How Do We Talk About "Asian-American" Music?
Art by Stella Bennett
Asian Americans frequently go underrepresented in music and, when they are represented, they tend to be left out of the conversation. Along with the problem of “Asian American” as a category, there is the issue of representation. Asian Americans make up 5% of the population, but are wildly underrepresented in all forms of media. There have only been two Asian American chart toppers: Bruno Mars and the lead in the group Far East Movement (who sang “Like a G6”). In both cases, their Asianness has gone overlooked. That’s partly because it’s difficult to talk about “Asian American music” — to do so would require defining a cohesive Asian American identity which doesn’t really exist. Of course, there’s the stereotypical image that exists in the broader American consciousness of Asians. Those tend to be images of East Asians and are often rooted in orientalism, xenophobia, and the model minority myth. Like all groups, though, Asian Americans are far from homogenous — based on the term alone, they include South Asians, Central Asians, East Asians, people from the Middle East, and others that may not fit into those categories. What’s more, if you ask many Asian Americans about their ethnic backgrounds, it’s unlikely that they’ll say “Asian American” — they’re likely to describe themselves more specifically, with labels such as Pakistani-American or Korean-American.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t commonalities within the Asian American community created by the shared experience of immigration and xenophobia, but that the diversity of the continent tends to overshadow them. However, ‘Asian American’ makes sense as a category when you consider that all of the racial categories in the US were created in relation to whiteness, making it an identity for political organizing and coalition building, especially when there were far fewer Asian Americans in the US on the whole than there are now. Now, though, many people do feel that the term flattens and erases more specific identities and experiences.
If we were to try to define “Asian American” music in general, it would likely be shaped by a combination of cultures of origin, the unique experience of immigrating and experiencing pressure to assimilate in the US, and existing American music traditions. There have been a few established Asian American musicians that have spoken on Asian American issues through the years. One particularly vocal group was Yellow Pearl, an Asian American folk music group in the 1970s. Their name riffed on “yellow peril,” referencing American xenophobia towards East Asians. Their music was used to express the pain of Asian immigrants and as a tool for activism. They sang about their identities as immigrants and workers, their close ties with the Latino community in New York, and the fight to establish Asian Americans as a force and voice in history.
Of course, being present in the music world is not the same as being successful or mainstream, and this has been where many Asian American artists have run into trouble. They are often told to instead try their hand at success in Asia, where Asian American artists can end up being more popular (some have become famous overseas by doing just this, like Girls Generation and Eric Nam). Here in the US, though, it’s much harder. Ironically, Asian artists who bring their music from overseas to the US, like BLACKPINK and BTS, often end up finding more success in the US than Asian American artists that originate here — likely in part because they’ve already established a fanbase there that they can use as a springboard. The difficulty Asian Americans have in breaking into the musical mainstream is indicative of the problem of them not being seen as either “exotic” or “traditional” enough. While artists who begin their careers in Asia and then bring their music to the US still experience xenophobia, the fact that they fit more neatly into a cultural category in the (largely white) American public mind contributes to their success compared to Asian Americans. Ideally, Asian American artists who were raised in the US would be able to attain success as well, and would just be able to make music that fell all over the cultural spectrum and expressed their individuality rather than just how they fit into a broader category. Unfortunately, even when Asian American artists do become commercially successful, they often run into the problem of being pigeonholed based on their identity.
One outstanding example of this is the conversation around Mitski’s 2016 single, “Your Best American Girl.” Mitski’s lyrics have dealt with a wide range of topics, but the songs of hers that have always sparked the most discourse have been the ones that deal — directly or not — with her Asian American identity. One of her most popular songs, “Your Best American Girl,” addresses the alienation and loneliness that can accompany being Asian American and romantically interested in a white person. In the chorus, Mitski sings “Your mother wouldn’t approve / Of how my mother raised me / But I do, I think I do / And you’re an all-American boy / Guess I couldn’t help trying / To be your best American girl.” The song is sonically fairly similar to the distorted guitar riff-laden indie rock songs of the 90s. Ironically and possibly intentionally, the older songs it resembles are often songs written by the white men that dominate that genre (along with most genres) and who occasionally — like Weezer in their song “Across the Sea” — actually fetishize Asian women.
When “Your Best American Girl” came out, reviews tended to weave it into a broader narrative about Mitski writing it as a political statement to “stick it” to the white male-dominated indie rock world. Eventually, Mitski felt compelled to make a post on Facebook attempting to clarify her intentions, writing “I wasn’t thinking about any of that when I was writing it. I wasn’t trying to send a message. I was in love.” While it’s hard to fault people for their more political interpretation, her statement spoke to the broader issue with the way Asian Americans tend to be pigeonholed today. It was hard for people to see Mitski’s music as expressing a nuanced emotional sentiment because it could either be about identity and politics, or about love, not both. This ignores the fact that identity influences emotional realities, instead boiling the entire emotional reality down to identity. For Mitski, like for many Asian American artists, “Asian American” rarely gets to be a simple descriptor — it’s either the central takeaway people get from her art or ends up entirely erased.
Today, we are seeing more Asian American artists make it into the mainstream, in large part because of the demand for representation. They’re still underrepresented, but the success of acts like Mitski, Raveena, or Japanese Breakfast or even musicians of Asian origin from Canada or the UK is promising and likely indicative of a larger push towards diversity in music. Apps like TikTok also allow for a more “grassroots” approach to popularizing music, where just by using their songs or interacting with videos that include them, fans can boost listenership for their favorite artists. This expanding representation is great news, especially for younger or emerging Asian American musicians that want to see themselves represented in the industry, but many artists also feel constrained by the breadth of and the expectations attached to the “Asian American” label.
Perhaps the most obvious and most popular example of Asian American success in mainstream music today is Olivia Rodrigo, whose success has been global and transcended more reductive conversations about identity. There are also less famous but still popular artists who weave elements of their cultural identity into their work, like Raveena, a pop and R&B singer-songwriter from a Sikh-American family. She released her debut EP, Shanti (which means peace in Sanskrit), in 2017 and her debut album Lucid in 2019, and her music touches on topics like trauma, spirituality, and sexuality. She incorporates South Asian musical traditions and imagery into her songs and videos, often wearing bindis and Indian jewelry and taking aesthetics and aural elements from 90s Bollywood.
If there’s anything to be learned by examining the history and current state of Asian American music, it’s that there’s no one clear vision for the genre — in fact, categorizing it as a single genre doesn’t make much sense at all. The best first step might be allowing the phrase to just be a descriptor for artists, rather than a defining characteristic in how we understand them.
Edited by Jennifer Morse, editor of Bird’s Eye View
Cover art by Stella Bennett