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Okay, so I lied. I said I’d recap the Grains of Rice a few days earlier. Well, better late than never right? Anyway. The Ninth Annual Grains of Rice at MIT took place on April 22. Overall, I thought it was a fairly entertaining event. (Although they ran out of Boba Tea by the time I got to the food!) As the largest event put on by the MIT Asian American Association in the 2006-2007 academic year, Grains of Rice featured both contemporary and traditional performances in one three hour show.

The show kicked off with a rousing Korean drum performance from MIT Oori. This was followed by dance performances put on by the MIT Filipino Students Association, MIT Chamak, and the MIT Thai Students Association. I particularly enjoyed the MIT Filipino Students Association’s Tinikling dance, a Filipino folk dance that imitates the movements of the tikling bird dodging bamboo traps. One could describe the dance as double dutch with bamboo sticks instead of jump rope. While two parallel bamboo sticks are moved around, the dancers’ feet flash in and out, carefully avoiding the sticks at all times.

Tags: Recaps.

Jin does a performance of one of his songs from his ABC album. Yeah, it’s in Cantonese. And he’s not an independent artist anymore. Still, he put on a good show. I’ll write more about The Grains of Rice 2007 tomorrow. But I’ll leave you with a little treat.

Tags: Recaps, Video.

In putting together his latest LP, Jin clearly outlines his by naming the album ABC (American-Born Chinese) and dedicating it to “everybody (especially the young Chinese Americans) that are proud of their heritage and are comfortable with their own identity.” ABC is a collection of 10 songs that attempt to unpack the individual and overlapping identities among many of Jin’s generation of Chinese Americans (or perhaps more precisely, Cantonese Americans). Exclusively rapped in Cantonese, Jin makes a conscious and ambitious effort to capture not only the nuances and particularities of the Cantonese dialect but also the cultural signifiers in the experiences of many first- and second-generation, working class Chinese Americans.

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Tags: Reviews.

Jin “The Emcee” Au-Yeung and Jay Legaspi will be playing at Grains of Rice 2007 at Walker Memorial at MIT in Cambridge, MA. There will also be other performances. Last year, Ken Oak and Phil Good rocked at MIT… we’ll see what happens this year. This event is sponsored by the MIT Asian American Association. For more information, you can check out the Facebook Event posting. Advance tickets are $12. $15 for tickets at the door.

Update: The full line-up is going to be:

• Ailah
• Jay Legaspi
• Korean Oori
• Dance Revelasion
• MIT Chamak
• MIT Bhangra
• MIT Thai Student Association
• MIT Filipino Student Association
• Freestyle Battle
• Jin “The Emcee”