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Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans
With contributions from activists, artists, and scholars, Afro Asia is a groundbreaking collection of writing on the historical alliances, cultural connections, and shared political strategies linking African Americans and Asian Americans. Bringing together autobiography, poetry, scholarly criticism, and other genres, this volume represents an activist vanguard in the cultural struggle against oppression. Afro Asia opens with analyses of historical connections between people of African and of Asian descent. An account of nineteenth-century Chinese laborers who fought against slavery and colonialism in Cuba appears alongside an exploration of African Americans’ reactions to and experiences of the Korean “conflict.” Contributors examine the fertile period of Afro-Asian exchange that began around the time of the 1955 Bandung Conference, the first meeting of leaders from Asian and African nations in the postcolonial era. One assesses the relationship of two important 1960s Asian American activists to Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. Mao Ze Dong’s 1963 and 1968 statements in support of black liberation are juxtaposed with an overview of the influence of Maoism on African American leftists. Turning to the arts, Ishmael Reed provides a brief account of how he met and helped several Asian American writers. A Vietnamese American spoken-word artist describes the impact of black hip-hop culture on working-class urban Asian American youth. Fred Ho interviews Bill Cole, an African American jazz musician who plays Asian double-reed instruments. This pioneering collection closes with an array of creative writing, including poetry, memoir, and a dialogue about identity and friendship that two writers, one Japanese American and the other African American, have performed around the United States. Contributors : Betsy Esch, Diane C. Fujino, royal hartigan, Kim Hewitt, Cheryl Higashida, Fred Ho,
Everett Hoagland, Robin D. G. Kelley, Bill V. Mullen, David Mura, Ishle Park, Alexs Pate, Thien-bao Thuc Phi, Ishmael Reed, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Maya Almachar Santos, JoYin C. Shih, Ron Wheeler, Daniel Widener, Lisa Yun
Everett Hoagland, Robin D. G. Kelley, Bill V. Mullen, David Mura, Ishle Park, Alexs Pate, Thien-bao Thuc Phi, Ishmael Reed, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Maya Almachar Santos, JoYin C. Shih, Ron Wheeler, Daniel Widener, Lisa Yun
416 pages, Paperback
First published June 4, 2008
About the author
Fred Ho
12 books2 followersFred Ho (Chinese: 侯维翰; pinyin: Hóu Wéihàn; born Fred Wei-han Houn; August 10, 1957 – April 12, 2014) was an American jazz baritone saxophonist, composer, bandleader, playwright, writer and Marxist social activist. In 1988, he changed his surname to "Ho".
He was born in Palo Alto, California, and moved at the age of six with his family to Massachusetts.
While he is sometimes associated with the Asian-American jazz or avant-garde jazz movements, Ho himself was opposed to the use of term "jazz" to describe traditional African-American music because the word "jazz" was used pejoratively by white Americans to denigrate the music of African Americans.
Ho arduously sought to define what constitutes Asian-American jazz: “What makes Chinese American music Chinese American? What would comprise an Asian American musical content and form that could transform American music in general rather than simply be subsumed in one or another American musical genre such as ‘jazz’?” He polemicized against, rightfully, “the white assimilationist notion of the petty bourgeois Asian American artist that anything by an Asian American artist makes it Asian American,” pointing out that, for instance, “Yo-Yo Ma is a cellist who happens to be Chinese/Asian American, not a Chinese/Asian American musician.”
In his role as an activist, many of his works fuse the melodies of indigenous and traditional Asian and African forms of music. He envisions his music to be a real synthesis: "In opposing cultural imperialism, a genuine multicultural synthesis embodies revolutionary internationalism in music: rather than co-opting different cultures, musicians and composers achieve revolutionary transformation predicated upon anti-imperialism in terms of both musical respect and integrity as well as a practical political economic commitment to equality between peoples."
Ho also co-edited four books: Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution (1996), Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America (2001), Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans (2008), and Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz (2013). Ho's contributions to the Asian-American empowerment movement are varied and many. He is credited with co-founding several Asian-American civic groups such as the East Coast Asian Students Union (while a student at Harvard), the Asian American Arts Alliance in New York City, the Asian American Resource Center in Boston and the Asian Improv record label.
Of Chinese descent, Ho specialized in the combining sometimes asynchronous tunes and melodies of various musical traditions, creating what many have described as both brilliant and chaotic sounds. He was the first to combine Chinese opera with traditional African-American music. He led the Afro Asian Music Ensemble (founded in 1982) and the Monkey Orchestra (founded in 1980). He lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York.
Ho held a B.A. degree in sociology from Harvard University (1979). He recorded for the Koch Jazz and Soul Note labels. Some of his final works include Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon, which premiered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in June 2006, and Voice of the Dragon I, II, and III. As Ho was a prolific composer, writer, playwright, his list of works grew continually. Some of his first CDs include Monkey I, Monkey II, The Underground Railroad to My Heart (Soul Note), We Refuse To Be Used And Abused, and Tomorrow is Now!
In his 2000 book, Legacy to Liberation, Ho, recapitulating an aesthetic vision first presented in 1985, wrote:
"Revolutionary art must ... inspire a spirit of defiance, or class and national pride to resist domination and backward ideology. Revolutionary art must energize and humanize; not pacify, confuse and desensitize...
