On November 4th, Pao Arts Center hosted “No-No Boy: Live In Concert,” a multimedia musical performance from No-No Boy (singer Julian Saporiti), as part of the tour for his new album, Empire Electric. No-No Boy previously performed at Pao Arts Center in February of 2018. Pao Arts Center was so excited to bring Julian back and to host this sold-out show to uplift the release of an album which brings Asian American history to life through a uniquely inventive approach to storytelling, accompanied by Emilia Halvorsen-Saporiti and Michelle Bazile.    

Storytelling has always been at the root of Julian Saporiti’s music as No-No Boy. The project developed as the central component of Saporiti’s PhD at Brown University, drawing on years of fieldwork and research on Asian American history to write folk songs with uncommon empathy and remarkable protagonists: prisoners at Japanese American internment camps who started a jazz band, Vietnamese musicians turned on to rock ‘n’ roll by American troops, a Cambodian American painter who painted only the most beautiful landscapes of his war-torn home. Along the way he started to draw on his own family’s history, including his mother’s escape from Vietnam during the war.   

In his latest album, Saporiti “bridges space” between Asia and America, creating a sonic manifestation of the places lost to conflict and geopolitics. This is the revelation at the core of Empire Electric, the third album by No-No Boy, and its songs that examine narratives of imperialism, identity, and spirituality. It tells stories rooted in years of research and relationship-building, made vibrant and profound through a rich congregation of instrumental, environmental, and electronically manipulated sounds from Asia and America.   

Audiences of many backgrounds were touched by the diverse and thoughtful variety of storytelling in No-No Boy’s music. From onion farmers in Oregon, to an unlikely Japanese American jazz group of the 20th century, the story of a serendipitous meeting with his mom’s childhood friend in Paris and a monastic retreat in upstate New York, No-No Boy’s work spans oceans and centuries. Just as songwriting is a self-reflective experience for No-No Boy, we hope that experiencing performances like this allows listeners and friends of Pao Arts Center to look inward and find connection where they might not have expected. For one audience member, the performance made him reflect on the remarkable potential music has in enabling people to form new relationships to their identities and to the world around them.

I think everybody has their own history to think about in a way of connecting to these bigger stories, so I hope that [connection] happens for a lot people. 

 -John

Another audience member, who also works as a local Boston public school teacher, shared her thoughts on the educational aspect of the performance. 

As an educator, it makes me think about how we can make stories really matter and be joyful to learn from, and to seek, but also to make. So, hearing No-No Boy, as well as Diego, talk about what it means to create stories and find information that matters to them, is very influential to me as a teacher figuring out how to guide students.

-Sophia

After this moving performance, which involved archival imagery and behind-the-scenes insight into the songwriting process, Julian Saporiti and Diego Javier Luis held a talk which was followed by Q&A session touching on the journey of No-No Boy — from research to music production, travel, and family history. For many, this kind of self-reflective artistic process is a radical way of thinking about history’s role in education. Julian Saporiti and Diego Luis both experienced this similar realization about the way their own identities could take on new personal meaning through education.

I think the notion that studying something that comes from your own family, history, or your own story — thinking of that, as being historically, or socially significant somehow — was a revelation for me [and] something I never experienced growing up…Recognizing that as something significant can be so empowering for kids to experience. I would be much less confused if I had that option to do that when I was growing up.

-Diego Javier Luis 

Saporiti has also worked as an educator and makes it clear that the preservation of history, and the many lives entangled in it, is central to his musical practice. The process of developing the No-No Boy project over the past decade has evolved, although this attention to human life at the core of storytelling has remained a constant.

I learned that [these histories] were making me really angry, but in the process of writing over 100 songs, at this point,…it didn’t become less political necessarily. It became a lot more nuanced. It was like [how] the monk taught me that there are multiple truths at every level. And a good historian I think tries to lean into the complications and the nuances and not just rest and catharsis and anger, no matter how noble or righteous it might be.

-Julian Saporiti

Although we cannot change the past, No-No Boy singer Julian Saporiti believes that the process of songwriting allows him to embrace the more challenging or nuanced aspects of history. We hope that for those who were able to enjoy the show last month, No-No Boy’s music is an empowering example of Asian American audiovisual storytelling.

Pao Arts Center was so excited to welcome No-No Boy back to our space for such a special performance. We cannot wait to learn, laugh, and jam out again next time!