No-No Boy
- Tuesday, November 19, 8 p.m.
- The Drake
- General admission $25 advance; $30 at the door
- Youth 17 and under and Five College students $12.50 advance, $15 at the door
Asian and Asian American Arts and Culture Program
“One of the most insurgent pieces of music you'll ever hear which re-examines Americana with devastating effect … . An act of revisionist subversion" — National Public Radio
No-No Boy’s music will challenge your concept of Americana. And a good bit more than that.
No-No Boy is a project of songwriter and scholar Julian Saporiti, whose music is equally reflective of his hometown, Nashville, and his Vietnamese American roots. Developed as the central component of Julian Saporiti’s PhD at Brown University, No-No Boy employs country, bluegrass and other American roots music forms — performed using an array of European, African, and Asian instruments — as the foundation for songs that explore Asian American experience. His subjects include prisoners at Japanese American internment camps who started a jazz band, Vietnamese musicians turned on to rock ‘n’ roll by American troops, and a Cambodian American painter who painted only the most beautiful landscapes of his war-torn home.
Saporiti has released three records via the Smithsonian Folkways label, the latest of which is 2023’s Empire Electric. Each comprises deftly crafted songs perfectly suited to stages from Nashville to Saporiti’s current home in Oregon to Newport or the East Village, with lyrics imbued with pathos and a sly, wry sense of humor, all interrogating, challenging, and redefining concepts of Americanness.
