Immigration is so common it might seem banal, but it profoundly changes you as a person. It changes your identity, how you relate to your new home, and your old one. After witnessing the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, the pandemic, the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes, and the national…

A year has gone by since I wrote this article, and I thought I'd check in on how the music industry is celebrating AAPI Heritage Month this year. Will there be a repeat of the tone-deaf promotion of Asian artists in lieu of Asian-American ones? …

Every songwriter starts their journey longing to convey the complexity of the human condition into digestible nuggets of perspective. Somewhere along the way, we learn the craft. We pick up techniques to overcome writer’s block, to avoid clichés, to critique our work, to make every word more potent. Inevitably, we…

June 2020. Long before the film even had the vague title “Untitled Alicia Keys Project”, the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius was abuzz. Rumor had it that Netflix was flying an entire crew to shoot a film on the COVID-free island. …

Some of the biggest names in entertainment industry were Wonsal, Gershowitz, Bulsara, Beilin, Konigsberg. Don’t recognize any of them? Perhaps you are more familiar with the Anglicized versions: Warner, Gershwin, Mercury, Berlin, and Allen? After my last article on the music industry’s celebration of AAPI Heritage Month, I was invited…

And how the music industry can do better — The perception of us as Asians who happen to be in America, as opposed to Asian Americans, is so deeply rooted that even well-meaning efforts like Asian American and Pacific Islanders Heritage Month features put their foot in it. Now that we’ve wrapped up AAPI Heritage Month, I want to…

#1 Where are you *really* from? “Where are you from?” asked the elderly British gentleman seated next to me. We were at a music conference in Los Angeles. Expecting a modicum of political correctness when attending business functions, I was mildly annoyed at the question. “Canada,” I replied with a smile. “But where is your family…

It is hard to watch helplessly as the dark fluid oozes onto our favorite shade of blue. Here are four ways to help meaningfully from afar. Our motherland, Mauritius, went from obscurity to being a prominent fixture of international news in a matter of days. Everyone has heard of the…

Why is this country still treating African Americans so poorly? How can it be that “the land of the free” can so easily disregard freedom of its own people? Inertia. Sadly simple. For most of us, lighter-skinned individuals, it is too easy to go back to “normal” life when the…