Sounding Our Way Home: Japanese American Musicking and the Politics of Identity

Music, Ethnicity, Identity, and Representation

Join Susan Miyo Asai, author of Sounding Our Way Home: Japanese American Musicking and the Politics of Identity, for a provocative discussion about her book and the efforts of three generations of Japanese Americans to reach “home” through musicking.

Using ethnomusicology as a lens, Susan examines the musical choices of a population that, historically, is considered outside the racial and ethnic boundaries of American citizenship. The book further provokes a discussion about the challenges of nation-building in a democratic society.

Sounding Our Way Home contributes to the ongoing struggle for acceptance and equal representation for people of color in the U.S. We hope you’ll join us for a this timely and important conversation.

Copies of Susan’s book will be available for purchase and signing. Please RSVP for planning purposes.

About Susan Miyo Asai

Susan Miyo Asai is professor emerita of ethnomusicology at Northeastern University, with expertise spanning Japanese traditional performing arts, Japanese American music and identity formation, and the intersection of Asian American and African American music and politics. She is coeditor of At the Crossroads: Music and Social Justice and author of Nōmai Dance Drama: A Surviving Spirit of Medieval Japan and has contributed to numerous edited volumes, including The Music of Multicultural America: Performance, Identity, and Community in the United States, published by University Press of Mississippi.

About the Book

A product of twenty-five years of archival and primary research, Sounding Our Way Home: Japanese American Musicking and the Politics of Identity narrates the efforts of three generations of Japanese Americans to reach "home" through musicking. Using ethnomusicology as a lens, Susan Miyo Asai examines the musical choices of a population that, historically, is considered outside the racial and ethnic boundaries of American citizenship. Emphasizing the notion of national identity and belonging, the volume provokes a discussion about the challenges of nation-building in a democratic society.

Asai addresses the politics of music, interrogating the ways musicking functions as a performance of social, cultural, and political identification for Japanese Americans in the United States. Musicking is an inherently political act at the intersection of music, identity, and politics, particularly if it involves expressing one's ethnicity and/or race. Asai further investigates how Japanese American ethnic identification and cultural practices relate to national belonging. Musicking cultivates a narrative of a shared history and aesthetic between performers and listeners. The discourse situates not only Japanese Americans, but all Asians into the Black/white binary of race relations in the United States.

Sounding Our Way Home contributes to the ongoing struggle for acceptance and equal representation for people of color in the US. A history of Japanese American musicking across three generations, the book unveils the social and political discrimination that nonwhite immigrants and their offspring continue to face when it comes to finding acceptance in US society and culture.