Musically Invisible Asians
A Close Look at Asian American (In)visibility in Mainstream Music
The first Asian American musical artist that I’ve truly connected to was Yvette Young of the instrumental rock band, Covet. I remember seeing and hearing her live for the first time a couple of years ago. To this day, I can’t get over how liberating that moment was: a Chinese woman playing her heart out on stage, entrancing the audience with her guitar skills alone. I went home feeling so cathartic, I just couldn’t get enough of that feeling. I wanted more. If someone like Yvette Young could make it in the rock music scene, which is overwhelmingly white among artists and listeners alike, then who knew how many other Asians I could discover in more popular genres?
For a long time, many of us have seen and perhaps even come to accept that Asian American visibility in the mainstream music scene is scarce. A few years ago, it probably would have been really difficult to pinpoint a notable Asian American artist. However, with labels like 88Rising making their own space in the industry, a generalized image of the Asian American artist has changed. The pride of 88Rising is its ability to amplify artists who are unapologetically Asian, and who seek to redefine the Asian American identity altogether. While it is worth celebrating that there are Asian American artists paving the way for future generations under 88Rising, we must also call into question how invasive the content can be.
I cannot deny the value of 88Rising’s platform, nor can I deny the raw talent that its artists have. Nonetheless, the bulk of their content is centered around rap and hip-hop culture—styles invented by Black Americans. Whether or not non-Black creators can indulge in these genres is not the discussion here. The issue is that 88Rising has taken it upon itself to utilize hip-hop as an outlet to reimagine Asian American music, without properly acknowledging that Black people paved the way for their platform to exist in the first place. This is not revolutionary, but instead exacerbates the existing intercultural rift between Black and Asian Americans. By neglecting to give credit where it is due, 88Rising is perpetuating the anti-Blackness that already exists in all Asian and Asian American communities.
“I hope for more inclusion and participation of Asians and Asian Americans in American media. But, when credit is meant to be given, and Asians are given fame and money for a culture that isn’t theirs, and when we as their fellow POC are left in the dust still fighting for their rights and end of the appropriation of their culture along with ours, it feels like we’ve drawn the short end of the stick.”
— Nia Tucker
“Sorry Asians, My Blackness is Not Your Counterculture”
Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing Asians unapologetically take up more space in mainstream music. But something that we, as Asian American consumers, need to understand is that we can and should be holding our community accountable with as much power as we use to celebrate it. Yes, it’s great that Asian Americans are thriving more than ever in music—but what means have we taken to fill that cultural deficit, and more importantly, whose space was taken away to make room for us?
Moreover, a highly underrated fact is that Asian American artists have been topping charts in the United States. Bruno Mars (half Filipino), Yuna (Malaysian), and Nicole Scherzinger (half Filipino) are among the most notable individuals in the history of mainstream music; and yet the “Asian American” identity has practically never been used in the same breath as their names and many accomplishments.
We can easily attribute this to their racial ambiguity. It is devastatingly easy for listeners to go their whole lives without ever finding out that these artists are of Asian descent. And this is no accident, either.
The first Asian American group to earn No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 was Far East Movement, with their hit “Like a G6.” They were asked to change their group name at one point and to obscure their eyes by wearing sunglasses. Both requests were deliberate attempts to make them look and sound as racially ambiguous as possible. This is the same weaseling that keeps a huge portion of the mainstream audience from acknowledging Bruno Mars as an Asian American artist, despite him literally being Asian American.
I used to be annoyed with the Filipinos in my life, never shutting up about popular American artists once they found out they were Filipino, but now I get it. There’s such a scarcity of representation that now we’re clinging on to whoever we can find. However, that’s the exact same mindset that keeps Asian Americans from holding 88Rising accountable for appropriating Black culture. We’ve become so used to having nothing, that we start dodging uncomfortable questions that challenge the merit of what we do have. Naturally, the response to this kind of discourse is that “it’s never that serious.” If you’re one of those people, then honestly—redirect your energy. Don’t target the people who actually want to hold 88Rising and others accountable for being anti-Black, just because you don’t want your picture-perfect image of them being tarnished. Instead, channel that energy into frustration towards the inherent white supremacy in mainstream music—they’re the ones that created this cultural deficit in the first place and leave little space for these discussions.
“It stems from this desire for us to manufacture a cultural foothold for ourselves where there isn’t one, instead of just making music that comes from the heart. We can see this effort among some Asian American and Filipino artists to create one monolithic sound for ourselves that comes from this huge void, rooted in imperialism.”
