Sounding Our Way Home

Susan Miyo Asai is professor emerita of ethnomusicology at Northeastern University, with expertise spanning Japanese traditional performing arts, Japanese American music and identity formation, and the intersection of Asian American and African American music and politics. She is author of At the Crossroads: Music and Social Justice and Nomai Dance Drama: A Surviving Spirit of Medieval Japan and has contributed to numerous edited volumes, including The Music of Multicultural America: Performance, Identity, and Community in the United States, published by University Press of Mississippi.

Acknowledgments Preface Chapter 1: The Nexus of Music, Identity, and Politics Chapter 2: Dual Identities: Japanese Immigrant Community, Identity, and Music Chapter 3: Caught on the Cultural Cusp: Nisei Politics of Identity and Music Chapter 4: "Buddhahead Blues": Musical Communities in the US Concentration Camps of World War II Chapter 5: Sansei: The Political Advocacy of Music and a Turn toward the East Epilogue: The Promise of Interracial Music Coalitions Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

Bringing together decades of interviews and original archival work, Sounding Our Way Home is the first book to provide a true overview of the full range of the Japanese American musical experience." - W. Anthony Sheppard, author of Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination "In Sounding Our Way Home, Susan Miyo Asai weaves together historical and musical analysis, spotlighting the achievements of individual musicians within a broader narrative of Japanese American musicking across generations. This book is an admirable and important contribution to Asian American studies and music history." - Grace Wang, associate professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis