Alicia Thao (she/her). Photo courtesy to Buck Holzemer.
ALICIA THAO
CEDAR COMMISSIONS SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEWS
Over the next few weeks we’re featuring the six artists of the 2021-2022 Cedar Commissions (taking place Friday, February 18th, and Saturday, February 19th at The Cedar) in a series of interviews on our site. The Cedar Commissions is a flagship program for emerging Minnesotan composers and musicians made possible with a grant from the Jerome Foundation.
In the second and now third year of the COVID-19 pandemic where shifts in daily life have been ever-present, these artists have been riding the waves. They’ve been composing, exploring new ideas, and assembling teams of musicians to bring their work to fruition in a mix of virtual and in-person work sessions. Over the two nights of the Eleventh Annual Cedar Commissions, audience members will witness performances about uncovering hidden truths of one's ancestors, uniting African music traditions across drawn lines, illuminating the Third Culture Kid experience, pushing oneself to the ultimate limit, the relational process of self discovery, honoring the disrespected beauty of our planet, and so much more.
Our second spotlight interview is with Alicia Thao (she/her). Alicia is a singer-songwriter and guitar player. Her new work for the 2021-2022 Cedar Commissions is self-titled: AS LIS SAM THOJ / ALICIA THAO. In this project Alicia is exploring her Hmong American identity and who ‘Alicia’ is. She spoke with Marketing and Communications Manager Shasa Sartin about her relationship to her name, falling in love with musicianship, and connecting to her parents.
“AS LIS SAM THOJ / ALICIA THAO is just a way for folks to get to know me better. Not only as a musician, but as a person. So I hope the audience finds it compelling and it inspires them to dive into their own self-exploration and to learn their history.”
Shasa Sartin (she/her): Your Cedar Commissions project is self-titled. Why did you choose to name your project after yourself?
Alicia Thao (she/her): I have two reasons why I chose AS LIS SAM THOJ / ALICIA THAO. [Firstly], I've always just been fascinated by names because it plays a huge role in everyone's identity in life. I even love giving friends and family nicknames. Last year, I had a really good conversation with my friend about people reclaiming their cultural name. Alicia is obviously not a Hmong name. AS LIS SAM THOJ is my name spelled out phonetically in Hmong, so this is just my way of reclaiming it. And my parents only decided to give my brothers Hmong names, but months ago, I confirmed with my mom about a Hmong name that she chose for me, which is Ia Ong. And to my understanding, it means the sun rays that pierce through the clouds.
Secondly, my project was heavily inspired by my friend Bunnard Phan, who I call Bun, actually. So he produced this podcast interview that he did with his mother in 2017 for the Stanford Storytelling Project. His mother is a Cambodian refugee, and he just got to ask her questions about how it was like to settle down in the US after the Khmer Rouge, and it made me realize how little I knew or felt connected to my own heritage. And it just really inspired me to get to know my parents story and try to get to know them as people.
I feel like my project blurb says it perfectly, that it's centered around my Hmong American identity and paying homage to my parents story, connected with my roots of family history. Half of my set is actually Hmong songs, and then the second half is in English, so I just felt like it made sense for me to have my project self-titled in my Hmong name and my American name.
ALICIA’S Project BLURB
Alicia Thao is a singer-songwriter who is Tulsa-raised and Saint Paul-based. “As Lis Sam Thoj / Alicia Thao” will be centering Thao’s Hmong American identity, paying homage to her parents’ story by connecting with her roots and family history. The set will range from kwv txhiaj (traditional Hmong folk song), incorporating Hmong inspired sounds which will transition to genres that Thao currently experiments and identifies with: indie, folk, soul, and rnb.
A photo of Alicia’s family in their backyard in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photo courtesy to Alicia Thao.
Shasa: So you said that your parents gave your brother's Hmong names and not you when you were born. And that your mom had this name for you that they decided not to give you. Can you say more about how it came up recently?
Alicia: Yeah, because I think growing up, I've always been very jealous towards other relatives or friends who have specific Hmong names 'cause there's always like an American version of the Hmong name, and I just didn't have one. So I actually have a huge family, I have three brothers and four sisters. They only chose Hmong names for our brothers because — my mom's reason that she told me was because when we get married, then our name would be too long. But I thought that was a really silly reason. It was just a conversation that came up like, "yeah, what would my Hmong name be if you were to pick one?" And so she told me.
Alicia Thao playing her guitar. Photo courtesy to Alicia Thao.
Shasa: This project is a lot about you and your reflection on your American Hmong identity. Has the songwriting been very personal?
Alicia: Yeah, I think it's been kind of difficult to talk about what my creative process has been like. Specifically when my friends ask me how it's going. I don't know how else to describe it, but it's been kind of painful, and I shared this with the [Cedar Commissions] cohort, too, because I think a lot of the subject material or the topics that I chose to write about are typically things that I probably don't wanna think about. Or it's just hard for me to talk about.
