Resounding Afro Asia examines black-Asian musical collaborations as part of a genealogy of cross-racial culture and politics in the U.S. Roberts argues these projects offer a glimpse into how artists live multiracial lives that inhabit yet exceed multicultural frameworks built on racial essentialism and segregation.

Cultural hybridity is a celebrated hallmark of U.S. American music and identity. Yet hybrid music is all too often marked -and marketed - under a single racial label. Resounding Afro Asia examines music projects that counter this convention; these projects instead foreground racial mixture in players, audiences, and sound in the very face of the ghettoizing culture industry. Giving voice to four contemporary projects, author Tamara Roberts traces black/Asian engagements that reach across the United States and beyond: Funkadesi, Yoko Noge, Fred Ho and the Afro Asian Music Ensemble, and Red Baraat. From Indian funk & reggae, to Japanese folk & blues, to jazz in various Asian and African traditions, to Indian brass band and New Orleans second line, these artists live multiracial lives in which they inhabit - and yet exceed - multicultural frameworks built on essentialism and segregation. When these musicians collaborate, they generate and perform racially marked sounds that do not conform to their individual racial identities. The Afro Asian artists discussed in this book splinter the expectations of racial determinism, and through improvisation and composition, articulate new identities and subjectivities in conversation with each other. These dynamic social, aesthetic, and sonic practices construct a forum for the negotiation of racial and cultural difference and the formation of inter-minority solidarities. Resounding Afro Asia joins a growing body of literature that is writing Asian American artists back into U.S. popular music history, while highlighting interracial engagements that have fueled U.S. music making. The book will appeal to scholars of music, ethnomusicology, race theory, and politics, as well as those interested in race and popular music.

A collection of writing on the historical alliances, cultural connections, and shared political strategies linking African Americans and Asian Americans.