Visual Communication’s “At First Light” @JANM
by Eddie Wong. Posted June 2, 2019. “At First Light: The Dawning of Asian Pacific America,” a retrospective of Visual Communications’ documentary work in still photography, film and video from 1970-1990, opened May 25 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. I, along with Robert Nakamura and Duane Kubo, was part of the…
Utom – Vibrant music from Florante Aguilar
by Eddie Wong. Posted May 29, 2019. Filipino American musician Florante Aguilar will debut Utom, a new composition inspired by the T’boli people in Southern Mindanao, Philippines, on June 1 and June 9 in San Francisco. The hour-long performance, which includes eight movements, recounts the myth of Lake Sebu’s formation through the stories of Princess Boi Henwu,…
Live in Concert, 1979 -Charlie Chin & Philip Kan Gotanda
by Eddie Wong. Posted May 22, 2019. Producer, singer/songwriter Peter Horikoshi launched the release of two CDs, one featuring Charlie Chin and the other featuring Philip Kan Gotanda, at Eastwind Books in Berkeley, CA on May 18, 2019. Chin and Gotanda shared the bill in a June 2, 1979 concert held at the Chinese Culture…
Nobuko Fujimoto – She Taught Much More Than Piano
by Eddie Wong. Posted May 21, 2019. Every few months, friends, family and former students of piano teacher Nobuko Fujimoto gather at her home in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles for a musicale, a small, informal concert. Although Mrs. Fujimoto, who is 97 years old, suffers from dementia and is unable to carry on…
Jon Jang Sounds of Struggle, Parts 7-9: Movement Music
By Jon Jang. Posted May 16, 2019. Act VII Country Preacher Meets the Butterfly Lovers Song “Art, in its many forms, often played an important role in the daily lives of Asian Americans. Art, for many, was not something distant or only the ‘privileged’ but was an important and integral element in the home, family,…
Dark Clouds Over the 150th Anniversary of the Golden Spike
By Eddie Wong. Posted May 15, 2019. A long line of cars unfolded ahead of me like a sluggish snake rounding the curves on UT 13 headed for Promontory Point and the eagerly awaited recognition of Chinese railroad workers at the 150th anniversary of the driving in of the Golden Spike. Chinese Americans, especially descendants…
East Wind: A Progressive Chinese American Voice 1945-1948
Part I by Eddie Wong and Part II by Steve Louie. Posted May 2, 2019. Many years after I started editing East Wind magazine in 1982, I learned that there had been another magazine called East Wind from the 1940s. I didn’t know much about that magazine until 1990 when I had the pleasure of…
Val Laigo, A People’s Artist
Celebrating Filipino American artist Val Laigo by Eddie Wong. Posted April 15, 2019. I’ve been a supporter of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution ever since I found a few unpublished poems by the little-known Chinese American revolutionary writer/actor/playwright H.T. Tsiang buried in the archives in the papers of his friend artist Rockwell Kent. …
Japanese American Voices from Dilley, TX
Testimonials from participants of the immigrant rights action at Dilley, TX. Posted April 12, 2019. “What a profound and moving experience! The light shined on Crystal City exposed the largest WWII immigrant family concentration camp run by the Department of Justice. Inclusion of the still little known rendition and internment of persons of Japanese ancestry…
“No More Kids in Cages! Not Ok in 1942, Not Ok Today”
Japanese American former detainees protest immigrant detention in South Texas By: John Ota, Susan Hayase and Tom Izu – Videos by Konrad Aderer and Lauren Sumida. Posted April 12, 2019. Dilley, TX – Over 100 protestors converged March 30 at the immigration detention center here in south Texas, the largest such facility in the U.S.,…