Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jafferis presented an excerpt from their work entitled Activist Songbook, a collection of 53 original protest songs for voice and percussion, culled from conversations with activists, agitators and other leaders in Philadelphia’s and the San Francisco Bay Area’s Asian immigrant and Asian American communities, and invited the public to join in a communal performance. They also engaged the public in crowd-sourcing a new global constitution for a shared humanity that was performed at the end of the evening.
The project, which Au Yong and Jafferis think of as a kind of toolkit for organizers, was inspired by the racially motivated 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man who was beaten to death in the Detroit suburb of Highland Park.
The project, which Au Yong and Jafferis think of as a kind of toolkit for organizers, was inspired by the racially motivated 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man who was beaten to death in the Detroit suburb of Highland Park.
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Meet the Artists
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Composer and Musician Byron Au Yong
Byron Au Yong composes songs of dislocation prompted by a broken musical lineage. Born to Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh and raised in the Pacific Northwest, his upbringing informs a dedication to creating events where the American Dream and sustainability play vital roles. Au Yong holds degrees from NYU, UCLA and the University of Washington. He has been artist-in-residence with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, Virginia Tech Center for the Arts, Westminster Choir College, and Yale Institute for Music Theatre. Honors include a Creative Capital Award and Time Warner Foundation Fellowship. Learn more about Byron Au Yong at hearbyron.com. |
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Poet and Playwright Aaron Jafferis
Aaron Jafferis is a hip-hop poet and playwright whose musicals Trigger (with Byron Au Yong), Stuck Elevator (with Byron Au Yong), How to Break, Kingdom, Shakespeare: The Remix, and No Lie have been produced or developed by The Old Globe, American Conservatory Theater, Public Theater, Sundance, Collective Consciousness and many others. Honors include a Creative Capital Award, Richard Rodgers Award, Sundance Institute/Time Warner Fellowship, NEA Art Works Grant, NEFA National Theatre Project Grant, two MacDowell Fellowships, Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, and a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award. A former Open Rap Slam champion at the National Poetry Slam Championships, Aaron is the founding Artistic Director of The Word hip-hop and poetry program in his hometown of New Haven. Learn more about Aaron Jafferis at aaronjafferis.com. |
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