Diaspora Dance Mixtape DJ Roundtable
Summary:
Les Talusan, Arshia Fatima Haq, and Roger Bong talk with Rochelle Kwan about the importance of stories and community in their work to share the music of the Asian diaspora.
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Interviewed: 09/08/2021
Narrators: Les Talusan, Arshia Fatima Haq, Roger Bong
Interviewer: Rochelle Kwan
Interview length: 48m 01s
Interview Log
1:30 Rochelle Kwan (RK), Les Talusan (LT), Arshia Fatima Haq (AFH), and Roger Bong (RB) introduce themselves and what they’re working on currently.
3:54 AFH, RB, LT, and RK remember their earliest memories of music with their families.
7:56 LT, RB, AFH, and RK talk about their first musical purchases.
10:06 AFH remembers how hearing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and turkish psychedelic music for the first time reminded her of music she grew up with.
11:20 RB talks about hearing Mackey Feary Band away from Hawai’i for the first time and how it led him to start Aloha Got Soul.
14:13 LT talks about being obsessed with My Bloody Valentine CD as a teenager and how it led her to start a shoegaze band.
16:00 RB talks about the way music of island bands connects Hawaii’s diaspora. RB and LT talk about their shared love for Kalapana.
18:18 LT talks about getting surprised reactions from Filipino Americans when she DJs Original Pilipino Music (OPM). LT remembers deciding to continue DJing OPM to share Filipino music.
20:35 AFH reflects on the connection between music and migration, the importance of joy and mourning together on the dancefloor for the Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) diaspora and the origins of Discostan.
23:40 RK talks about learning the stories behind her inherited Chinese record collections from her neighbors.
26:25 RB reflects on his complicated identity and relationship with Hawai’i and his sense of duty to share the music of Hawai’i with “pono”.
28:10 LT talks about OPM Sundays and talking with the OPM (Original Pilipino Music) artists to learn about the histories of the music that they play. RK talks about the origins of Cantopop and how these histories are grounded in her music work today.
31:00 LT, AFH, and RB talk about the exploitation and exotification of their culture’s music within the record industry. AFH reflects on starting the Discostan record label and the racist ideas of expertise in the music industry for other cultures’ music.
36:47 RB reflects on the importance of showing people, especially youth, that it’s possible for other cultures to make great music.
39:00 RK reflects on the growing community of people who contribute to her music work. LT talks about the important space that OPM Sundays create for Filipinos across the diaspora to listen and reminisce together over music.
42:10 AFH explains the importance of playing music made today from the diaspora to show the evolution of music across time, particularly for conflict regions.
43:33 RB, LT, and RK talk about their love for working with elders to learn about the histories of the music they play.