Asian voices/Dialogues with Asia series


The Asian voices/Dialogues with Asia series began in June 2001, and was intended to showcase music somehow connected with Asia: not only art music of whatever stripe by contemporary and recent Asian composers, but also music -- whether by Asian composers or not -- that uses Asian instruments and compositional modes in new ways, as well as the occasional bit of "western" music inspired by Asian themes and subject matter. Although it initially ran bimonthly, later on it traded positions with the Northwest composers series to run on the fifth Thursday morning of every month that had five Thursdays.

Why did I do this series? Partly, it's because I'm an Asianist-anthropologist by training (currently nonpracticing), as well as a once and future performer of Asian music (especially, gamelan); and I like the idea of highlighting material for which I happen to have a special affinity, as was the case with the defunct speculative fiction/experimental music series. As well, there's a fair amount of Asian and Asian-related music in the Prisms vein available, but it doesn't get the attention it deserves, so I decided to address that gap. I'm not Asian, and I made it clear throughout the series that I don't claim to speak for Asian communities, musical or otherwise, as some sort of insider. That's part of the reason why I maximized eclecticism during this series, hopping back and forth between cultures and nations as well as mixing in "western" material that seems germane to the musical tasks at hand -- the idea was that if I stuck to the usual all-but-the-kitchen-sink Prisms modus operandi, that would help diffuse my authority a little bit.

I didn't stop doing this series because I lost interest in the kind of music it surveyed -- quite the opposite. Rather -- as part of a general rethinking of the Prisms format that culminated while the program was on hiatus in August and September 2002 -- two conclusions I reached during that process led to my decision to end the series. First, I decided that the geographical eclecticism made for thematically weak (even if sonically interesting) programs, and that my ability to do thematically strong programs related to Asia would actually be bolstered by crafting such programs as standalones -- because discarding the AV/DA organizing rubric would make it easier for me to be clear that thematically strong programs aren't part of some attempt to speak for Asians. Second, much as was true with my decision to end the Northwest composers series, I felt that I would probably better serve the listening community and the composers in question by stirring their work back into the general soup. I became worried I might come to "ghettoize" AV/DA-appropriate work a bit by drawing it away from other programs -- and more importantly became concerned that, by creating hodgepodge programs with playlists connected only by geography, I might end up restricting the range of fruitful connections that could be made between local work and other music.

After the hiatus, I did go ahead and do one more AV/DA program, both because I'd already thought through what would have been the (unthemed) August program and didn't want it to go to waste, as well as to give the series one last fond go. But henceforth, I plan to turn my primary attention back to finding good ways to interpolate Asia-related work into other kinds of themed programs and series, along with the occasional program focused on a specific aspect or area of Asia-related music.

These programs were part of the Asian voices/Dialogues with Asia series: