Fred Ho
| Fred Ho | |
|---|---|
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Fred Ho in 2005
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| Background information | |
| Native name | 侯维翰 |
| Birth name | Fred Wei-han Houn |
| Also known as | Hóu Wéihàn |
| Born |
August 10, 1957 Palo Alto, California |
| Died | April 12, 2014 (aged 56) Brooklyn, New York |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, bandleader, playwright, writer and Marxist social activist |
| Instruments | Baritone saxophone |
| Years active | 1985-2011 |
| Labels | Soul Note Records |
| Associated acts | Julius Hemphill Sextet |
Fred Ho (Chinese: ; pinyin: Hóu Wéihàn; born Fred Wei-han Houn; August 10, 1957 – April 12, 2014) was an American jazz baritone saxophonist, composer, bandleader, playwright, writer and Marxist social activist. In 1988, he changed his surname to "Ho".
He was born in Palo Alto, California, and moved at the age of six with his family to Massachusetts.
While he is sometimes associated with the Asian-American jazz or avant-garde jazz movements, Ho himself was opposed to the use of term "jazz" to describe traditional African-American music because the word "jazz" was used pejoratively by white Americans to denigrate the music of African Americans.
Ho arduously sought to define what constitutes Asian-American jazz: “What makes Chinese American music Chinese American? What would comprise an Asian American musical content and form that could transform American music in general rather than simply be subsumed in one or another American musical genre such as ‘jazz’?” He polemicized against “the white assimilationist notion of the petty bourgeois Asian American artist that anything by an Asian American artist makes it Asian American,” pointing out that, for instance, “Yo-Yo Ma is a cellist who happens to be Chinese/Asian American, not a Chinese/Asian American musician.”
In his role as an activist, many of his works fuse the melodies of indigenous and traditional Asian and African forms of music. He envisions his music to be a real synthesis: "In opposing cultural imperialism, a genuine multicultural synthesis embodies revolutionary internationalism in music: rather than co-opting different cultures, musicians and composers achieve revolutionary transformation predicated upon anti-imperialism in terms of both musical respect and integrity as well as a practical political economic commitment to equality between peoples."
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