The more music from Asian artists that reaches people anywhere in the globe, the better.īefore we proceed, I want to note that I had extreme difficulty finding albums from Pacific Islanders that have reached any audience at all within the West. I think the results may surprise you, and that’s a great thing. It’s no surprise that most of the music from Asia reaching Westerners is Japanese, Korean or Chinese in origin, and it is unfortunately out of my purview to try to reverse these issues in time to write this article.īut what I can do is be honest about what music has moved me and proved to be culturally meaningful throughout my searches. Unfortunately, distribution of music outside of these countries is difficult to achieve for numerous reasons furthermore, systemic forces of erasure of Southeast Asians in the US (such as police and prison systems that incarcerate and deport Cambodian refugees en masse) have left these demographics sometimes struggling to find promised wealth and prosperity, and exclusion from the music industry is part of the whole package. At the end of the day, it’s difficult to find hidden jewels in rare CDs from small bands that the music industry struggles to market to Western audiences. I have made many rather radical inclusions on the list I hope these help foster diverse taste and consideration of music scenes in oft-ignored countries in, for example, Southeast and South Asia - who can name any Malaysian, any Singaporean, any Cambodian rock bands? I didn’t know much about contemporary music of these regions, and I ended up relying greatly on Internet board sentiments, Bandcamp articles and seeing whatever music has made it to the West from these regions.

My criteria for placing each album discussed here rely on my assessments of cultural influence, cultural significance and aesthetic value, all in varying degrees. The methodology for constructing this list? Hours of arbitrary sifting through large catalogs of albums, some amount of piecemeal research, lots of listening to albums and much debate. To celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I am going to discuss my list of my 10 favorite albums from Asian and Asian American musicians since 2010.

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