows us how we’re connected as an API* community. In this feature, a chain of API* folks is formed with each person in the chain asking an API* person they know a set of  eight questions. After the answerer has composed a response, the answerer becomes the questioner. Ask another API* person and so on. Each set of questions and responses will appear on BPRLive! Check out some of our past columns.

This week Eugene Shih talks to Tadashi Nakamura.

Tadashi Nakamura is a 28 year old, fourth-generation Japanese American and second-generation filmmaker. His introduction to film began when he was 9 days old and made his first and last on-screen appearance in Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (1980), the first feature-length narrative film produced by Asian Americans, which was directed by his father, award-winning filmmaker Robert A. Nakamura. Besides carrying on his parents’ work – his mother is writer/producer Karen L. Ishizuka – Nakamura seeks to tell his community’s history to a new generation.

1. What are your three favorite foods and why?

• Bacon fried rice with 2 eggs over-easy on top: You can eat this for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I grew up on fried rice so it’s my comfort food. My dad’s fried rice is my favorite but second to that is Tak’s Coffee Shop in Crenshaw Square in LA.
• French fries: I know, not very original. I like most things that are deep fried and fries are just classic. They’re easy to eat and you can dip them in anything. I like skinny crunchy ones over the fat steak fries.
• Chicken katsu curry and rice: It’ like the best of both worlds. Something crunchy and fried with something saucy all over rice. Having any of the three without the other just isn’t the same, you need all of them on the same plate to create the trifecta of goodness.

2. If you could have a conversation with 3 people who are no longer alive, who would you pick?

Jesus Christ… no just kidding.

• My Jichan (if I could speak Japanese or if he could speak English)
• Elijah Ealy, my good friend who died two days after our 5th grade graduation
• Chris Iijima, pioneering API, oops I mean API*, musician and educator

3. Boxers or briefs? Read more

Tags: Eight Questions.