Tune in to a special green edition of APEX Express, featuring a film from the San Francisco Green Film Festival, a film on whaling, and spotlighting the upcoming Solidarity to Solutions Week happening September 8 to 14.
We interview Soumyaa Kapil Behrens about her new film Nail House and Megumi Sasaki about her film Whale of a Tale. We also talk to Thuy Trang about the Asian contingent at the upcoming Solidarity to Solutions week, and the march on Sep 8!
Tonight, we have a great panel discussion of amazing Bay Area women in hip-hop including Rocky Rivera, Chhoti Maa, and Versoul (formerly known as Babii Cris).
Get this: Less than 5% of the people creating the sounds, music and media in the daily soundtrack of our lives are women.
For 15 years, Women Audio Mission has been working to close the gender gap in creative technology careers. In addition to preparing women and girls to go behind the board of a professional recording studio, the organization also provides studio time, and a recording package so that women musicians can have a professionally recorded album.
In March this year, they held their quarterly Local Sirens concert series featuring local women musicians and performers. The performance was preceded by this allstar lineup of Bay Area women in hip hop. Rocky Rivera, Chhoti Maa, and Versoul (formerly known as Babii Cris). They cover integrating their activism and love for their community into their lyrics, surviving as musicians, and being women in a mostly male industry. Moderating the panel is Founder and Executive Director of Women Audio Mission, Terri Winston.
Community Calendar
In just over a week, Solidarity to Solutions Week of Climate Actions arrives. Asian Pacific Environmental Network and their allies from the It Takes Roots delegation will be linking up with communities on the front lines of fighting climate change around the world to show what real community-led solutions to climate change really look like. Join APEN for local solutions tours, solution-based strategy exchanges, and a democratic popular assembly. Also, join the Asian Contingent at the march!
Posted in Music
Tonight’s show is about reflections and reportbacks! Today’s show is a reportback special from two key events that took place this summer: the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Allianceconference held in San Francisco last month, and Bay Area Solidarity Summer. We debrief about this rich forum in conversation with organizer Tracy Nguyen API Equality – Northern California, one of the local organizations that organized this edition of NQAPIA and Khudai Tanveer. To discuss their reflections on Bay Area Solidarity Summer, we have Sathvik Nair and Shreedha N. Hordagoda discuss their experiences of this South Asian youth activist camp
Posted in Art and Culture, human rights, Sexuality
Tonight Powerleegirls Miko Lee & Ayame Keane-Lee present Asian American’s Advancing Justice Reflections on the 1968 SFSU Strikes, a look back at the seminal student movement at San Francisco State University that not only led the creation of ethnic studies programs across the country and the modern Asian American identity as we know it, but even shaped the formation of Advancing Justice — Asian Law Caucus. A panel discussion moderated by Paul Ocampowith Juanita Tamayo Lott, Penny Nakatsu, and Laureen Chew, three leaders of the 1968 strikes who were instrumental in the movement’s success.
We also feature music by Malaysian 4 Languages “Wake Up!” selected by Sonny Lê.
Posted in Art and Culture
“Pistahan 2016” by RealCereal is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Tonight, we explore the importance of space. Whether we’re talking about living space or our social surroundings, if you don’t own or manage the venue, you may be in a precarious situation. In this segment, we focus on the effects of Redevelopment on Filipinos in San Francisco’s South of Market community through the lens of Alleluia Panis, a longtime cultural worker and artistic director of Kularts, and MC Canlas, local historian and cultural specialist for the Filipino American Development Foundation.
To tell the modern day story about displacement and land ownership in San Francisco, you have to start with the International Hotel. This weekend, I went to the annual commemoration of the eviction. Board member Carlos Zialcita kicked off the event.
Posted in Art and Culture, Housing
Tonight, we explore the importance of space. Whether we’re talking about living space or our social surroundings, if you don’t own or manage the venue, you may be in a precarious situation.
In the first half of the show, we focus on the Filipino community. Members of SOMA Pilipinas Alleluia Panis, artistic director of Kularts, and MC Canlas, cultural specialist for the Filipino American Development Foundation, talk about the effects of Redevelopment on San Francisco’s South of Market community. More information is available at Freedom Archive’s Resistance to Urban Renewal timeline.
The team that liberated 23rd Ave Community Building. Photo by Steve King.
Then we’ll go across the bay and spotlight a victory. The Liberate 23rd Ave Community Building campaign is an amazing victory, keeping a Queer and Trans People of Color space in the hands of the community. Guests include Eri Oura and Eugene Kang from Cycles of Change, Devi Peacock from Peacock Rebellion, and Ricardo Andrade, a long-time resident at the space.
