No-No Boy in Merced

No-No Boy in Merced

Come join us for an unforgettable evening at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center to experience a powerful performance by.

Coming on the heels of the 2023 album release Empire Electric, No-No Boy, the media project of Ethnomusicologist and Smithsonian Folkways recording artist Julian Saporiti and co-producer Emilia Halvorsen Saporiti, is coming to the MAC for a free evening performance deconstructing and reconstructing history into song. Called a “Master Storyteller” by All Music, Saporiti’s songwriting examines 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. Every single sound becomes a part of the poetic recasting of shared post-colonial trauma and the startling joys that can be wrung out of that hardship.

Storytelling has always been at the root of Julian Saporiti’s music as No-No Boy. 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. His 2021 album 1975 was called "a remarkably powerful and moving album,” by Folk Alley and “gentle, catchy and accessible folk songs that feel instantly familiar," by NPR - a contrast that gets to the heart of Saporiti’s songwriting.

There will also be a midday workshop by Dr. Saporiti on turning history into song, video or any media that can share a story at 11 AM the morning before the concert.

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit www.calhum.org

Host or Publisher Merced County Arts Council