Enxi Chang - Jazz FM Voices

Throughout 2021, Jazz FM Voices has been commissioning opinion pieces from creatives across the UK and asking, "what's important to you?"

Enxi Erskine Chang is a British-Chinese multidisciplinary writer, actor, spoken word poet, rapper, TikToker and Mandarin translator working in theatre, film and music. Her work explores the intersections of queer mixed race diaspora identity and navigating the world as a Chinese trans woman in a post-COVID world.

We invited Enxi to write something for Jazz FM Voices, and this is her take...

Clapping Back Against COVID Racism - Meet the BESEA artists changing everything you thought you knew about Asians

Ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, the racism towards ESEA (East and Southeast Asian)* people that has always existed in Western society has finally been brought to light, two years of open violence and unflinching discrimination exposing centuries of discrimination, stereotyping and exploitation.

For years, ESEA people have been stereotyped as weak, timid and submissive. A faceless monolith of hardworking drones. Good at STEM, bad at creativity. As the events of the last two years have shown us, these stereotypes have succeeded in making ESEA people a target.

But that's about to change. Asian American artists like Joji, Mitski and Yaeji have been making waves, and over the last few years, we've seen a rise in British ESEA (BESEA) artists like Rina Sawayama and beabadoobee challenging Asian stereotypes just by being unapologetically themselves.

Since the pandemic, many BESEAs have been forced to fully confront the harsh reality of being Asian in the West, and this collective trauma has resulted in an outpouring of community solidarity, organising and artistic expression.

To get some other perspectives I caught up with BESEA Alt Rock artist and TikToker, Hongza, and Lumi, founder of ESEA club night and music collective Eastern Margins.

Hongza (real name Sam Hong), who just dropped his first EP Gen Z, makes what he describes as "sonically more on the alternative rock/shoegaze spectrum", with heavy influences from bands like Slowdive, Ride and My Bloody Valentine. But he very quickly pivoted away from describing his music in purely technical terms;

"My music is very personal to me. Because I'm a Pisces, everything I write is very emotionally driven. My EP is basically a coming-of-age story, with tracks about social media culture, online dating, and my own identity crisis growing up as an Asian boy in London".

With lyrics like "Stuck inside this hole again/I hate myself and I blame my friends" on his anthem to social media addiction, his music is relatable, hard-hitting (and catchy af) in all the ways it should be.

A confident Hackney boy through and through, Hongza's charming but nonetheless humble, self-effacing, almost vulnerable energy is perfect for his brand of emotionally driven alt rock. I mentioned how gassed I was to see someone I could actually relate to making the kind of 'white boy guitar music' I grew up listening to, and I'm sure his almost 37k followers on TikTok (where he often posts educational videos about anti-Asian racism) feel the same.

Hongza is well aware of his platform, influence and responsibility: "I don't wanna be seen as just an Asian artist... But sometimes I can speak about topics that white artists can't write about and connect with ethnic minorities".

Just like any other ESEA person, Hongza is not defined by his Asianness - but it's ultimately a part of who he is, and something that has finally started to give him strength and pride instead of the shame so many POC feel growing up in the UK, which he talks about on 'Identity Crisis'

"I'll hide my egg fried rice and go hungry cos I live in shame"

This sense of shame is something that diaspora ESEA communities know all too well, and Hongza's music is a powerful statement of intent - not just to the world who seeks to stereotype and pigeonhole us, but to ourselves. His music is a rallying cry for Asian youth everywhere, as well as a clear message to our parents who forced us to give up our passions in exchange for model minority stability.

Consciously or not, Gen Z is the sound of a young man casting off his shame, taking pride in who he is, and making sure the world knows it. Passionate, funny, sad and conscious, and as much a product of his racial identity as his experiences as Gen Z Asian boy from North London, Hongza is one of the most exciting things that's happened to UK rock in a long time.

On the other end of the musical spectrum, I caught up with Lumi, founder of ESEA club night and music collective Eastern Margins, which specialises in bringing underground ESEA dance, electronic and urban music to London.

Founded in 2018, Lumi spoke to me about how EM was originally created to boost ESEA representation in UK music, but since then its focus has radically changed into becoming more of a community, a musical collective devoted to meaningful dialogue, and cultural exchange.

"I get so much from the community building element... Because we've been afforded so little space in British society, we really need to build this space together, focus on a wider community, and work as a collective".

This collective ethos arguably embodies all the best aspects of Asian culture, and it shows in their commitment to inclusivity. I've personally always been struck with EM's commitment to all forms of inclusivity. I went to several EM nights before lockdown, and although the crowd was largely ESEA, there was not only a high level of racial diversity but also a significant queer presence.

This shone through in the artists they spotlighted - though it was primarily ESEA artists, I went to an EM event at Bussey Building which featured several queer Black grime MCs. It seems that in addition to being a safe space for ESEA artists, EM has made itself an actively inclusive space for all artists of colour - queer artists of colour especially - who work in genres typically dominated by toxic masculinity and queerphobia.

It's undeniable that EM has big ambitions. Despite EM's obvious ESEA influences, Lumi emphasised the limitations of 'Asian identity', and stressed that he wants EM to be a community on its own terms, rooted in the diaspora but with its own values and principles beyond that.

Lumi stated that "The pandemic has only surfaced stuff we already knew, so it's not a surprise. But it has consolidated my motivation for doing this". Aware of his privilege as a cishet man, Lumi is devoted to using his privilege to create a safe space for ESEAs who are marginalised not just by wider society, but even within the ESEA community. He then said;

"The safety net has been pulled away... we don't have the comfort to shy away from these issues, and it's our responsibility if we have any kind of prominence to represent our culture."

Consciously or not, it feels like almost every ESEA artist has become aware of this. Whether it's through EM's active work in uplifting marginalised underground creators, or Hongza's proud reclamation of his Asian identity, big changes are happening to BESEA identity. Now more than ever, BESEAs are conscious of how we are perceived, and how we want to be perceived, and its artists like these who will redefine not just how the rest of the world sees us, but how we see ourselves.

Footnote - ESEA - This is a term that was only coined two years ago. Previously, East and Southeast Asians in the UK were either described as 'Asian' (which much more commonly referred to South Asians) or 'Oriental' (a racist, outdated term). On official UK government ethnicity forms, the only options available for East and Southeast Asians are 'Asian - Chinese' or 'Asian - Other'.