Taking on musical racism in the Asian American community: David Choi's Only You

June 29, 10:50 AMOakland Music ExaminerDavid Woo

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David's album, Only You, successfully merges two opposing guitar genres in a single album.

With all of the current discussion of Michael Jackson and his achievements, I feel that the racial precedents which he made merit some discussion. Michael, as you may know, was the first African American musician to draw a strong audience on MTV, forever changing the racial dynamic of popular music. These achievements concerning racial precedents have carried throughout the evolution of popular music, developing into the existing African American based popular genres like Rap and R&B. Despite these momentous achievements, however, large racial gaps still remain in the Asian American community, whose place in American popular music remains more or less nonexistent (to be clear, I am intentionally excluding Asian based pop musicians like Andy Lau, whose music holds no place in American popular music, despite his enormous success all around Asia). As a studying Asian American musician myself, thus, this is a rather disturbing precedent.

Enter David Choi. By no means am I implying that David’s musical achievements are even comparable to that of Michael Jackson, but he has at the very least a created a foothold for Asian Americans in the popular music scene. As much as we may like to believe that the racial barriers which David has overcome do not exist, you cannot deny that in order for this man to achieve popularity in this genre, he has had to traverse new ground on which there is no existing fan base for him to build off of.

After achieving great success with his humorously aimed original composition “YouTube, A Love Song,” (putting David on the map in a way which only the miracle of YouTube can do), he went on to break into the predominantly black and white genre of pop music with the release of his album Only You in August of 2008. The hit single of the album, “Won’t Even Start,” was also produced as a music video with Wong Fu Productions to emphasize Choi’s ability as a lyricist as well as a vocalist and acoustic guitarist (the musical counterpoint between his guitar, vocals, and solo violin line is additionally quite impressive). The album also portrays Choi’s musical diversity by showing his abilities with the rock genre as well. “Heart,” for example, employs the rhythm guitar accents in the style of a Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton ballad and a vocal intensity which seems to allude to an Aerosmith ballad. It goes without saying, thus, that David’s musical talent stands on its own without even acknowledging the racial barriers which he has broken down; his unique ability to both mimic and write originally has given him a musical persona which crosses the acoustic guitar and rock guitar genre in a single album (artists like John Mayer took several albums and several years to make this crossover). As a result, though I cannot stress enough how inspiring it is to see an Asian American like David Choi make headway in the popular music genre, I should also make clear that his album, Only You, is also quite impressive, carrying musical qualities about it which promise impressive future albums by him in the years to come as well.