Under the direction of Hitomi Oba,???? ????? listen to the UCLA Contemporary Jazz Ensemble perform Jon Jang’s “Reparations Now! Concerto for Large Ensemble and Taiko” on Tuesday, March 6, at 7:30 p.m. at Schoenberg Hall on the UCLA campus.
This work, composed in 1987 inspired by a San Jose Day of Remembrance program, was born out of the redress struggle and commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Civil Liberties Act signed by President Reagan. That was half the battle; a new struggle was needed to obtain funding for the payments to Japanese Americans who had been deprived of their civil liberties during World War II.
Jang said the piece is also “a shout-out to our ancestral warriors and leaders from L.A. National Coalition for Redress and Reparations: Bert Nakano, Lillian Nakano, Glenn Horiuchi, Mervyn Dymally, and also outside of L.A.: Tsuyako ‘Sox’ Kitashima, Wally and Catherine [Nunotani], George [Iwao], Spark Matsunaga, Daniel Inouye.
“Hitomi Oba is a graduate of Berkeley High School and UCLA. She is part of the Berkeley High School alumni of Bobby Seale, Black Panther Party co-founder with Huey Newton, and both Berkeley High School and UCLA alumnus Yuji Ichioka, who created the term ‘Asian American’ through the Asian American Political Alliance at UC Berkeley and taught the first Asian American studies course at UCLA.”
Note: Jang will not be present.
Those who are unable to attend can experience the concert online at https://www.schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/school-of-music-live-streams.