I really wanted this project to be pretty similar to my friend Bunnard’s podcast, and just having this project to be a way to document my parents life story, which might have also included their experiences as Vietnam war refugees. I was kind of wanting to go for a No-No Boy vibe. No-No Boy is a songwriter, his name is Julian Saporiti. He typically writes about archival or hidden Asian-American histories, but I didn't really want my set to be about my parents potentially traumatic experiences. I really wanted to use the project to get to know my parents more as people. But I think within the past six months, I didn't wanna rush or force certain conversations with my parents and I probably would have preferred [being] in-person because I live here and they still live in Oklahoma. I was born and raised there. So I just went with what I naturally wanted to worry about or what I was inspired by in my casual conversations with them.
I knew I wanted to share my parents story and tie it to my own Hmong American identity and my experiences. And that's been, I think, rough because I've always grown up having an identity crisis. There's not a lot of written Hmong history, and I grew up in Oklahoma, so there wasn't really resources for me to learn about my own people and my parents didn't really prioritize me learning Hmong. My opening song talks about that and the language barrier, and then I challenged myself to write Hmong songs. I always get really emotional [about] anything that's related to my parents. And I also wanted to talk about my queer identity, which, not a lot of people know that I'm queer, and for me — I don't know if it's intentional — I just don't really talk about it. But I think this is kind of a great way of, I guess, coming out. And I wrote a song called "E-side" for the set, too, which [is] talking about Eastside Tulsa because it's where I grew up, and I got to visit Oklahoma over the holidays.
I think it's hard for me because I just don't have the perfect relationship with my parents. A natural relationship where we talk about our lives with each other and share our experiences. So that's been a challenging aspect. And I actually hated growing up in Oklahoma. So I think even trying to write about Tulsa was difficult and visiting it is also a struggle for me. I guess this project has just allowed me to really explore my self-identity and it's been a tool to also help me know who I am.
Alicia’s collaborators include Shawn Mouacheupao on drums, Kenny Lee on bass guitar, Yeng Yang on vocals and main guitar. Photo courtesy to Alicia Thao.
Shasa: Do you have any collaborators for your project?
Alicia: Yes, I have a backing band. So I usually play solo acoustic sets. And that's what's gonna make this show different than other gigs that I’ve done. Folks that I met when I first moved here are the band members that I hand selected. They're my friend Shawn Mouacheupao who's on the drums, Kenny Lee on the bass, and Yeng Yang for some vocal harmonies and he's gonna be playing the main guitar.
I would say, I think the majority of the song writing has been my own doing, but Yang has definitely helped me with proofreading the Hmong lyrics and helping me translate a few things because I'm not entirely fluent in Hmong. So I've been so grateful for his help. And Shawn is a really great producer, so he's been a huge help in the arrangement department. I don't have a lot of experience performing with a lot of people so it's been a fun challenge trying to make my songs sound fuller.
A photo of Alicia’s father as a teenager playing the drums in his band. Photo courtesy to Alicia Thao.
Shasa: Can you speak about your relationship to and with music?
Alicia: I love telling this story. My sister Savannah, when she was around 16, she had mentioned to my dad very briefly that she wanted to learn how to play the guitar. So one day when we came home from school, we found him sitting in our kitchen and playing a guitar, and she was like, "Where did you get that?" and "Who's guitar is it?" And he was like, "It's yours!" And I was actually really jealous and I forced her to teach me everything that she knew on the guitar. And eventually she just stopped playing and I surpassed her, and that's when I slowly started song writing.
I would say my first music inspiration was Mree, and what's really cool is she's a singer-songwriter, so I think at the time, in my early teens, seeing another Asian girl who was independent and she self-produced all of her albums, there [was] just something really empowering for me to see that because I didn't grow up with a lot of Asian representation. And also at the time, my peers and folks around me weren't really writing their own music. And I thought, well, so many people can sing — cause I was in choir — but not everyone can write a song, and so I just found power in that and just kept at it.
A photo of Alicia’s family. Photo courtesy to Alicia Thao.
Shasa: What is something that you want your audience to take away from your performance?
Alicia: Cedar Commissions has just been a very personal and self-fulfilling project, so I actually don't have any expectations of what I want people to take from it. If I were to say something, I would say, just take what resonates. And if it doesn't, thank you for listening to my story. AS LIS SAM THOJ / ALICIA THAO is just a way for folks to get to know me better. Not only as a musician, but as a person. So I hope the audience finds it compelling and it inspires them to dive into their own self-exploration and to learn their history.
Shasa: That is lovely. That is so lovely. Do you have any final thoughts?
Alicia: During one of my rehearsals, I was explaining to my band what each song means, [and] why I chose the specific order for my set. And Shawn had said something to me that really made me reflect a lot. He said "When you first moved here, Alicia, you were like... ‘I moved here and I'm never looking back at Oklahoma, just looking forward.’” And he's like "With this project, it's really cool to see that no, you are looking back, and you're just delving into your past and working through it and healing from it." That was a moment like, whoa, I've been growing. And that was a really powerful moment for me. This project has been painful, but it's been really healing, too.
Catch Alicia Thao’s performance of AS LIS SAM THOJ / ALICIA THAO premiering live at The Cedar on Saturday, February 19th as part of the Eleventh Annual Cedar Commissions. Buy tickets here.