East Meets Beats #6 / Inaugural Post

So during this night, unlike most nights, there were some beats. And there were meetings. And these beats and meetings have really become the lifeblood of my stay here in Cambridge, Massachussetts. The landlord (AKA descendant of Confucius) told me something recently. He said that when your life becomes busy, it is essential to select your time commitments based on what kind of return you get out of them (for both yourself and the community). He said to ask yourself if these commitments are draining your life force or supporting it? Despite the setbacks, I can honestly say that East Meets Beats really supports my life force and provides me with incommensurate returns, and I hope I can say the same for all the family who are involved in it. Not only have I met really close and supportive friends from it, but I have been able to share and listen to inspiring creative material in a supportive and intimate setting. Community. It’s all about community. I really hope to build a community of dope producers and musicians and listeners and just simply people which flourishes by bringing its members up as opposed to trying to compete with them. Straying away from the egos and the bullshit of the market based music scene, I want East Meets Beats to be a safe haven for people to grow in the most supportive way possible. In all honesty, I never expected East Meets Beats to come this far, but the most recent event in February was the 6^th installment for the EMB community.  Even though we reinstated the strict guest list for the event, all the fam came out to show support and love. 934 Mass ave. has been known to emanate some crazy creative energy from time to time, but this night was really something special. I spent the majority of the night walking around different ciphers and breaking circles amongst a luscious backdrop of aural rhythms. We were blessed with some EMB residents (Kaanerbay and Tide eye, also shouts to the homie Will AKA Tone Ra for killin it in general even though he didn’t play), some newcomers AKA The Canteen Killa (murked it), old homie and associate holm. (aka yung thatcher who took a bus from NY), the homie and beatboxer extraordinaire Gene Shinozaki (peep his videos if you haven’t seen them, they will blow your mind), and the big homie and mentor from back in San Diego Mike Gao on HW&W records (dude is a genius, taught me everything I know on ableton). We were even lucky enough to have youtube star Jeni Suk come through and hang with us. Vibes were real, as they will continue to be in the future if yall come and help build community with us (if you like beats and community that was a formal invitation, find me on facebook: Scooter Oyama and I will add you to the group).

NYONG'O ON BLACK BEAUTY

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR. Congratulations to Ms. Lupita Nyong'o for the win last night.

Thanks Ramon Lee for the find.

IGNORANCE

Cover art for unfinished and indefinitely delayed debut album by Kai Huang, Harvard Medical School class of 2015. Stay tuned.

Photo credit: David Kong

JANUARY 10, 2014 EAST MEETS WORDS OPEN MIC FEATURING: OMNI

NOTE: This blog post is late as hell since it's taken us a minute to get the interface up and running again, but here we go. Check it after the jump. More to come soon as we get EMW's online presence on and popping again!! Ugh.

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What up y’all, it’s Kai Huang coming at you live from the left side of the attic at 934 Mass Ave with an update on our most recent East Meets Words open mic. It all went down last night, so let me give you the play-by-play.

Our host for the night was the wonderful Stacy Dimapelis, who held it down strong in between performances and kept the energy real high with her humor and crazy tangential monologues, one of which involved reading the entire text of an ill but mostly incomprehensible love poem by the 16^th century English poet John Donne, as randomly selected by a poetry app on Stacy’s iPhone. Strong move, girl.

The open mic performances were strong throughout the night. Adi (of Subdrift fame) came through and dropped an intelligent and well put together stand up comedy bit, showing some love to our LGBT brothers and sisters in the process. Jeff and Richie of Mix Theory held down solo sets, with Jeff playing the guitar and Richie stepping up his spoken word game to share a reflection on his favorite season, Autumn. Emcees included LuDow AKA LuDeezy and the boy Aaron King, whose father is widely known outside of hip hop circles for inventing gel electrophoresis and teaching EMW organizer Dave Kong biology back in college. Big ups, homie. Speaking of Dave Kong AKA The Landlord, that dude got his usual struggle on as he pieced together words and phrases chosen by the audience into a live freestyle before we transitioned into the cypher proper, featuring all of the above plus ya boy, dropping a little wisdom on they asses regarding my mostly vegetarian diet game based around the Whole Foods on Prospect St.

