Archiving Asian American Music and Cross-cultural Collaboration in Chicago

Due to structural racism, the contributions of Asian American musicians in Chicago have largely gone unnoticed by popular media. For the past half-century, Asian American creatives have been practicing in Chicago with little recognition, and with the unfolding of anti-Asian sentiments this last year, it becomes increasingly imperative that we investigate that unwritten history, and finally give credit where it is due. Without an adequate archive, there is not much for journalists and academics to draw upon, thus Asian Improv aRts Midwest (AIRMW) has compiled an extensive database covering over 40 years of material, spanning videos, interviews, articles, photographs, and ephemera.

This initiative is an effort to provide coverage of Asian American creative endeavors that have been influential but are rarely noted. It is not intended to uphold rigid ideas of identity, but rather shape our present culture and cultural history to better reflect the diversity of Chicago’s performing arts community. Media theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi writes, “Cultures exist in a perennial process of becoming and cultural evolution does not depend on ovaries or sperm or skin color — it depends on schools, on books, on friendships, on the sharing of resources and technology. Identity is based on an imaginary sense of belonging to a common past, while cultural becoming anticipates the futures inscribed in the present of social life.” With this archive, action is being taken to participate in the cultural becoming; it is an acknowledgement of Asian American arts in the Midwest and a call for greater representation of artists of color in the future. This project strives to unravel the consequences of systemic racism which have kept Asian American creatives from gaining recognition in the past, while shaping the present and future of Chicago’s cultural landscape by recovering the music of the historically marginalized.