Date/Time
Date(s) - 02/10/2018
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Location
Pao Arts Center
National touring musicians and Brown University doctoral students Julian Saporiti & Erin Aoyama bring their unique and innovative multimedia concert No-No Boy to Boston. Taking inspiration from interviews with World War II Japanese Incarceration camp survivors, and his own family’s history living through the Vietnam War, as well as other archival stories that explore diverse aspects of the Asian American experience, Saporiti has transformed his doctoral research into folk songs in an effort to bring these stories to a broader audience. Performing these well-crafted songs alongside Erin Aoyama, whose family was incarcerated at one of the 10 Japanese American concentration camps, No-No Boy aims to shine a light on experiences that have remained largely hidden in the American consciousness.
This concert will also feature the live debut of a suite of songs from the No-No Boy project which focus on historical and contemporary Chinatowns in Boston and NYC.
About the Artist: From 2004-2010, Julian Saporiti fronted the indie-rock group The Young Republic. Later, while in Laramie, Wyoming to pursue a Master’s in American Studies, Saporiti made several trips to the remains of the Heart Mountain concentration camp where, during WWII, the US government unconstitutionally incarcerated over 10,000 people of Japanese descent. Saporiti began interviewing camp survivors and researching the music performed in the camps. From these interviews, and his thoughts about his own displaced family of Vietnamese refugees, he began writing No-No Boy. He resides in Providence, Rhode Island where he iscontinuing this research, composing and recording music, and pursuing a PhD at Brown University, where he also directs the Brown Arts Initiative Songwriters Workshop.
