Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts & Agriculture/Roundhouse Foundation present June artist-in-residence No-No Boy for a concert/presentation at PSB! Admission is free, but RSVP is required. Donations for the artists will be gratefully accepted. Click here to RSVP.

Julian Saporiti, the musician and historian whose work under the name No-No Boy has been called “an act of revisionist subversion” by NPR, has announced the release of his second album,1975, out April 2 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

This project began at the site of Heart Mountain War Relocation Center, a Japanese internment camp in Wyoming. There, Saporiti encountered a photo of an all-Japanese jazz band that had formed while its members were incarcerated by the U.S. government. Though he had studied jazz at Berklee School of Music, he had no framework for the possibility of Asian musicians playing jazz, much less under such dire circumstances.

The discovery led him to investigate how Asian musicians, confronted with the musical thrills and the imperial power of American culture, had adapted jazz, psychedelic rock, and country music to fit their own needs.

The project has special resonance for Saporiti. “Even though I grew up in Nashville and grew up loving that music and literally in the industry,” he says, “there was always something that didn’t fit, because I look the way I do.” No-No Boy became a way of “making space for myself as a younger musician,” as he puts it.

“When you actually look into history, or when you actually look into your contemporary moment, it’s a mess,” he says. “But if you sit with that mess, and do some deep listening and meditate on it, you might learn from it. And that’s what this record tries to do. Just sit down for a second and listen. Not to my music so much, but to the past as best you can. When you listen, things have to calm down.” This calm, quiet, and open territory is where No-No Boy makes his home.

Artist Bio:

Julian Saporiti is a Vietnamese American songwriter and scholar born in Nashville, Tennessee. His multi-media work "No-No Boy" has transformed his doctoral research on Asian American history into concerts, albums, and films which have reached a broad and diverse public audience. His latest album "1975" released through Smithsonian Folkways has been hailed by NPR as "one of the most insurgent pieces of music you'll ever hear" which "re-examines americana with
devastating effect" and American Songwriter called it "insanely listenable and gorgeous." By using art to dive into highly divisive issues such as race, refugees, and immigration, Saporiti aims to allow audience members to sit with complication as music and visuals open doorways to
difficult histories.

Saporiti currently lives in Portland, Oregon. As a teacher, he has taught courses in songwriting, music, literature, history, Asian American Studies, and ethnic studies at the University of Wyoming, Colorado College, Brown University, and has served as artist/scholar in residence at many universities and high schools across the country. Saporiti holds degrees from Berklee College of Music, University of Wyoming, and Brown University, and has been commissioned by cultural institutions such as Lincoln Center, the LA Philharmonic, the National Parks and Carnegie Hall.

Emilia Halvorsen is originally from Baltimore, MD. As a musician and artist with No-No Boy, Emilia has performed and taught workshops from Alaska to Mexico. Working directly with communities inspired her to attend Lewis & Clark Law School, where she pursues criminal defense and immigration law.