As an Asian person, my artistic practice has always been centered on white art

It’s time for that to change

I vividly remember the first (and only) time I visited China. I was in music school at the time studying music and music education. My main instrument was (classical) saxophone, but I was singing and conducting almost as much as I was playing my saxophone, and was in China touring and performing with the University of Victoria Chamber Singers.

I was excited to go. I was traveling with many of my closest friends, most of whom were white Canadians of various stripes. As a second generation Chinese Canadian who grew up in Victoria (B.C.) and didn’t speak Mandarin or Cantonese, the trip had a special significance to me; I saw it as a rare opportunity to better understand my identity and who I was in the world.

I have lots of thoughts and memories from that tour (including some 18+ college hijinks that I won’t go into), but one that I still think about and reflect on is about toilets.

In China, like much of the world, most of the toilets are squat toilets. For those of us in North America who have never used one, you don’t sit on a seat, but squat on your feet and do what you need to do into what is a fancy, or less than fancy, hole in the ground. It didn’t take long for many of us Canadians to complain about the washroom facilities and long for the comforts of home. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the way we in the West think about throne toilets and squat toilets is an apt metaphor for how we also think about music, art, and culture in the world (more on that later).

I’ve spent most of my life doing art of some kind. Music is my main medium, but I have also pursued dance, film, poetry, writing and acting at various times in my life. I believe art is really important, in no small part because it helps to deepen and develop our imaginations. If we want to do something, individually or collectively, in life or in love, we need the ability to imagine it as being possible.

The imagination art can cultivate is important for everyone, but is more important for people who have had parts of their imagination taken away from them. In North America, it is well established that people of colour, minorities, and women, even if they are represented in media, books, movies, music and art are seldom shown in three dimensional roles or as protagonists. Because of this, people can start to see themselves as secondary characters within the world and their own lives. A world where you don’t see yourself as a protagonist is a world that can put limits on what you imagine is possible for yourself and people like you.

But beyond issues with visual or “round” representation in art and media, what limits the collective imagination of everyone in North America in more profound (and hidden) ways is how we normalize white culture(s) and art and label things outside of that as the “other”.

One of the most profound realizations I’ve had over the last few years is that people from different cultural backgrounds actually think about love in different ways. I was recently talking with a friend of mine (an Asian woman) about her split with her partner of many years (he is white, with a European background). In the midst of their break-up, she realized that one of the tensions in their relationship was that they had different conceptions of what love is. His western interpretation was based more in feelings of shared fun and comfort. Her more eastern interpretation was based more on commitment and dedication during times of turmoil. I’m not saying everyone from one culture thinks the same way, or that any of these tensions are insurmountable, but they do influence us and how we think about love.

People from different cultures can also process hardship differently and this is reflected in the art they create. One of my ex-partners is Russian, and she would watch these long Russian movies that seemed (to me) to be three hours of pure suffering on a film screen. I now spend a lot of my time studying capoeira (from Brazil), and the music that comes from that tradition (mostly from slaves suffering in bondage) is rooted in a philosophy of living with as much life as you can today because you might not get the chance to do it tomorrow.

Beyond my anecdotes, established research suggests our cultural background deeply influences how we think, reason, understand ourselves in relation to others, and physically perceive the world. It also suggests that although we in the US and Canada may assume that the rest of world thinks like we do, that we are actually the psychological outliers compared to everyone else, especially when it comes to our hyper-individualism. If you want to read a 75 page peer-reviewed and published research paper on that topic, here it is; it’s titled “The Weirdest People In The World”.

This brings us back to why squat and throne toilets are a good metaphor for how North Americans think about music, art, and culture. Most of us think of throne toilets as the standard image of what a toilet is in the world when it isn’t. Furthermore, though many North Americans would say the throne is “better” than the squat toilet, there is evidence to suggest that using squat toilets can lead to better overall colon and digestive health.

We think throne toilets are normal and better not because they are (they’re neither), but because we have made it “normal” by centring whiteness and Europeanness as “normal” and everything else as “other.” Western classical music is predominantly rooted in Christian worldviews and led by and based on the work of people from white backgrounds; only 31.5% of the world identifies as Christian; by my estimate, only 15–20% of the world comes from European heritage. Most Western pop music (including the hipster bands I often listen to and emulate) is in English and rooted in a similar worldview; only about 5.5% of people speak English as their first language — it’s about 14% for Mandarin. When we fall into comfort and what we’ve labeled as “normal”, we blind ourselves to the richness, breadth, and knowledge outside of it.

I’ve come to realize that as an Asian person, my artistic practice has always been centred around white art. The art I consume is more culturally diverse than the music I create, but is still overwhelmingly white. Of the music I rehearse, play, and perform, I would say 90% is either drawn from or written by white artists (overwhelmingly male) or rooted in the perspectives of white culture(s). This includes imbibing and expressing white versions of love, fairness, and philosophy, even when they may not reflect my own voice. It’s time for that to change.

I don’t think my situation is unique among artists of colour or minority musicians living in North America.

My decision to shift my creative focus away from white art is not because I think western art is immaterial, or because I think there is something is wrong with it. Nor is it because I see it as monolithic. I went to music school and studied everything; I loved it. I’ve toured three continents as a (mostly) classical choral singer and recorded numerous albums (including as a back up vocalist for a feminist comedy singer/performer). I’ve done musical theatre as a singer/actor, instrumentalist and music director. I spent time working for the United Church as a paid chorister. I’ve performed everything from the Brahms Deutsches Requiem to covers of the Shins and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I’ve been known to show up at bluegrass jam sessions and have played in indie bands and rock groups. There is richness and diversity within what I’ve described as “white art”.

But when I really think about it, I didn’t consciously choose to be an Asian artist who spends 90% of his creative practice focusing on white perspectives or creating white art. It is something that happened not because I was thinking, but because I was not thinking. I fell into it because white art and culture are thought of as normal and respectable, and everything else is considered the “other”.

I don’t want to restrict my artistic or cultural imagination to western ways of interpreting or being in the world anymore. Human experience and possibility is so much deeper and than that. I also want to make room for art that more fully reflects my own identity and perspectives. I don’t want to be a secondary character in the majority of my artistic practice anymore.

I won’t abstain from western forms of art (or any kind of art). Good art is good art, no matter where it comes from, and working with perspectives that are not your own is important. It can help us foster connection and empathy between different kinds of people, and we need more of that in this world. I just can’t make it my primary focus anymore.

Over the last few years, I’ve been practicing and studying Brazilian music and culture more and more seriously (this has included capoeira, dance, percussion, and learning and memorizing songs in Portuguese). When working with my teachers, we learn things mostly by rote or self study. It’s different, it’s liberating, and it’s brought many gifts with it, including a deeper understanding of how Brazilian people interpret and relate to the world. I’ve started to create more of my own original music, poetry, and writing based on my experiences and perspectives as an Asian Canadian settler living in colonized Canada. I also recently had a meeting with a friend to talk about pursuing a film project rooted in our stories and observations of how people from different cultures think about love.

Pursuing white art has been a rich part of my creative past, but I don’t think it’s going to be the foundation of my artistic future. It’s time for me to explore the potential of my creative imagination outside of it… and in looking at what this can mean, I’m more excited now about making art than I’ve been in a long time.

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