By Kyle Gann
Fred Ho De-Europeaneanizes Opera Through Martial Arts
Fred Wei-han Ho knows how to cut your carotid artery with his hands, and how to snap a man's spine in three seconds. His expertise in such maneuvers isn't recent; it dates back to his 1974-75 stint in the Marines as part of an elite special corps trained in hand-to-hand combat and stealth assault techniques. But I find the relationship of that training to his baritone sax playing too evocative to ignore. He won't describe the spine-snapping gambit (and I sure don't want a demonstration) except that it requires a kind of intensity exploding out of stillness, from a storehouse of chi: internal energy. That explosive quality is evident in every phrase Ho blurts out of his booming sax. And as he and I discuss his upcoming opera next week at BAM - Journey Beyond the West: The New Adventures of Monkey - it strikes me that that Marine stint, distant as it seems, is a focal point of Ho's life.
Ho is at the forefront of an attempt to create an Asian-American musical and operatic aesthetic. A snappy if eccentric dresser known for his purple suits and trademark wide Mohawk, Ho directs two ensembles, the Monkey Orchestra (performing at BAM) and the smaller Afro Asian Music Ensemble. His solution to the dilemma of Asian-American hyphenation is to infuse a basic jazz idiom with strong doses of Asian sonic iconography. Gongs and pitch-bending squeals dot his scores, and his favorite sax technique is an altissimo wail that he achieves without fingering, through sheer lip pressure and, well, chi. He writes his vocal works in non-Western languages - Cantonese, Mandarin, Tegalog, Farsi - and is counting on Tai-Chi-trained choregraphers. "Martial arts," he insists, "is going to kick the ass of modern dance."
And so Journey Beyond the West, of which we'll hear the first three acts, is narrated in Chinese. You won't have trouble understanding the story, for it is told in unmistakeable terms - Ho calls it a "visual comic book" - through choregraphy. The basic plot is traditional: a cowardly priest is sent on a dangerous journey from China into India to find and bring back the Buddhist scriptures. Three companions protect him: Monkey, a trickster figure, expert in martial arts but arrogant and conceited; Pig, once an admiral but changed into a pig for trying to seduce the emperor's daughter, and whose appetites for food and sex are uncontrollable; and an Ogre, persecuted in youth by humans and harboring a rage that can only be satiated by slaughter. As Ho admits, it's kind of a T'ang Dynasty Wizard of Oz, but overlaid with his own politically-inspired additions.
A superficial glance suggests that Ho is not alone in creating an East-West fusion; Asian-American composers are thriving at the moment. Tan Dun's opera Marco Polo and his Symphony 1997 for the reversion of Hong Kong made recent splashes, while Chen Yi, Jhou Long, and Bun-Ching Lam receive frequent commissions. Ho, however, points out crucial differences between himself and the others: none of them were born in America, none of them grew up with racism, all of them came here as professionals with doors being opened for them by Columbia University and other institutions, and all of them work within a Eurocentric concert tradition. He's complained in print that Asian artists and companies are given precedence over Asian-Americans "because they are considered 'safe' - their work will not confront issues of racism, oppression, project resistance, and struggle, as the expressions of oppressed nationalities (so called peoples of color) in the U.S. tend to do."
The only other prominent East Coast figure in Ho's situation is Jason Hwang, also born in the U.S. Hwang comes from Chicago's chaotically improvisatory AACM tradition, Ho points out, whereas Ho comes from a big band tradition. Yeah, it flashes on me, that's what makes Ho's sound so original: instead of the individualistic free-for-all of most Downtown improv, his groups always blend for a powerful sonic kick. His whole ensemble's got chi.
Ho did so many projects in the Bay Area during the '80s that everyone assumes that he came here from California. Actually, although he was born in Palo Alto, he grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. The racism he confronted there, and the domestic violence in his household, conditioned the thrust of his career. (Music against misogynist violence is one strain in his output; a recent suite is entitled Yes Means Yes, No Means No, Whatever She Wears, Wherever She Goes.) Despite a turbulent childhood, he lucked out in high school in the fact that jazz greats Archie Shepp, Max Roach, and Reggie Workman lived and worked in Amherst. Ho missed no opportunity to sit at their feet, attending workshops and analyzing band arrangements by Thad Jones and Duke Ellington. He gravitated toward jazz, he says, because:
"As a teenager I was trying to find an example of something that was not part of the white world. The catalytic impact of the Black Power movement, and Malcolm X, and the Black Arts movement sought to challenge white supremacy in America. I came of age during the Asian American movement of the early '70s, and I'm trying to forge a unity between the two great social movements that had an impact on my life. Music that's been called 'jazz' said a lot to me because it came out of the experience of an oppressed people. At the same time, it spoke to the beauty and passion of people who in spite of their oppression affirmed their humanity."
Then came the Marines. Ho's racist instructor used him for target practice, and (this was the Vietnam era) would point to him and tell the other men during workouts, "Here's what the gook looks like." Finally, Ho - a big guy - knocked the instructor unconscious during a training drill. Harvard was next and hardly better. "The main impact Harvard had," he recalls, "was making it clear that I did not to want to join the bourgeoisie - to be a manager or some lackey of the governmental or corporate ruling structure. It became clear that privilege doesn't equate with talent, ability, intelligence, or hard work. Privilege is simply privilege." Ho steered a wide path around the Eurocentric music department, majoring in sociology.
After college Ho became a construction worker, and started working with nonprofessional musicians at community centers. Though he's done the usual new-music circuit gigs, he considers his "guerilla accomplishments" the center of his musical life - playing for the Asian American Creative Music Festival in Boston, Yale University's Minority Freshmen weekend, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. He's belonged at times to the Nation of Islam, Iwar Kuhn (an Asian-American group modeled after the Black Panthers), and the League of Revolutionary Struggle. A portrait of Ho on the wall was painted and sent to him by a Puerto Rican nationalist prisoner incercerated in Wisconsin. "What I'm trying to do is to try to change the American musical landscape... to develop a new American music that is anchored in the traditions of people of color in this society. To de-Europeanize the world."
In the fourth act of Journey Beyond the West, the one we won't hear yet, Monkey returns to his homeland to find that the jealous gods have corrupted it, capitalist-style. Monkey has a choice: he can proceed directly to Nirvana, or he can form a revolutionary movement to liberate his homeland and change the world. "Naturally," I venture, "he chooses to stay and fight."
The slightest grin breaks across Ho's impassive face. "Of course," he replies.
