Win Tickets ($40): History Pub Presents No-No Boy @ Mission Theater | Empire Election Album Release Celebration

We are giving away a pair of tickets to No-No Boy @ Mission Theater on October 4. To win, comment below on this post why you’d like to attend. Winner will be drawn and emailed September 25.

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From our sponsors:
No-No Boy
October 4, 2023
7PM Doors, 8PM Show | $15 ADV, $20 Doors | All Ages
More info: mcmenamins.com

Mission Theater
1624 NW Glisan St, Portland, OR 97209

Join us for this very special music-meets-history presentation! Performing as No-No Boy, Julian Saporiti’s music draws on years of research on Asian American history, and examines narratives of imperialism, identity, and spirituality. Along with his musical performances, Julian will be telling stories about his work and art with visual presentations on the stage’s big screen.

About No-No Boy:
Sounds contain histories and prophecies. If you listen closely, there are winding tales to be found in a string brushed by a handmade bow, worlds to be uncovered in the trill of a bird about to take flight, and truths to be reckoned with in the grain of an unknown voice. This is the revelation at the core of Empire Electric, the third album by No-No Boy, and its songs that examine narratives of imperialism, identity, and spirituality. It tells stories rooted in years of research and relationship-building, made vibrant and profound through a rich congregation of instrumental, environmental, and electronically manipulated sounds from Asia and America. Every single sound, from the gracious swell of a pedal steel to the warbling pluck of a koto, becomes a part of the poetic recasting of shared post-colonial trauma and the startling joys that can be wrung out of that hardship.

Storytelling has always been at the root of Julian Saporiti’s music as No-No Boy. The project developed as the central component of Saporiti’s PhD at Brown University, drawing on years of fieldwork and research on Asian American history to write folk songs with uncommon empathy and remarkable protagonists: prisoners at Japanese American internment camps who started a jazz band, Vietnamese musicians turned on to rock ‘n’ roll by American troops, a Cambodian American painter who painted only the most beautiful landscapes of his war-torn home. Along the way he started to draw on his own family’s history, including his mother’s escape from Vietnam during the war. His 2021 album 1975 was called “a remarkably powerful and moving album,” by Folk Alley and “gentle, catchy and accessible folk songs that feel instantly familiar,” by NPR – a contrast that gets to the heart of Saporiti’s songwriting.