Word, another highlight last night was the boy Marty, a storyteller and an older white gentleman who’s been coming to the space for some months now. Much like Kong with the freestyle, dude usually asks for some topics from the audience so he can improvise a story for us. So as usual, ya boy sat in the front row and suggested institutionalized racism. Someone else said chocolate chip cookies too. I don’t know, son. Go figure. I guess some people ain’t on that militant wavelength all the time. I don’t understand it either. Anyway, that meant we got to see Marty, this pleasant older white dude, try to put together a story on the spot that involved both institutionalized racism and chocolate chip cookies. Needless to say, y’all, I was anxious to see where this was gonna go!

Marty held it down humorously though and took it in good stride, telling a story about a person of color who moves into a new city (presumably not Cambridge, MA) and is initially met with tremendous discrimination and threats of violence before making peace with his assailants using chocolate chip cookies. On some Indians and pilgrims shit, I guess. Word. I do want to note though, that as positive and charming as the story was and as much as I respect that man Marty for stepping outside his comfort zone and running with the topic I recklessly threw at him, the story he told is one about interpersonal racism, and not institutionalized racism. If y’all confused, get at me later and ask me about this!! Seriously though.

In any case, after it was all said and done on the open mic portion of the evening, that boy Omni the beatboxer came through and veritably fucked everybody’s heads up with a crisp 15 minute set. For those of y’all who don’t know, Omni’s a Cambodian-Malaysian American beatboxer from Providence, RI (401 stand up) who was recently ranked in the top 16 beatboxers in the nation, and so dude is just able to do ridiculous things with his mouth, sonically. He’s also a great dude who stays involved in the community as far as his youth outreach and mentoring (dude’s only 19 himself though!!), so we gotta respect that. And he’s actually moving to Las Vegas TODAY y’all, so he blessed us here at EMW with his last east coast show for the time being. Indeed, big ups to that dude. We’re grateful that he kicked it with us, we’re proud of the work he’s doing for Asian Americans in the arts, and we wish him all the best out in Vegas. Stay up, kid. You know you always welcome back in Cambridge.

Well, that about it, fam. Thanks to everyone who signed up to perform, thanks to everyone who signed up for the mailing list, and we’ll see y’all clowns next month. SAME BAT TIME. SAME BAT PLACE. That would be the second Friday of the month at East Meets West bookstore, 934 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA. Next month’s second Friday happens to be motherfucking VALENTINE’S DAY too, so bring your best love shit, or bring your best lovers, or both. You know the rules!

Until then, this is Kai Huang still posted up in the left side the attic. I want to let y’all know that the water’s working in the building again, so I finally flushed my toilet and all is right with the universe. Alright peace.

Kai

The Storytellers Project: Boston

On Friday, March 29, twenty individuals gathered at EMW for its first-ever Storytellers Project event (formerly called The Human Project). The bookstore’s space had been cleared, leaving only a circle of chairs and a white board. As people walked in, I could tell that they were feeling nervous, maybe skeptical. No one knew what to expect. But they were courageous and generous enough to walk into this bizarre little unknown, and for that I was and am so grateful.

Abel, Kongo, and I conceived the idea for The Storytellers Project months ago over ice cream and outrage over the daily misunderstandings, violence, and loneliness that we experience or witness every day. I mean, I look around at this planet of ours and could sit here for hours just listing off all the people that we fear or stigmatize—gay people, trans people, sick people, “illegal” people, poor people, black people, brown people, young people, old people, homeless people, surviving people, foreign people, disabled people…it’s extraordinary. It’s absurd. It honestly blows my mind, how segregated our society can be, how easy it is to accept a lie, phobia, or prejudice if you have never personally known the story of someone who has lived a certain experience. Inspired by a number of similar projects—The Human Library, TED Talks, the work of hundreds of sociologists who have come before us—the three of us decided to create a space in which otherwise quieted, pushed-aside, or segregated stories could intersect. We came up with The Storytellers Project.

Actually, to say we “came up” with it is a bit lofty. Storytelling and listening have been a part of our species since its earliest days, but what we did do was come up with a prompt and invite people who were aching to tell a story—or aching to listen and learn—to share. It was this: Tell us about a moment in which you became who you are today.

