Air Guitar, Hip-Hop

Melissa Hung
August 8, 2006

Why? Maybe because no one expects us to.

According to Park, that's one of the keys to the Asian domination of Air Guitar Nation: "No one expects us to be able to rock out, so we have the element of surprise on our side."

I love that in the profiles, Yang goes into their backgrounds, finding out that C.Diddy, like many Asian kids, had been pushed to study music. Of course. Hell yeah. Messing with stereotypes, one head-banging, gyrating, invisible-instrument performance at a time.

  • Asia Pacific Arts has an interview with Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop, a cultural history of the hip-hop generation, which we also featured in issue 5.
    • Contributor: 

    Melissa Hung

    Founding Editor

    Melissa Hung is the founding editor of Hyphen. She was the editor in chief for the magazine's first five years and went on to serve in many other leadership roles on the staff and board for more than a decade. She is a writer and freelance journalist. Her essays and reported stories have appeared in NPR, Vogue, Pacific Standard, Longreads, and Catapult, among others. She grew up in Texas, the eldest child of immigrants. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

    Comments

    Comments

    seng wrote on Tue, 08/08/2006 - 2:28pm
    The national championships of speedcubing were held in San Francisco this past weekend. Leyan Lo, a member of the Cal Tech club we featured in issue 9, won top honors with an average of 15.50 seconds over 5 solves. Toby Mao, younger brother of Tyson Mao (founder the Cal Tech club) set a new world record solving the 3x3x3 in 10.48 seconds.How cool is cubing now? Check out this table in a clothing store in Paris, France.
    Anonymous wrote on Thu, 08/10/2006 - 2:29am
    What the hell is an Air Guitar? Is that chick Cassie Asian? she looks like it
    Billy wrote on Tue, 11/14/2006 - 3:58pm
    Dude, the air guitar rocks! Just found some footage from an Air-aoke party held for the new documentary "Air Guitar Nation". Kinda cool---these folks know how to rock it out! Watch the footage here:http://www.iklipz.com/Movies.aspx?MovieID=317a07fb-4914-4360-811a-3b20ee94343b
    Anonymous wrote on Wed, 11/15/2006 - 5:26pm
    the air guitar is gay and the dude that was playing it is gay to