Born in Los Angeles in 1939, Nobuko Miyamoto is a pioneer of Asian American “artivists.”
She’s an advocate for underrepresented people and calls for a greater connection with each other and our planet. Her work as a songwriter, dancer, and musician draws from community, collaboration, and justice. For Miyamoto, songs are archives of our lives. “To share stories through music is a way of memory keeping for ourselves and the next generations,” she says.
In 1973, she released A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle of Asians in America (Paredon Records), a collaboration with Chris Iijima and Charlie Chin. Widely recognized as the first album of Asian American music, the folk record delivered a message of strength and solidarity during the Vietnam War.
She performs live at the Getty Center on February 19, a significant day in Asian American history known as Day of Remembrance. Eighty years ago on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order to uproot and incarcerate all people of Japanese ancestry, mostly citizens living on the West Coast. About 120,000 people were sent to concentration camps—including Miyamoto. She was only two years old when her family was forced to leave their home.
Miyamoto says that being uprooted from her home at such a young age was a “marking memory.” She felt she didn’t have a voice or a place until she found them through music and dance, forms of expression that empowered her to stand up for herself and for others to be heard.
We caught up with Miyamoto to discuss her recent work.
Emilia Sánchez González: Tell us about your artistic trajectory. You began your artistic career by training in dance at the American School of Dance in Hollywood. What provoked you to turn to music?
Nobuko Miyamoto: Well, it is interesting you ask that because I would never have danced if it wasn't for music. As a child, coming out of Japanese relocation, my father took me to hear a concert of classical music and that changed my whole world. I started dancing to his favorite records, and my mother saw me and took me to classes. It was through my love of music that I came into dance. Dancing gave me a sense of place and belonging as a child displaced from any place I could call home.
Most of the time in my dance career, I felt frustrated as a performer because I was stuck in specific “oriental” roles. After performing in West Side Story in 1961, I looked for other ways of expression and found music. I kept studying and was very lucky to have a teacher who opened up the world of Black music to me. I was really inspired by Black women telling their stories in songs and I wanted to do the same thing.
ESG: Can you share a memory of when you first experienced the power of music for social activism?
NM: When Asian Americans started standing up, rising up to have their voice heard, to stop the war in Vietnam, I became involved. It was then that I stumbled upon one man who was involved in the activist movement and played the guitar—Chris Iijima. We ended up creating a song together. When we presented the song in front of the Asian American community and our community of activists, I realized how much we needed that. We hadn’t had a song that spoke about us, sung by people who looked like us. And that at the same time could connect with others even further, connect us across borders—with Latinos and African Americans who were also struggling for recognition and liberation.
Activism and music are a complicated relationship, especially when you’ve been called a minority your whole life and when you are working with other minorities. Being part of an ethnic minority is something that is not only physical but psychological. We had to fight strongly to stay together and not be divided. We saw ourselves connected with other people of color in a very early stage of the movement. We knew there was work we had to do in our own individual communities, but there was also the idea that we needed to have a united front.
Even now, new immigrants are coming and the work of social activism begins over and over. That's why telling our stories is important and songs are a kind of archive of our lives. Through music, we can share the feelings and ideas of our experiences and even more so, the feelings that come with them.
ESG: Your most recent album is called 120,000 Stories in reference to the 120,000 Japanese Americans ordered into concentration camps during World War II, but you’ve said it goes further than that. Could you tell us more about what this number represents?
NM: It’s a concrete number as a tribute to Japanese Americans. But it is also an abstract number that represents more stories than we can count. It transcends the experiences of Japanese Americans. It symbolizes the stories untold in our daily lives, the songs unheard, or ignored, songs missing from our cultural stratosphere. And it has the goal to bring attention to those unsung stories.
The trauma that marked my life also marked the lives of many others and has been passed on by generations. Other communities have gone through similar and many other kinds of trauma. Even now children are being put in similar camps at the border; the 120,000 stories also speak about them, about the braceros (Mexicans who emigrated to the United States as part of a Farm Labor Program from the 1940s to the 60s), the struggle of African Americans for reparations, and many others.
ESG: Connection is a key element to your music. Do you recall a specific recent concert where you felt particularly connected to the public and perceived they truly understood your message?
NM: Absolutely. It happens the most at festivals. Quetzal and my group produce a festival where we use traditional music, called the FandangObon Festival. We've been bringing together people to connect cross-culturally and we also connect with mother earth. My collaborators are all musicians in their own right, and the feeling amongst us when we get together is amazing. It's a really uplifting connection that the public can feel, get up, and dance with us.
Playing at the Getty Center is going to be the first time we are all able to get together again and play after the two difficult years of the pandemic. The fact that our first concert is on the Day of Remembrance is ideal because there are many people that we have lost during this time. We are hoping for a moment of healing, unity, and joy to share among everyone present.