— Cailin Lansang
Filipino American musician based in North Jersey
White supremacy in the American music scene is what hands artists, like many of those tied to 88Rising, the pass to perform Blackness in order to fill this gap. It is a conditional representation, similar to how Asians as the alleged “model minority” will appear to have access to certain privileges due to merit, when really it’s permitted by proximity to whiteness. That is not to say that Asian American artists are untalented and only ever succeed when white people let them. Instead, as long as white supremacy remains in the music industry and everywhere else, Asian Americans will remain the perpetual foreigner, and unfortunately have to do one of two things to achieve success: perform another culture, or completely oversell their own. The American music industry profits through weaseling its way out of identity politics, and the Asian American identity is inherently political. Thus, to the typical white American producer, the Asian American is not marketable, and when they have the potential to be marketable, it often comes at an unjust cost.
In stark contrast, we see Asian artists thriving overseas and even breaking through to the Western music scene. This is especially the case for Korean pop sensations like BTS, who have powerfully committed fan bases and continuously make history time and time again on a global scale. But why are American consumers so quick to embrace Asian artists overseas, while also ignoring the countless talented Asian American artists working tirelessly in the same country as them?
The K-Pop industry undoubtedly thrives in every sector. Korean labels love to promote artists who can do it all: singing, dancing, rapping, visuals, etc. It’s almost as though the goal is to push artists who are so talented that they are simply undeniable, and therefore have the potential to a breakthrough in the West. Aside from the extraordinary quality of the music though, there is a disparity in American consumption that simply must be addressed. It’s easier for American consumers to indulge in Asian artists overseas because that image of the Asian identity, that apparent foreignness, is more “digestible.” After all, K-Pop is one of the fastest-growing music trends of this generation. American consumers eat up ideas above all else, and there’s nothing more palatable to them than a jack-of-all-trades industry that they can also exoticize. Asian artists don’t oversell their culture, they live in it.
The Asian American artist eludes that same consumer as a direct result of Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome. To many non-Asian Americans, Asians will almost always appear to be fresh off the boat. American consumers expect the whole package: traditional clothing, an accent, maybe some words from a different language thrown into the mix. However, this is problematic for the Asian American artist, who may want to make it in the industry so badly that they end up overselling a culture outside of their lived experience. So, when an Asian uses the title “American artist” and makes music completely in English intending to break through to an American audience, non-Asian American consumers literally…
Meanwhile, a K-Pop artist born and reared in the same country they make music in would not evoke that same level of thinking. Besides, since Asian countries are typically homogeneous for the most part, their first and foremost competition is in each other. The American music industry is completely dominated by non-Asian American artists, so Asian American artists face an uphill battle from the start.
“For the Asian artist, being ‘foreign’ in appearance could become an advantage, while for the Asian American artist, that same aspect of them could become a disadvantage. That distance between the creator and consumer could also be something worthy of discussion; from what I have seen, it appears easier for the American consumer to fetishize and/or mystify Asian artists because of the comparatively longer distance they are able to maintain from the artist internally.”
— Takahito Mori
Japanese American musician and first-year student at the University of Michigan
Nevertheless, the goal is not to spend all our energy criticizing these disparities. It’s to uplift Asian American artists on the rise, and know when to hold our own community accountable for all its wrongdoings. We should hold our creators to the same standard as anyone else, and never over idolize or undermine anyone just because we aren’t used to being represented. Let’s view ourselves for everything that we are: the good, the bad, and the ugly. A community that rarely sees itself to the fullest extent outside closed doors is a community that fails itself. Music is medicine. Let’s heal.
“Saying there’s little to no AAPI visibility in the music industry sometimes can erase or overshadow the fact that AAPI artists have been carving out their own ways of being visible and taking space. 88Rising did it, Beatrock Music in the bay has been doing it, and so many AAPI indie artists are doing it too!”
– Janel Schroth
Filipino American artist and senior at the Clive Davis Institute at New York University
If you’re looking for some Asian artists in the Western music scene to support outside of 88Rising, you can start with any of these amazing individuals!
Yvette Young of Covet (Instrumental Rock)
Keshi (R&B/Alternative)
Harry Teardrop (Alternative/Indie)
Rina Sawayama (Pop)
No Rome (R&B/Dream Pop)
UMI (Neo-soul)
Ruby Ibarra (Hip-Hop/Rap)
Mitski (Indie)
George Quibuyen of Blue Scholars (Hip-Hop/Rap)
Hojean (R&B/Soul)
Who are some of your favorite Asian American artists? Are there any fresh faces in music that we should keep an eye out for? If you or someone you know is an Asian American musical artist, I would love to hear about it in the comments!
To further decolonize our minds:
Color Lines | Performing Blackness Won't Fill Our Asian American Culture Deficit by Muqing M. Zhang
High School Insider: Los Angeles Times | Are Asian Musicians Still a Joke in American Music?
Dazed | How K-Pop Is Responding to Its Longstanding Appropriation Problem
okayplayer. | How Hip-Hop Has Aided The Meteoric Rise of K-Pop by Ashlee Mitchell
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