“I felt compelled to play and replicate each of these instruments — Eastern, Western, Hawaiian — with only my voice.”
Jason Tom is an American beatboxer and slam poet who has represented Hawaii at the sixth International Human Beatbox Convention and the first and fifth American Beatbox Championship in Brooklyn. He received the Hawaii Scene Choice Award for Best Solo Human Beatbox Performer, TEDx Presenter Award for his “Vocal Groove” presentation, among other accolades. He co-founded the Human Beatbox Academy, where he leads outreach performances, speaking engagements, and workshops for students of all ages.
In his interview with The International Wave, Jason talks about his childhood inspirations, references exhilarating onomatopoeic beatbox sounds, and kowtows to his Asian cultural heritage as a fourth-generation American of Hawaii Chinese descent. The chat also delves into his most challenging elements of his personal life, including an SUV collision which rendered him unconscious, and on what strung him together to revitalize his strength as an inspirational speaker. …
“As classical musicians, we don’t lip sync. We don’t have fancy smoke machines. We’re delivering it live every single night.”
Violinist Sarah Chang has for long astounded audiences across the world with her now-signature Romantic flair, technical precision, and full-arm bow flourishes. At the mere age of six, Chang started lessons at the Juilliard School, from when the title of ‘child prodigy’ followed her to her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age eight and her first album recording, “Debut,” at age ten.
Unlike many other child prodigies who tend to grow out of music, Chang soared past that “confusing” stage in her life, finding value in music beyond the ritzy stage: she delivered handcrafted violins to children in impoverished and war-torn regions as America’s cultural ambassador, proudly bore New York’s 2004 Olympic torch, and travelled to one of the most secluded places in the world, Pyongyang, North Korea, for a concert vouching peace and reunification. …
Originally published in Harvard Political Review [October 29, 2020]
Charles W. Mills is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Born in the U.K. and raised in Jamaica, he is a leading thinker in social and political philosophy as it centers on class, gender, and race. His first book, “The Racial Contract,” introduces the titular concept: a “contract” that permits white people to violate their own moral principles in dealing with non-white individuals. …
HarvardWood Alumni Profile
Originally published in Harvardwood [October 1, 2020]
Kenneth S. Williams AB ’78 began our hour-long conversation with a flip-side marketing pitch on why film school students should consider returning to a virtual fall: having a firm grasp of collaborative software solutions and non-in-person digital tools could well-position a job-market candidate entering a world bestrewn with uncertainties such as the COVID-19 resurgence. “The old way of in-person work will soon be replaced by the new normal,” he says. “A lot of companies are not only looking for temporary work-arounds, but they’re trying to find permanent solutions to future-proof themselves.”
As the Executive Director of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at USC, Williams shared his reams of first-hand observational knowledge on the colossal shifts in the film and entertainment industry. His work at the ETC, a collegial post he’s taken up for eight years, stands at the forefront of groundbreaking entertainment technologies. Bringing together major studios and tech companies, Williams has led research, projects, prototypes, and demonstrations in areas of immersive entertainment experiences, cloud-based remote production and post-production, AI, and machine-learning-driven applications for media and entertainment. …
““Yellow Rose” is a story of perseverance. Rose is almost as old as the film took to make by the time I made it — almost 17 years old.”
Diane Paragas is a Filipino-American documentary and narrative film director who produced the 2011 documentary, “Brooklyn Boheme,” a portrait of the Black arts movement in Fort Greene during the mid 1980s through the 90s. Paragas called in from her apartment in Brooklyn, New York, with a view of Manhattan on the right, preparing for the October 9, 2020 theatrical release of her debut feature-film, “Yellow Rose.”
Drawing from real-life interviews with families detained by ICE, Paragas in “Yellow Rose” vividly portrays the story of Rose, an undocumented 17-year-old Filipina (played by Tony Award Nominee Eva Noblezada), who aspires to become a country music performer in Austin, Texas. …
Originally published in Harvardwood [August 1, 2020]
Joey Siara EdM ’14 is a screenwriter who has worked on series for ABC, CNN, and Discovery. His short fiction, “The Last of the Goggled Barskys,” was recently featured on Slate Magazine. Before receiving his Master’s in Education from Harvard University and MFA from UCLA, he played in indie rock band, The Henry Clay People, performing at Lollapalooza and Coachella. He is a writing instructor in the School of Theater, Film, and Television at UCLA.
Woojin Lim: Your latest short story on Slate “The Last of the Goggled Barskys” tells of a Black Mirror-esque dystopian science fiction about smart goggles that project user tasks for optimal satisfaction. …
Originally published in Harvard’s The Wave Arts Magazine [July 31, 2020]
Filipino musician Polo Reyes (alias Mellow Fellow) describes his music as being “comprised of pearlescent guitars, and a golden voice that drives distinct jazzy tunes seasoned with luster from synthesizers.” Starting out by writing music in college as a platform to channel his loneliness and frustration into warbling love songs, Reyes has gained a massive online following and toured in various countries in Asia as well as the United States.
When asked to describe his music pictorially, Reyes left me with three words: “Cigarettes, coffee, and polaroids.” Infused with a warm brew of memories, Mellow Fellow’s songs stand out with drowsy jazz melody lines, as if cigarette embers slowly wilting, leaving behind a soft, silent trail of smoke. In our coffeehouse-like conversation, Reyes and I talked about some of his most personal lyrics, the triviality of the label “bedroom pop,” and the struggles of being a musician in the Philippines. …
“What we need is an insurrection, as Judith Butler might say, at the level of white ontology itself.”
Originally published in Truthout [July 18, 2020]
What drives the current rift between white and Black America, and how as individuals can we effectively contribute to the fight against the worldmaking of whiteness?
Philosopher George Yancy, a leading public intellectual in the critical study of race who received backlash for pointing out the U.S.’s yoke of whiteness, argues that white supremacy breathes at the site of Black asphyxiation.
In this exclusive Truthout interview, Yancy discusses the racialized dimensions of COVID-19 vulnerabilities, Donald Trump’s displays of white nationalist aspirations, the un-sutured pain of living as a Black person in the United States, and the much-required insurrection against white ontology itself. …
“Find yourself in every story you tell. Any story can be personal.”
Originally published in The Harvard Political Review [July 16, 2020]
Smriti Mundhra is a film producer and director who specializes in observational documentaries. She won the Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award at the Tribeca Film Festival for “A Suitable Girl” (2018), a nuanced dive into the lives of three young women in India, and received an Academy Awards nomination for “St. Louis Superman” (2019), which follows the story of Bruce Franks Jr., a local activist, battle rapper, and former Missouri politician. Smriti is set to release her latest Netflix series “Indian Matchmaking” on July 16, 2020.
Woojin Lim: How has your upbringing inspired you to explore the filmmaking space? …
‘Write for yourself. Be bold, be crazy, forget any rules.’
Kevin Kwan talks about the success of the “Crazy Rich Asians” trilogy and his magical adventures in the island of Capri which have brewed for ten years into his latest book “Sex and Vanity.”
Kevin Kwan, 47, was born in Singapore as the youngest of three boys into an elite Chinese Singaporean family. Since his publication of Crazy Rich Asians (2013), which topped the NYT bestseller charts, Kwan’s books have explored the over-the-top wealth of Asia’s high-society in the playground of romantic comedy. In 2018, “Crazy Rich Asians” was adapted into a film by a major Hollywood studio to feature an all-Asian cast and an Asian-American lead in 25 years since the Joy Luck Club (1993). …
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