No-No Boy releases “Nashville” video, ode to growing up Vietnamese-American on Music Row

No-No Boy, the project from scholar-musician Julian Saporiti that NPR's Here & Now compared to an indie rock "Trojan Horse for teaching Asian-American history," is out today with the video for “Nashville,” from his Smithsonian Folkways album ‘Empire Electric.’ 

Watch "Nashville" HERE.

Born and raised on Music Row - Saporiti’s dad discovered Faith Hill and Keith Urban, his brother Adrien’s the artist behind the city’s now-iconic “I Believe in Nashville” mural - Saporiti was entrenched in Americana and folk music from an early age before forming his first band Young Republic in 2004.

“As Nashville as it gets” in many ways, growing up in town for Saporiti, was marked by time spent at songwriter rounds, old-timey jams, and barbecue joints, mixed with feelings of outsiderness and memories of casual racism that came from being Vietnamese-American in a blue-eyed, country-boy town.

In his own words: “This song is an effort to center one's self, something that shouldn't take so much effort in one's own hometown.”

The video for Nashville reflects that mixed bag of evocations, visually a pastiche of honky-tonk and musically accented with samples of Chinese pipa, guzheng, and dizi, mariachi violins, and drum beats that evoke the paigu - a set of “tom” drums originally brought to the United States by 19th-century Chinese immigrants. Set in a hub of country and Americana music, “Nashville” reveals the multiple, intersecting cultural histories of American sound.

For more on the video and song from Saporiti himself, check out his Instagram post HERE, and catch the No-No Boy project on tour this spring before Saporiti puts the project, ten years in, into semi-retirement.

No-No Boy Tour Dates HERE

"One of the most insurgent pieces of music you'll ever hear" (NPR Music)

"From professor to rock star" (KEXP)

Watch No-No Boy's new KEXP session HERE