Popular music-1950s Playlist to date-Challenges experienced-Songs by Asian American women & girls
Popular music is a window into the racial and gender politics of any era! Make a playlist of 20 songs from the 1950s to the Present filled with songs by Asian American women and girls. Please use Spotify or Soundcloud to construct and organize your playlist and make it sharable and accessible to the public, i.e. me.
Like Renee Tajima-Peña, your curated playlist should be a journey with destinations, detours, and surprises. Once your playlist is complete, you will write a 2-3 page reflection (400+ words) about your experience. What kinds of challenges did you experience when searching for music by Asian American women and girls from the 1950s to the Present? (Challenges like defining Asian American? Finding artists and songs from every era?) What reoccurring themes did you find in the music by Asian American women and girls? What kinds of songs made it onto your playlist, which ones did not? Why? What eras are more prominent on your list? Why?
Please format your reflection using the Modern Language Association’s (Links to an external site.) formatting guidelines and upload load it to Canvas as a PDF file. You can include a link to your playlist in your reflection.
Resources for the Assignment:
- NPR’s Turning the Tables Project
- Deborah Anne Wong, Speak it Louder: Asian Americans Making Music, (New York: Routledge), 2004.(Links to an external site.)
- Ann Powers, “You’ve Got A Home: June Millington’s Lifelong Journey in Rock”, NPR, 11/19/2015.(Links to an external site.)
- Apryl Berney, “In The Basement: Afro-Asian Teenage Female Alliances in Post-War America,” Scholar & Feminist, Issue 14.3, 2018.(Links to an external site.)