Our search led us to find four extraordinary Storytellers and thirteen Listeners. But something surprising happened that night: we all became Storytellers and Listeners. We opened with a simple group exercise that, because of the courage of everyone in the room, transformed into something sacred. Participants were asked to write and share one of the following: (1) A moment when you realized you were a skin color, gender, or class; (2) A moment when you were broken and reborn; (3) A moment of pure joy.

One woman spoke courageously about the trust that was broken and the wisdom that was reborn after a sexual assault. “I was kind of nervous about sharing my story and thought about going the safer route, but hearing other people's experiences pushed me to take a risk and I am glad that I did.” We told love stories, coming out stories, stories about enormous mistakes and quiet epiphanies. By the time the exercise came full-circle, we had each heard or shared something that had never been told before, like a real-live Post Secret.

Finally, it was time for our four featured Storytellers. The moments in which they became who they are today. What was said, what was shared, what transpired from the sharing—that’s something that could never be captured, that existed only in that time and space. I leave the reader, then, with just four images:

A Chinese-American son of immigrants writes his parents a letter declaring that he will not obediently follow a traditional career path but will instead devote his life to bridging our country’s unconscionable health disparities.

A woman lies in bed under sheets with a beautiful lover, while a storm rages on outside. She can feel in her heart that her partner sees her not as a “former man” or a “trans person” or a “freak” but as a woman, strong and good, the woman she has fought her whole life for the right to be.

A young immigrants’ rights activist approaches the podium at a rally to give a speech he has given dozens of times before—and realizes with a start that for the first time in his life, he is proud of the person and activist he has become because of his documentation status.

A young woman stands quietly in a church. She looks around, sits in its pews, walks its aisles. She lights a candle, adding its flame to the dozens of other candles that have been lit in prayer. As she lights this candle, for the first time in her life she acknowledges to herself and to the world the many nights she spent here in this church and in youth shelters while growing up in homelessness. She becomes the advocate and scholar she is today.

We left the bookstore that night, feeling shaken, inspired, and, I hope, loved. I am humbled by how many forms of “coming out” I bore witness to that night, and how healing it was for others to hear people tell their truths. As one participant said, “Listening to the others' stories about their courage and strength was inspirational and reminded me that we are all stronger than we may understand.”

The second Storytellers Project event took place on Saturday, April 6th, in Providence Rhode Island at Brown University. A recap of that event to follow. 

Post by:

VyVy Trinh

EMW Fellow

[gallery]

EMW Gallery Presents: Corky Lee

EMW Gallery is proud to present this week's feature from our upcoming show, Our American Life. This week’s featured artist is: Corky Lee

He is the Undisputed, Unofficial, Asian-American Photo Laureate — Corky Lee. The son of a paper son, many aspects of Lee's family history meld to form his deep dedication to his craft. Lee has been photographing the Asian-American community since its conception. Lee’s life work, spanning 40 years, has been devoted to what he calls "photographic justice" — a continual pursuit to document the Asian-American community.

Join the EMW Family in celebrating select works by Corky Lee, the seminal photographer of the Asian-American community.

Post by:

AnRong Xu

EMW Artist in Residence

EMW Gallery Feature: G.B. Tran

EMW Gallery is proud to present this week's feature from our upcoming show, Our American Life. This week’s featured artist is: G.B. Tran

G.B. Tran is a Brooklyn based cartoonist/illustrator whose graphic memoir VIETNAMERICA details his family’s journey of survival through the Vietnam War, and their refugee migration to the US.  Having started self-publishing his comics, VIETNAMERICA is the culmination of years of research and work, all produced while managing his career as a commercial illustrator.  G.B. was born in South Carolina a year after his family came to the United States.  He wasn’t raised on stories of their hardships; it wasn’t until his first trip to Vietnam in 2001 that the floodgates of his family’s history of tragedy, trauma, and triumph burst open.  His family's story has been featured in TIME Entertainment's “Top 10 Graphic Memoir” list, ABC's World News Now, and has been named one of 2011's best books by Library Journal, Kirkus, and the School Library Journal.  G.B.'s graphic memoir also earned him a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in non-fiction literature, a gold medal for Sequential Art from the Society of Illustrators, and an Eisner Comic Industry Awards nomination.

Join the EMW Family in celebrating select works by G.B. Tran.