"I am adamantly against one-dimensional, so called "correct" proscriptive forms that p
He was born in Palo Alto, California, and moved at the age of six with his family to Massachusetts.
While he is sometimes associated with the Asian-American jazz or avant-garde jazz movements, Ho himself was opposed to the use of term "jazz" to describe traditional African-American music because the word "jazz" was used pejoratively by white Americans to denigrate the music of African Americans.
Ho arduously sought to define what constitutes Asian-American jazz: “What makes Chinese American music Chinese American? What would comprise an Asian American musical content and form that could transform American music in general rather than simply be subsumed in one or another American musical genre such as ‘jazz’?” He polemicized against, rightfully, “the white assimilationist notion of the petty bourgeois Asian American artist that anything by an Asian American artist makes it Asian American,” pointing out that, for instance, “Yo-Yo Ma is a cellist who happens to be Chinese/Asian American, not a Chinese/Asian American musician.”
In his role as an activist, many of his works fuse the melodies of indigenous and traditional Asian and African forms of music. He envisions his music to be a real synthesis: "In opposing cultural imperialism, a genuine multicultural synthesis embodies revolutionary internationalism in music: rather than co-opting different cultures, musicians and composers achieve revolutionary transformation predicated upon anti-imperialism in terms of both musical respect and integrity as well as a practical political economic commitment to equality between peoples."
Ho also co-edited four books: Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution (1996), Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America (2001), Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans (2008), and Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz (2013). Ho's contributions to the Asian-American empowerment movement are varied and many. He is credited with co-founding several Asian-American civic groups such as the East Coast Asian Students Union (while a student at Harvard), the Asian American Arts Alliance in New York City, the Asian American Resource Center in Boston and the Asian Improv record label.
Of Chinese descent, Ho specialized in the combining sometimes asynchronous tunes and melodies of various musical traditions, creating what many have described as both brilliant and chaotic sounds. He was the first to combine Chinese opera with traditional African-American music. He led the Afro Asian Music Ensemble (founded in 1982) and the Monkey Orchestra (founded in 1980). He lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York.
Ho held a B.A. degree in sociology from Harvard University (1979). He recorded for the Koch Jazz and Soul Note labels. Some of his final works include Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon, which premiered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in June 2006, and Voice of the Dragon I, II, and III. As Ho was a prolific composer, writer, playwright, his list of works grew continually. Some of his first CDs include Monkey I, Monkey II, The Underground Railroad to My Heart (Soul Note), We Refuse To Be Used And Abused, and Tomorrow is Now!
In his 2000 book, Legacy to Liberation, Ho, recapitulating an aesthetic vision first presented in 1985, wrote:
"Revolutionary art must ... inspire a spirit of defiance, or class and national pride to resist domination and backward ideology. Revolutionary art must energize and humanize; not pacify, confuse and desensitize...
"I am adamantly against one-dimensional, so called "correct" proscriptive forms that p
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 13, 2009
I"m so in love.
Currently reading
August 21, 2009Fred Ho and Bill Mullen were the first to explore the Afro Asian connection. I had to put it down but expect to finish after the summer is over.
April 2, 2012
A very informative and thought-provoking collection of essays. Worthy of discussion and future re-reads. Highly recommended.
December 22, 2014
Very in depth. Fantastic pieces by good writers. Most articles are very readable. All of them are highly scholarly.
December 16, 2021
4.5/5
Warning: this book is dense...but I've never read anything like it and am unconvinced anything like it may exist. Afro Asia is a collection containing expansive texts and writings by African American and Asian/American revolutionaries.
Notably it includes ways that the BPP was inspired by Maoism, Mao's 1963 and 1968 statements in support of the Afro-American struggle, the Bandung Conference (a first of its kind 1955 Asian-African conference held in Bandung, Indonesia), and various cultural pieces including the relationships between Asian Ams and hip hop. It was also really interesting seeing the chapter on Richard Aioki and Yuri Kochiyama and how since the book was published in 2008, Aioki was allegedly revealed to be an undercover agent for the FBI (which Fred Ho has denounced).
Warning: this book is dense...but I've never read anything like it and am unconvinced anything like it may exist. Afro Asia is a collection containing expansive texts and writings by African American and Asian/American revolutionaries.
Notably it includes ways that the BPP was inspired by Maoism, Mao's 1963 and 1968 statements in support of the Afro-American struggle, the Bandung Conference (a first of its kind 1955 Asian-African conference held in Bandung, Indonesia), and various cultural pieces including the relationships between Asian Ams and hip hop. It was also really interesting seeing the chapter on Richard Aioki and Yuri Kochiyama and how since the book was published in 2008, Aioki was allegedly revealed to be an undercover agent for the FBI (which Fred Ho has denounced).
June 3, 2019
A series of essays on a variety of topics: Chinese "indentured servants" in Cuba, Black soldiers in Korea, the relationship that Asian Americans have to Black music, especially jazz and hip-hop. Some of the essays were clear and informative, others more muddled in ideology and political propaganda. But hey, that's our history too. Learned a lot, highly recommend.
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April 12, 2023Duke University Press
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Box 90660
Durham, NC 27708-0660
www.Dukepress.com
March 21, 2023
An insightful read into the history of Black organizing movements in the United States, the impact of fellow communist and socialist nations that inspired the majority (if not all) of the movements we've seen from people of color in the United States.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews