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233 10 “Reharmonizing” the Generations Rap, Poetry, and Hmong Oral Tradition Nicholas Poss In 1985, Amy Catlin wrote about performances of Hmong popular music at New Year festivals in the United States that “harmonized” both “the new life with the life left behind, as well as the younger generation with the old” (1985, 96). Born in the post-1975 refugee camps of Thailand, this music combined the soft sounds of Asian and Western pop with themes of loneliness and longing common to traditional Hmong music and verbal arts. Songwriters resituated the homeland lost from China, the place of ancestral origin and return preserved in Hmong rituals, to Laos, the source of the modern Hmong diaspora. The lyrics often pleaded for unity and love in the emerging global Hmong community (G. Y. Lee 2006, 4). As refugees were resettled in third countries such as the United States, France, and Australia, independent artists developed a thriving cassette industry. The movement of these recordings around the globe and new Hmong music industries in Thailand, Laos, and China helped to bridge the diasporic community . As Catlin said at the time, “Perhaps [cassettes of popular music] function to harmonize the entire nation of Hmong in exile by offering a common currency which expresses a united identity.” Today, the Hmong-American community is more diverse than ever and perhaps not so easily reconciled. At the time of Catlin’s article, the 1975 communist takeover of Laos and the subsequent persecution and mass movement of Hmong people to Thai refugee camps and beyond was not so far removed. Adults and adolescents had shared memories of the Secret War and personal narratives that included a harrowing journey from Laos to Thailand. Now, third-generation Hmong Americans live side-byside with recent immigrants from Wat Tham Krabok, some of whom lived in Thai refugee camps for decades. Hmong popular music now includes 234 Poss everything from boy bands to heavy metal, Christian rock to mor lam (a genre of popular music in Laos and Thailand based on traditional folk music ). In many ways, the sentimental Hmong popular music pioneered in the 1970s has become a part of traditional culture. It has been the accompaniment to the lives of several generations in all parts of the Hmong diaspora . In the United States, it remains a fixture at Hmong New Year festivals where young and old can share the dance floor. For many young Hmong Americans, intergenerational communication remains problematic. They are more proficient at speaking English than Hmong, and the culture of their parents and grandparents can seem foreign. Yet they are proud of their heritage and are eager to connect to their family history and traditional Hmong practices. This desire was voiced repeatedly by the young Hmong Americans I met while conducting field research in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Since 2000, I have studied raj, a family of traditional wind instruments including flutes and free-reed pipes. Musicians communicate verbal messages through melodies on these instruments that can be understood sometimes word-for-word by skilled listeners . The practice is maintained by first-generation immigrants, almost all of whom learned to play before arriving in the United States. It has not been passed on to the second generation, most of whom lack the detailed knowledge of the Hmong language and conventional musical phrases to perform on the raj or to understand the messages. Some young Hmong Americans have taken an interest in the qeej, a free-reed mouth organ integral to the traditional funeral ritual and also played at New Year festivals . Hmong community organizations around the country offer classes to groups of boys in instrumental technique, repertoire, and the dancelike movements made while playing.1 I also met a handful of young Hmong artists who have found resonances between contemporary American art forms—such as rap and performance poetry—and the traditional arts practiced by their elders. Brothers Vong and Tou Saiko Lee capitalize on these relationships, not only to entertain audiences through spoken word poetry and rap but to educate people about Hmong history and culture. Their work raises awareness about ongoing crises in the Hmong diaspora and offers a starting point for dialogue between generations. They promote a message of community empowerment through education and respect for the older generations. By playing on themes of Hmong folklore and experiences of modern Hmong American life, they subvert characterizations of Hmong people rooted in the colonial past. Through the intersection of Hmong and American oral traditions, these artists negotiate...

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