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

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Friday, January 29, 2027 | 6pm to 7:30pm

25 West 43rd Street, 10th Floor, Suite 1000
between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan

In-Person: RSVP | Zoom: RSVP

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 how music functions as a performance of social, cultural, and political identification for a population historically excluded from the racial boundaries of American citizenship, provoking a broader discussion on national identity and the challenges of nation-building.

By exploring how musical practices cultivate a shared history and aesthetic between performers and listeners, Asai investigates the complex relationship between ethnic identity and national belonging. Ultimately, Sounding Our Way Home situates Asian Americans within the US Black/white racial binary while shedding light on the ongoing social and political discrimination faced by nonwhite immigrants and their offspring in their struggle for acceptance and equal representation.

Purchase Book: https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/S/Sounding-Our-Way-Home

Author Bio

Susan Miyo Asai is Professor Emerita of Ethnomusicology at Northeastern University in Boston. Her research focuses on traditional Japanese performing arts, Japanese American music and identity formation, and the intersection of Asian American and African American music and politics. In addition to Sounding Our Way Home: Japanese American Musicking and the Politics of Identity (2024), she is the author of Nōmai Dance Drama: A Surviving Spirit of Medieval Japan (1999) and the editor of At the Crossroads: Music and Social Justice (2023).