Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Asian American Religious Music

The most important thing for me to do at this point in time is to structure my Wikipedia article so that clearly convey the important aspects of the Asian American religious music. With that, I’ve decided to divide my topic into four main religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism and then Additional Religions, which is to include smaller, but growing religions among Asian American. Since the article does is about music, I’m making it a point to explain the role music plays within each of these religions , while also including specific artists who create music for their religion as well as Asian American performers who are associated with a specific religion. Furthermore, I can’t discuss the music effectively without putting it in cultural context. One thing I am really interested in discussing is the growing number of Asian American evangelical Christians in the US, especially on college campuses. This is other topics to include Religious Life in the US, will consist of issues and address questions facing individual religions, discrimination, among other things. To give a name and a face to each specific religion, I’d like to include prominent places of worship, and people who have been Influential Leaders within Asian American religious life. Finally, one of the most important things for me to do is to make sure that I define similarities and differences between Asian American music and Asian music and how influential the latter is within the Asian American music community and religious life in general. For the most part, my article is not going to be taken from a very historical, archival perspective, but I rather seek to write this section with a more forth-looking and modern day point of view since the face of the Asian American community is constantly changing, many not having a long history here in the United States. My goal is to make the article as thorough and clear as possible, allowing one who browses the page to get an immediate grasp on the nature of prevalence of Asian American religious music on just a cursory glance. If possible, I would like to include listening samples and pictures, because the best way for me to accomplish that is with clear subtitles and opening sentences, as well as charts, graphs and pictures with subtitles.
Notes and Resources
Artists
Koti Hu
http://us_asians.tripod.com/ articles-koti-hu.html
"US ASIANS: What do you see as your role/participation in the Contemporary Christian Music industry as an Asian American?
KOTI HU: I see it as peripheral only. I do not have that strong of an ethnic identity and therefore don’t have too much of an agenda at all concerning that. I will let my music speak for itself. Anything that develops will be a byproduct of that"

Asian American evangelical Christian movement on the campus of Berkley
http://us_asians.tripod.com/articles-koti-hu.html

http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Kim.pdf

Book
Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity and Ethnicity

Monolid Magazine

Christan Organizations at Harvard

Changing Dynamic of the Churches
http://www.modelminority.com/article1091.html

Human Resources
http://www.religionlink.org/tip_071015zones.php

Pluralism Project at Harvard University
University of Texas, music journals

Harvard Asian American Christian Fellowship
http://hraacf.org/about/Ethnic

2 comments:

  1. I like the idea of organizing this information based on religion. And I concur with your focus on the contemporary activities, although you may briefly mention the history of certain groups by simply stating how long these communities have been around.

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  2. I really like how you categorize by the different religions. It might also be interesting to see if location makes a difference or influences the music produced.

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