asians: we fuck better

A weekend of raised fists.

Went to see Def Poetry Jam, which was more radical and inspiring than I expected. The mixture of spoken word and "progressive politics" can build a facialising mode of expression that fails to be actually subversive (I'm looking at you, Michael Franti), but most of Def Poetry Jam was engaging enough to break free of that. The poets talked about identity, and its material investments and sedimentations (so luxuriously imagined away by those who confuse nomadology with the subject), without falling into reactivity. So instead of noble caricatures of the oppressed, we got performances of "identity" that were like water bombs. Beau Sia's ridiculously over the top "angry Asian" stage persona had me in tears. Some of you might remember the "Chinese waiters reserve the right to spit in your lemon chicken" piece I performed at the Sydney Writers' Festival a few years ago; Beau Sia amplifies this approach by infinity. We met the poets and DJ backstage after the show, but instead of thinking what untouchable gods they were, their work made me proud of the work we're all doing in cultural politics. Oh, and one more reason why Beau Sia rocks:

Also went to see the Asian Dub Foundation's live rescoring of La Haine. Now, I've always been more of a fan of the idea of ADF than of their music itself, and that idea has been tremendously influential in my world. When Lena and I went to London a few years ago, I noticed that Community Music -- the music training programme from which ADF had originally emerged -- was putting on a show featuring its recent graduates. Because of this cool ADF association, we went along, and were blown away. We decided to visit Community Music's headquarters, and met the people who ran the programmes. We had a great, rambling discussion about the politics of race and class in our respective countries, and it became immediately clear to Lena that London's infrastructure for cultural community development in the field of grassroots popular music was something we could learn from, and began planning a London/Sydney exchange on the spot. A couple of years later it became a reality, and Lena took a bunch of MCs to tour and train in the UK. Since then, two of those MCs, Trey and Maya, have released the most significant local hip hop albums of the past year (and don't let the fact that I designed the cover of one of them distract you from this important fact :) ). And perhaps more importantly, they've strengthened their commitment to grassroots community music programmes, running hip hop workshops across the country.

So ADF are a really important inspiration for us. Unfortunately, I found their new live score for La Haine a little too self-consciously "hardcore" and unrelenting. There were passages of great power, but the moments of quiet humour in the movie were obliterated by its new soundtrack. It wasn't necessarily a problem with "dynamics" per se, but creating the space for engagement with the medium. There wasn't enough of this space. But I was glad I was there.