DAAPIC Column
By Gil Asakawa
What does celebrating Woodstock have to do with DAAPIC?
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n a previous life during my long and winding journalism career, I was a rock critic. I was the music editor for Denver’s weekly newspaper, Westword. So when the Denver Press Club recently asked me to participate on a panel discussion for the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival, I was eager to join in the fun. What does a talk about a 50-year old music festival have to do with the Denver Asian American Pacific Islander Commission (DAAPIC)? Admittedly not much… except for me, since I’m a commissioner. Here’s how being Asian American is part of this story: I became a rock critic because I loved rock and pop and soul music when I was a kid. From the Beatles to the Stones to Motown and Aretha, and all the stars and one-hit wonders in between, I was glued to my radio. I was a fan, and an opinionated one at that, thanks to the emerging music press back then, primarily Rolling Stone magazine. And in the early years of the magazine, I saw that one of the founding editors was Ben Fong-Torres. Somewhere I saw a photo and confirmed that he’s Asian. I found out years later when I read his excellent memoir, “The Rice Room,” that he is Chinese American whose family went to the Philippines and paid to add “Torres” to their name because it was legal for Filipinos to emigrate to the US but not Chinese. Anyway, the fact that a writer with an Asian face was one of my heroes, covering rock and roll in my favorite magazine was an
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September 2019 | DAAPIC Column
inspiration to me. I began reviewing records for my high school newspaper (Alameda High School Paragon in Lakewood), and when I went off to art school in New York City, I began writing music for a college newspaper entertainment insert, which continued after college for the Colorado Daily in Boulder, then Westword. I eventually even got to write some freelance pieces for Rolling Stone and other national music publications. And, I got to meet Ben Fong-Torres as an adult, and thank him for inspiring me. That’s what DAAPIC is about. Nothing like this commission existed when I was a kid. But with our activities supporting the area’s Asian Pacific Islander Desi American community with arts grants or job fairs or policy guidance for the city, if we can inspire some young kid to find their passion and follow their dreams… well, that’s our goal. That is, unless the kid has tiger parents who are determined to have them grow up to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. I haven’t written about music for years – except for covering Asian American artists, who seldomc are covered by mainstream music media – but because of my ancient past, I was asked to be on the Woodstock panel. The music festival was held Aug. 1518, 1969, in the town of Bethel, New York upstate from New York City. It took over the dairy farm pasture belonging to Max Yasgur, a nice, unsuspecting farmer who was probably as shocked as anyone when over 400,000 young people flooded his land to enjoy the weekend of music and art (and rain, and mud). There
Photo Credit: Jude DeLorca