husetts Institute of Technology.
“Those communities lived up to the promise of the nation when the nation failed to do so … because they were equally marginalized and equally deprived of full membership.”
I also found this video featuring Bald lecturing at The South Asia Institute Institute at Harvard. It’s called “Harlem, Black Bottom, Tremé: South Asian Muslims in U.S. Communities of Color, 1890-1965”.
Before I move on, some clarification: the book begins with the stories of Indian immigrants in the late 1800s. At that time, there was only India. In 1947, the Partition of India occured, carving out Pakistan and East Pakistan, leading to the displacement of millions, many deaths and chaos. In 1971, after a bloody and brutal war, East Pakistan gained independence and became Bangladesh. Many of the immigrants came from what is now Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Finally, here’s a list from XXL of fifteen rap songs influenced by Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian music. Now before you interject, “The Middle East is NOT Southeast Asia!”, calm down, I’m aware. I’m including the link here because it touches on the melding of the historically Black American musical genre with sounds that were birthed in Southeast Asia in a number of the listed songs. And I’ll close with one of my favs, “Beware” by Panjabi MC with Brooklyn’s own Jay Z. Many thanks to my friend Wafi who sent me the link at the top of the post that got my brain churning enough to read up on this and write the post.