This mix-use building is home to a community bike shop (The Bikery, part of Cycles of Change), a Queer & Trans People Of Color collectively-run house and community garden (SOL – Sustaining Ourselves Locally), a martial arts and self-defense studio (Shaolin Life), a people of color-led maker/hacker space (LOL – Liberating Ourselves Locally) that is now a program of Peacock Rebellion, and a queer and trans people of color arts + healing organization (Peacock Rebellion).
Community Calendar
Posted in Art and Culture, Housing
We are looking at all the ways APIs are being defiant…with food. Chefs, vendors, and consumers—they are being the change they want in the way we eat, source, and pay for food. They are even using food as a way to change our perception of other cultures.
Ang Hadwin, founder of FaFa Dumplings
Sana Javeri Kadri, founder of Diaspora Co. Photo by Laila Bahman
Ang will be in conversation with queer food photographer and founder of Diaspora Co., Sana Javeri Kadri. Diaspora Co., is a spice collective dedicated to sustainable agriculture, equity, and decolonization within spice trade.
Both will let us know their thoughts on the rise of craft foods and how it can invest in the cultures and communities it borrows from.
Later, you’ll hear stories from Japanese American incarceration from an event hosted by Oakland political educators People’s Kitchen Collective. Some memories are clearly defiant acts of cooking and eating together, and others show trauma, pain, and resilience felt long after incarceration.
Posted in Food Justice
Tonight on Apex Express we hear from Artists Shaking Things Up. First we chat with International dancer, scholar and educator Tara Pandeya and then we speak with Visual Artists and curator Justin Charles Hoover about the new exhibit “Don’t Believe the Hype, Asian Americans in Hip Hop.”
We will also hear some tracks from Jason Chu’s latest album and hear the Powerleegirls Miko Lee, Ayame Keane-Lee and Jalena Keane-Lee riff about politics, arts and culture.
Calendar items
This Saturday it’s Bay Area Solidarity Summer’s fourth annual community fundraiser at SoleSpace! This is an Dance party Fundraiser for BASS, a political action camp for progressive college-age South Asian Americans to develop their political organizing skills and build community with their peers.
Also check out the 59th season of San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Seeing Red: A Time-Traveling Musical – running through Sept. 9, 2017 at parks around you.
Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company, World Premiere of Leah Nanako Winkler’s Two Mile Hollow opening July 15th at Potrero Stage in San Francisco.
The Chinese American Museum‘s show “Don’t Believe the Hype: Asian-Americans in Hip-Hop.” runs through November 2018. Hot Summer Nights: Hip Hop Artists and the Industry – August 23, 6:00 – 8:30 pm, with Pecha Kucha style presentations by visual artists and hip hop insiders followed by live music.
Posted in Art and Culture
Tonight’s episode of APEX Express features music curated by Zuha Khan (DJ Baqvas) on the continuation of a theme from the last time she was on APEX. That theme is: Defiantly Yours: Radical Music from the Asian Diaspora in the Era of Trump. Tonight’s setlist reflects coming together and standing up for what’s right, recognizing our own struggles, and our pasts through migration and movements to do what we can to survive in a country that is employing more and more fascist practices.
Posted in Music
Tonight, guest host Marky Enriquez talks with Joel Quizon to help us dive into the world of OPM, Original Pilipino Music.
Marky is a west coast DJ and Music Curator for Undiscovered SF, a creative night market. Most recently, he was in a theatrical production, MUMU, at Bindlestiff Studio, which featured 1970s Filipino music.
He’ll be talking with Joel Quizon. Best known for his filmmaking, Joel is a collector, curator and archivist of Pilipino music.
Community Calendar Items
Track List
Eva Eugenio “Ang Tangi Kong Pag-ibig”
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Rico J. Puno “Neither One of Us”
Jovials “Sa Unang Pagkikita”
Ryan Cayabyab & Quito Colayco “Alalahanin II”
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Freddie Aguilar “Anak”
Asin “Sarungbanggi”
Bong Panera “Sa Dako Pa Roon (Reprise)”
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VST & Co “Awitin Mo At Isayaw Ko”
Boyfriends “Oras Oras”
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Hajji Alejandro “Ako Pa Rin”
Posted in Art and Culture, Music
APEX Express is a proud member of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality, or AACRE. AACRE is a network of Asian American social justice groups with shared values that are working to create positive change.
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