courtesy of Cat in the Stack @ HASTAC
Oliver Wang and Mark Anthony Neal:
CULTURAL CRITICISM 2.0
“How Do You Filter the Infinite?”
MAN opens the conversation by asking "What would Oliver be doing in 2008 if not for the internet?" OW says "I can't even imagine what the world would look like without the internet."
OW's music journalism began in the 1990s, including in the pre-internet era, on the early UseNet usergroups. (For non-geeks who don't know what that was, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet).
"Growing up Asian American, there was no organic musical tradition I could identify with. My dad listened to Simon and Garfunkel . . . My friends and I latched on to New Wave. And then Hip Hop, through the Alternative Rock station (which would be anathema today). I went out and bought Three Feet High and Rising."
The mobile Filipino mobile dj culture in the Bay Area really takes off in the 1990s. What did it mean? What was it about? It's the subject of the book OW is doing for Duke U Press.
MAN asks what is the reaction of these dj's to being studied? OW says no one had ever really studied them before, no one had documented this history, no one had ever bothered to ask them about their experiences . . . esp the relationship between their dj'ing and being Filipino. They hadn't really thought about race and ethnicity and their music, and his questions made the dj's think about that. The younger dj's now are very aware of these issues, the issues are much more a part of their culture today.
MAN: At one time, people went to the Village Voice for cultural critidism, now, in the very competitive internet scene of music journalism, what kind of questions are you being asked to explain?
OW says that in his experience he hasn't really had to account for being Asian writing on soul and hip hop because of the multicultural nature of the Bay Area (and forerunners like Jeff Chang).
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