Bridging the Gap — Pacific Bridge Arts Looks to Offer Asian musicians a leg up: On Thursday, Nov. 2, on the Intercrew restaurant in Los Angeles at the side of the Pacific Bridge Arts Foundation, an event called A Night to Remember: A Celebration of Asian Americans in Music will happen. While it’s a non-public event, it still guarantees to be a big and necessary night for the scholars receiving scholarships on the night, in addition to Asian American artists normally.
Kevin Nishimura is a cofounder of the Pacific Bridge Arts Foundation, which provides “a platform to support and rejoice Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in arts and culture” (in accordance with their website). He’s also a member of the pioneering electronic/hip-hop outfit, the Far East Movement. That group now not performs, having switched to the business side of the industry, but they’ll be hosting this event.
“The Far East Movement was really the start of our lives within the skilled music industry,” says Nishimura. “We began as a music group, doing electronic rap, representing Korea Town and Downtown L.A. We were signed to Interscope, and really had a learning experience within the music industry head on. As we began getting older and transitioning into more of the business role, we actually wanted to achieve out and create those channels to achieve out. Pacific Bridge Arts was that perfect bridge where we could return into the community and encourage students and young musicians that were taking a look at the music industry and seeing that it felt to date away. Pacific Bridge Arts was a way for us to bridge that gap through scholarships and different programs. It started off with live shows. That was why we desired to become involved. We didn’t see many programs that were doing that kind of work. We were excited to be a component of that.”
The Far East Movement founded an organization called Transparent Arts, after its move away from performing, which distributes music from Asia into the USA, investing in artists, and doing more community work through Pacific Bridge Arts. It’s been an excellent time to be working in that space, not least due to the ever-increasing popularity of K-Pop and J-Pop within the west.
“After we were artists, we never thought there could possibly be a platform this big,” says Nishimura. “Even Asian language and specifically Korean language music could possibly be heard all all over the world and sung exactly perfectly, the way in which the language is sung in Korean. So to listen to it translated the way in which that the LatinX community and that music is translated has been an actual inspiration for us and so we’re very grateful to be a component of that next journey. Excited to see lots of artists which might be our friends. The Jay Parks and so many others which might be making global waves out of Korea. It’s a terrific time.”
The Pacific Bridge Arts Foundation got here to be due to former councilmember David Ryu, who originally began it as a community event on the steps of City Hall.
“I feel it was 12 months two, he contacted us, me and my partner James Roh, to see if we desired to take it over and do an event,” says Nishimura. “We had lots of love for what he was doing for the community, we thought it was perfect, and we did it. We threw a festival on the steps of City Hall, and it went lots higher than we expected, to be honest. A whole lot of our friends that were within the K-Pop and Asian hip-hop industry just got here out and performed. Eight thousand to 10,000 people on the steps of City Hall in Downtown L.A., and for us we’d never seen anything like that. I feel at the identical time, we saw community leaders come out, we were giving out awards from the City of LA, and thru that first event it inspired us to take Pacific Bridge Arts lots further. That’s once we expanded it into scholarship programs and what it’s now.”
A second event pulled in an analogous number of individuals, with Jay Park and Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park) performing. That led to a partnership with Amazon Music.
“An executive there named Frankie Yaptinchay was pivotal in bringing Amazon Music in to support and getting Twitch involved in order that we could amplify this globally,” says Nishimura. “We were capable of usher in much larger stars to do the livestream in the course of the pandemic. Huge support from Amazon and Twitch to represent the API community. We had billboards in Latest York Times Square, and that was definitely an emotional experience to see how recognized our community was getting. During that point, we made the Pacific Bridge Arts musical scholarships, and the partnership with GRAMMY Camp (a five-day camp for top school students occupied with a profession in music).”
If the final word aim is to advertise Asian musicians, but in addition to assist young Asian musicians start in music, then they’re having great success. The importance of groups like this has been highlighted by a wave of violence against Asian people in the course of the pandemic, due to an expansion of misinformation.
“News like that affected the community deeply, and if anything it unified us,” says Nishimura. “If there was a necessity I couldn’t say, but there was definitely a way of togetherness and strength in numbers. I’m also a cofounder and board member of a corporation called Gold House, which has been greatly supportive of Pacific Bridge Arts, and we collaborate lots together. Gold House was pivotal within the Stop Asian Hate campaign. Bringing large corporations to the table to assist that GoFundMe. So Pacific Bridge Arts, we actually didn’t touch on that, but I’ll say that the support from the community was immense.”
“It’s hard for anyone to take the road less traveled. We definitely went through lots of that, and our success is de facto a product of our surroundings and the people who helped us along the way in which,” adds Far East Movement’s James Roh. “So we wish to support those that have the courage to take those steps in any way that we are able to, whether through scholarships, mentorship, training, whatever. We just want them to know that they’re not alone, they usually can come to us at any time.”
So back to the Nov. 2 event. This might be the primary celebration and dinner Pacific Bridge Arts has held for the scholarships.
“We desired to make it an evening to essentially recognize Asian Americans in music, and a number of the amazing accomplishments,” says Nishimura. “Far East Movement might be hosting; we won’t be performing. But now we have an incredible friend coming out to perform. Her name is Yuna, she’s Malaysian; she’s had incredible success in America collaborating with Usher and so far more. She’s going to do an acoustic performance.
“We’re recognizing some amazing friends, but in addition Asians which were either nominated or won a Grammy.”
“We’re really excited to have Yuna perform at this event, who now we have known and revered for a very long time,” adds Virman, also of the Far East Movement. “She’s a trailblazer who has never been afraid to be herself and still achieved high levels of success. She’s also an awesome one that at all times wants to provide back. DJ Eman is a legend in American radio who has at all times used his platform to support up and coming artists, including us! The speakers are all also friends who we’ve worked with in other ways over the past years. It’s sort of mind-boggling to think that they’re all Grammy certified in a technique or one other considering where they began from.”
Grammy-winning producer John Yip of the Stereotypes might be speaking, as will fellow winning engineer David Yungin Kim, electronic artist TOKiMONSTA, and producer Nick Lee. Meanwhile, scholarships might be going to Cayla Mendoza (Music Therapy and Psychology, Frost School of Music, University of Miami) and Claire Goh (California Institute of the Arts, Instrumental Studies – Guitar).
“We’re going to have a couple of of the recipients come out, share their stories, and considered one of them play for the audience that night,” says Nishimura. “Lastly, we’re introducing the Filipino Music Leaders Committee headed by Virman from Far East Movement. DJ E-Man, a pioneer within the music industry for Filipinos, and he’s a program director for Power-106, which, for us growing up, was the station with elevated Far East Movement. It’s an action-packed night.”
Looking ahead, beyond this event, Nishimura hopes to expand this program further.
“We were talking with the Recording Academy – I’m a part of the L.A. chapter,” he says. “We hope to do lots more with the Recording Academy. I feel we’ll have some board members there to talk as well. We’d like to bring back the festival but I actually have to say it cautiously because we did it so way back, and now we’re doing a livestream with Amazon Music. So we’ll see where things go. After this 12 months, we’re going to discuss it. It’s too early to say.”
Bridging the Gap: For all of the knowledge, go to pacificbridgearts.org.
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