Fred Ho from www.bigredmediainc.com
On Saturday, April 12, we lost a true revolutionary warrior–Fred Ho. After fighting cancer for eight years, Fred Ho passed away in his Brooklyn home at the age of 56. This radical activist infused politics into his music making and art into his politics. Although Fred had an intellectual background (his father was a scholar and Fred graduated from Harvard) he was committed to the proletariat. He said in a speech at Kearny Street Workshop in 1985, “Revolutionary art must energize and humanize; not pacify, confuse, and desensitize. This is the liberating function of art, freeing the imagination and spirit, yet focusing us to our revolutionary potential.”
Robynn Takayama brings us this tribute.
To learn more about Fred Ho and to hear the voice of a dear friend and brother in the movement, the documentary Fred Ho’s Last Year screens at the L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival on May 6. Let’s hope it makes it up to the Bay Area soon.
Publications:
Sounding Off!: Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution
Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America
Tributes:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/14/fred-ho-lives/
http://www.downbeat.com/default.aspsect=news&subsect=news_detail&nid=2358
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/arts/music/fred-ho-56-composer-and-radical-activist-dies.html
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