I write and DJ; my sound reverberates refugeeness.
My dissertation project “Hip-Hop in and of Vietnam: Performances, Sonic and Visual Aesthetics” is my writing on hip-hop and Vietnameseness. This dissertation makes an important contribution to Critical Refugee Studies by recentering Vietnamese music and sound. My project asks: how does an engagement with hip-hop construct the Vietnamese refugee subject? How do Vietnamese performers construct Vietnamese cultural identity post-1986 Đổi Mới “Renovation Era” through hip-hop? How do translocal friendships allow for post-war generations to navigate, negotiate, and unify between the nation and diaspora after the war? By attending to grillz jeweler Johnny Dang, rappers Thai VG and Suboi, and DJs from the Cipherz turntablist crew, I seek answers.
My live sonic performances “Lo(về) (Quê)er” commemorate the end of the Vietnam war. My DJ sets play in the tension of reunification of Vietnam post-1975 by mixing musics—nhạc vàng, Southern Vietnamese music yearnings and sorrow over loss of homeland and nhạc đỏ, Northern Vietnamese music played in revolution in the unification of the nation. Unimaginable to earlier waves of exilic refugees, subsequent generations of refugees dream up life after war through hybridizing, negotiating, and feminizing / queering / transing. My mixes uplifts these sonic productions of Vietnamese diasporic singers like Lynda Trang Đài, Phạm Duy, Sailorr, and Thuỷ as well as poems and interviews from QTViệt Café Collective of artists.
Born x Raised in Los Angeles but I roll everywhere. Currently, I train at the Beat Junkies Institute of Sound and I study as a doctoral student in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University.