Posted by:

AnRong Xu

EMW Artist in Residence

EMW Gallery Feature: Tomie Arai

EMW Gallery is proud to do our weekly feature on one of the artist in our upcoming show, Our American Life. This week’s featured artist is, Tomie Arai.

Tomie Arai is an activist/artist/philosopher/poet/historian, and printmaker, from New York City. She has painted murals with community groups on the Lower East Side, and has designed permanent public works of art for the US General Services Administration’s Art & Architecture Program, the MTA Arts for Transit Program and the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Arai’s project Momotaro/ Peach Boy draws upon the popular Japanese folk tale about a baby boy who emerges from a giant peach and grows up to become a hero.  The prints in this portfolio form the pages of a fictional narrative, inspired by family memories of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.  Each of the prints incorporates photographs of Arai’s father, grandfather and son, as well as cartoon characters, material from the National Archives, traditional Japanese motifs and illustrations appropriated from magazines and children’s books.

Join us in celebrating select works by Tomie Arai, a visionary pioneer for Asian American artist.

Post by:

AnRong Xu

EMW Artist in Residence

EMW Gallery Feature: Wing Young Huie

  Our American Life Cultivating Bicultural Identities Opening reception – March 22, 2013 – 8PM

EMW Gallery 934 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 (Red line to Central Square)

This week, EMW Gallery features Wing Young Huie, a proud addition to our inaugural show, Our American Life. Huie is a Minneapolis, Minnesota based Chinese American photographer; self-taught and documenting the dizzying socioeconomic and cultural realities of an America not often captured in our living-history. Travelling across the states, Huie works to find an Asian America: Mainstream culture razed by the Asian-American voice from the mundane to the movement provoking moments of everyday life.

Join us in celebrating select works by Wing Young Huie, an artist that shows us our domestic world as something foreign and yearning for acceptance.

Check out more of his work at, http://www.wingyounghuie.com/

Post by:

AnRong Xu

EMW Artist in Residence

Wing Young Huie: Looking for Asian America  //  Demolition Derby, Baker, Montana

Wing Young Huie: Looking for Asian America  //  Henry, Houston, Texas

EMW Gallery Presents: Our American Life

EMW Gallery is excited and proud to announce it’s inaugural show, Our American Life, featuring the work of ten artists: Alan Chin, Tomie Arai, Wing Young Huie, Corky Lee, Jerry Ma, G.B. Tran, An Rong Xu, Jon Lee, Cindy Liang, and Janice Chung, and curated by Janet Tham.

Our American Life, is a group show of artists from different practices whose work finds roots in their identities as Asian-Americans.  With their bi-cultural upbringings and experiences, this exhibition displays the story of an American people through the lens of dynamic individuals.

The Opening Reception will be March 22nd, 8pm at the EMW Gallery — 934 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, MA.

Stay tuned for gallery updates and sneak peeks of pieces by the artists!

Post by:

AnRong Xu

EMW Artist in Residence

East Meets Words = Open Mic Night + Sana!

East Meets Words Open Mic series hosted by Boston Progress Arts Collective :: http://www.bostonprogress.org/

EAST MEETS WORDS FEATURING SANA

Friday / April 13 / 8pm East Meets West Bookstore 934 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA Suggested minimum $3 donation :: All ages welcome

Come early, sign up for the open mic. Stay for the party! Kongo on the 1s and 2s!! www.facebook.com/kongoDJ

RSVP!!! https://www.facebook.com/events/329592153771596/

4/28 MODK.IT Mini Maker Faire

Whether you're a full-fledged Maker, DIY enthusiast, or curiously drawn to cool gadgets and blinking lights, this is the place for you! Join your friends from Modkit & the East Meets West Bookstore for a fun-filled day of Maker Magic.

All are welcome, so invite your friends!

You'll have a chance to:

• Meet & Mingle with Makers
• Take home a piece of art (support the artists by buying pieces they've made)
• Gain instant access to new electronic gadgets, DIY kits, locally-designed clothes, amazing art, and delicious food from our friends at Just Eats!

PS - If you're a Maker and would like to participate as part of the event, email Modkit here: events@modk.it

Find the facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/405983152747513/

Mini Make-it Market (PDF)

Video shoot at the bookstore w/ Giles Li

Video shoot at the bookstore w/ Giles Li (http://gilesli.com/)