Asian American & Pacific Islanders: Arts

The term “Asian American art,” like “Asian American,” first came into general usage as a discrete subject of interest in the late 1960s and 1970s with the contemporaneous rise of the Asian American movement and establishment of ethnic studies as an academic field, beginning on the West Coast. Fueled by broad-based protest, identity, and counterculture movements, this turbulent moment witnessed the potent convergence of heightened ethnic awareness, cultural activism, and politically inspired cultural production. Activist scholars and writers published the first critical writings that sought to frame constituent elements of a distinct Asian American identity and culture. This emergent panethnic formulation was premised on the belief that despite their many differences and longstanding antagonisms, Asian groups shared common struggles and aspirations to establish themselves in the face of a difficult domestic history marked by racism, discrimination, exclusion, and economic exploitation.

The deep impact of Islam as a spiritual and cultural force among Central Asia's sedentary populations resonates strongly in sophisticated urban art song and instrumental music called maqām, a name shared with other classical or court music traditions in the core Muslim world. Local repertories of Central Asian maqām include Shash maqām, identified with the city of Bukhara, Khorezm maqām, nourished by noble patronage in the city of Khiva, and Ferghana-Tashkent maqām, historically linked to the patronage of the Qoqand khanate. A related but somewhat more distant complex of local maqām traditions exists among the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, who inhabit the oasis cities of northwest China. In Central Asia, maqām refers both to a melodic type or mode and to a cyclic form or suite consisting of as many as 25–30 canonical pieces. Many of the names of the Central Asian maqāms are identical or cognate with those in other Islamic court music traditions, e.g., rāst, buzruk, segāh, irāq; however, their scales and modal features are often different.

There are five distinctive cultural areas in this geographical region: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Korean, and Japanese. In the Chinese cultural area, Tibet and Inner Mongolia are autonomous regions within the People's Republic of China. East Asian cultures have long interacted with one another through trade, diplomatic and cultural exchange, warfare, and religious pilgrimages. As a result, in the sphere of music, there has been much borrowing and exchange of musical instruments, styles, scales and modes, and ideas. In what follows, the official Chinese pinyin system is used in the transliteration of Chinese names and terms.

Oceanic music has undergone extensive change through contact with outside groups. Christian missionaries, for example, zealously suppressed indigenous singing and dancing, substituting European hymn-singing in its place. In 19th century Polynesia, the well-known popular "island music" style developed and spread rapidly with the advent of brass bands, accordions, and mouth organs; and in present-day urban Melanesia, traditional music has been largely displaced by new idioms derived from hymn-singing, cowboy songs, and rock music. In more isolated areas, the older traditions have survived almost unchanged. There remain parts of New Guinea where missionaries have not ventured and where European contact has been minimal. Tribal life also continues unabated in the remoter desert regions of Australia. The following discussion is largely concerned with extant nonacculturated styles of music as practiced at the time of first European contact.

Art of the native peoples of Australia and the South Pacific islands, including New Guinea and New Zealand. Covering a wide geographical area, Oceanic art is extremely diverse in style and technique. Artefacts were not considered ‘art’ by their creators, but were an integral part of the religious and social ceremony of everyday island life. Art objects include ancestor figures, canoe-prow ornaments, ceremonial shields, masks, stone carvings, decorated human skulls, pottery, and stools. Fertility is a recurrent theme, along with occasional references to headhunting and ritual cannibalism. Most Oceanic arts are considered primitive in that until recently the indigenous cultures possessed no metal, and cutting tools were of stone or shell. Although Oceanic art is considered to have little historic depth, an outstanding example of prehistoric art is found in the sculpture of Easter Island, huge standing carved-stone figures up to 18 m/60 ft high, possibly representing ancestors.

The region called South Asia is centered on India and includes the countries on its periphery with which India has close cultural and historical ties. While the term South Asia implies a unit with more than mere geographic contiguity among its constituents, it does not signify ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or musical uniformity any more than does the term Europe. Within this region, therefore, there is a musical diversity based on class, ethnicity, religion, and education, as well as a contrasting unity that is aided by modern media and marketing.

Until the mid-20th century, Southeast Asians lived in diverse societies, in rural, village, or urban-court environments. Most societies were closely related in some aspects of musical culture to their immediate neighbors; some were linked to more distant Southeast Asian societies or to other Asian, African, Middle Eastern, or European peoples, resulting in a complex dynamic of intra- and interregional social relationships. The diversity of many urban-court and some village environments meant that, even as early as the 10th century c.e., in several regions of Southeast Asia, groups of people with different cultures, but speaking the same language, lived in what can be called the same society. Cross-fertilization of musical traditions has been one result of these diverse social forces. Some understanding of the history of the complex interactions of these many different cultures is necessary in order to appreciate the many types of music that have developed in Southeast Asia and to avoid making premature judgments about the relative value of any one type.

A fascinating documentation of the traditional musical culture of the 'Are'are people of the Solomon Islands, in the South-Western Pacific. The three LP records published after a first one-year field-research in 1969-70 were a "phenomenal surprise" (Garfias) as they revealed a completely unknown music (outside of the Solomon Islands) of an exceptional beauty and complexity in its instrumental and vocal polyphonies. It seemed to the researcher an absolute necessity to document visually what had been published on sound recordings, showing in detail all the playing techniques, body movements of performers, and spatial coordination of music ensembles and dancers. The documentary consists of a comprehensive inventory of all the twenty musical genres of the 'Are'are people and is structured according to native classification, along with explanations by master musician 'Irisipau.

This special one-hour program features Asian American women musicians and performers who draw on different deep cultural heritages and contemporary genres--from performance art and ritual, to hip-hop, rock, and singer-songwriter pop. Music heals and reveals. It anchors us to the toughest of realities while also letting loose our imaginations.

One of the rare few who have managed to excel in both art and architecture, Maya Lin creates places of refuge and contemplation in highly public spaces. Constructed on an intimate human scale, they invite visitors to touch, feel, respond, and reflect. In this program, the acclaimed sculptor and architect talks with Bill Moyers about a life and a career that have been shaped by her Asian-American heritage and a profound respect and love for the natural environment.