Today, only a few dozen from the early 20th century survive. Most of these were collected by Harry Urata in the mid-20th century. Allison Arakawa was one of Urata’s students, and she learned these songs as a teenager.

asianamericanmusic.org/learning/25s...

Most "hole hole bushi" used folk melodies from the workers’ home regions, and have new lyrics that reflected new realities in Hawai`i. It is likely that first-generation Japanese immigrants (the “Issei”) created thousands and thousands of these songs—many of them improvised while they worked.

"Hole hole bushi” is a collection of songs created primarily by Japanese women who worked on sugarcane plantations in Hawai`i in the early 20th century. In their original context, these work songs were often sung by women while they removed dead leaves from sugarcane.

The first selection on “Asian America in 25 Songs” is Allison Arakawa’s performance of "hole hole bushi" at the Japanese American National Museum in 2010. “Bushi” is the Japanese word for melody, and “hole hole” is the Hawaiian word for dead sugarcane leaves.

asianamericanmusic.org/learning/25s...

The 1st project we are launching in 2026 is the full "Asian America in 25 Songs" resource, which uses Asian American music-making to teach Asian American history & Asian American studies. We quietly released the playlist w/ short descriptions in mid-2025 & it has gotten a lot of attention already.

Happy 2026! The Music of Asian America Research Center looks forward to many new initiatives. The first is this NEW BSKY ACCOUNT! Please follow us!

We will also be releasing several projects we have been working on over the last few years, and planning our next festival--late September, Chicago!

Next Wed. (Apr. 2) at 4pm ET, @yanyiii.com & I will moderate a virtual panel on the "Future of Asian American Community Archives." The panelists are Christina Ong, Laura Chen-Schultz, Danielle Davis & Andra Palchick. Hope you can join us--register at the link below!

umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Happy to have contributed a playlist to this wonderful installation at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago! For more on the installation, visit: ccamuseum.org/current-exhi... To listen to the playlist, visit: tinyurl.com/ShanghaiSongs.

I just read part of Ch. 2 of Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology with my class where she addresses this very thing.

One of the ways that heterosexuality and cis-sexuality is naturalized is through putting queerness out of reach. Or, by structuring the world so that queerness doesn't come into view.