I can't help but love me some Marketplace and the smooth sounds of Kai Ryssdal - who - just in case you missed it - did a feature on Legaci - interviewing Josh Kun from the Annenberg School at University of Southern California:
Yeah I know. Two posts in a row with a Beiber reference.Ryssdal: What's the big deal these guys are Filipino-Americans?
Kun: Well, part of the big deal is that you just don't see many Filipino Americans, or for that matter Asian American, on the pop charts or the R&B charts, so to suddenly see this quartet of guys on some of the biggest stages in American pop music is a big deal.
Ryssdal: How did they come to attention, then, of who I must say is not my favorite pop artist in the world, Justin Bieber?
Kun: First of all, I heard you listening to Justin before I came in, so I just wanted to let listeners know. They came to his attention the same way Justin Bieber came to the world's attention, which is actually on YouTube [...]Ryssdal: What's it going to take, then, for major record labels to get smart and say, "I gotta sign one of these guys."
Kun: This is one of the great mysteries. I mean, if you look at the amount of Asian Americans on YouTube versus the scarcity of Asian Americans on the pop charts, it's this big kind of like "why?" question. And some people believe it's kind of lingering, old-school racism. Others believe that within U.S. pop culture the idea of Asian Americans as somehow not quite "American" still persists in many ways. And many others just talk about kind of more basic stereotypes -- that, in fact, mainstream U.S. culture is not used to seeing Asian American kids who aren't mathematicians or who aren't behind the scenes as DJs.
Somehow that's just wrong.
But I do you give you some Legaci news straight from Marketplace and technically that's worth more.
