Wednesday in class we entered into some writing exercises. I was in group three and our prompts were. “When I was 6…”, “When I was 16…”, “Now I remember”, and ” If I wrote a book about home. ______ would be on the cover”.
Wednesday’s class forced me right into the analysis of my home and it’s relation to APIA pop-culture. Through the prompts I discovered two aspects of music that I wish to examine further within this project.
- Music’s ability to bring groups together and cement them using the sounds and melodies as the glue.
- Music’s role in forging a place not just in society but in our own minds.
The prompts forced me into the writing process when I was not totally prepared for it, through this however I was able to discern exactly what I wish to explore.
Through the writing I really had to think about how music and myself are interwoven. Through that I was able to identify one of my first experiences of a large group of diverse peoples all enjoying the same thing and being unified as one through that.
The other experience I was able to pinpoint was my introduction to jazz and funk music, so I started looking back at the my introduction with a lens ignoring music. through this I was able to discern that right around when I first started listening to my dad’s Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, and George Clinton albums that my self-identity stems directly from that time. I have no doubt in my mind that the music and sounds of these albums are what shaped my identity into what it is.
I wish to explore the way that Asian Americans have forged their own identities through the same sounds. How Asian Americans related to what was behind the music, how music is able to bridge gaps between groups through shared experiences. The music of one group may sound completely different to another but the other group can still feel the soul in the music and therefore relate to and even embrace entirely. An example from our text would be in Frank Chin’s “Donald Duk”, Donald’s instructor and the flamenco music. The flamenco music of the Gypsies resonated with the Chinese American musicians because the heart of the music stems from struggle, which both groups could relate with. I want to look at the use of jazz and music in forging a new identity in the United States.