It is a little weird that non-American Asians seem to have had so little penetration in the American pop music market. Migs asked me the other day, while preparing for his post, if I could name any Asian pop or rock stars. The only person I could come up with was James Iha, who (a) is an American of Japanese descent; (b) was in Smashing Pumpkins, but was not the frontman. I later remembered that there's also Cibo Matto, founded by Japanese expatriates in America (and apparently only popular in the states) and Shonen Knife, off the top of my head.

Of course, as with anything, there is a niche culture -- there are American "J-pop" fans, just like there are American fans of Afrobeat, Norwegian black metal, Mexican rap, and French house. I'm confident saying, though, that I've read far more reviews in mainstream American music magazines discussing albums by and influenced by the above four genres than any mentioning Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, or Korean music.

But that's only half the question, and in some ways it's the less interesting half, because there are lots of countries and cultures that haven't exported pop music to America. The other half is "where are all the Asian-Americans?" Black Americans, of course, are a significant part of the American music scene, even in areas that aren't traditionally "Black music". There are plenty of Latino American rappers (Pitbull, Lloyd Banks, Jim Jones), pop singers (Christina Aguilera, David Archuleta, Jennifer Lopez), rock musicians (Los Lobos, Zach de la Rocha, Dave Navarro, Robert Trujillo from Metallica), and other (Joan Baez).


Latina.

That said, Wikipedia tells me that Amerie's mother is Korean, Ne-Yo's mother is of Chinese and African descent, Tony Kanal from No Doubt is Indian-American, and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park is of Japanese descent. And then how could I have forgetten Jin! Wikipedia also points to a number of musicians with Filipino roots, including Joey Santiago and Nicole Scherzinger.

What jumps out at me from this list is a perception issue, partly arising from people of mixed race not carrying the Asian parent's name and partly from the fact that "Asian" is a remarkably diverse category in terms of cultures, languages, and physical characteristics. That is, the typical American picture of a Latino, while not always terribly accurate (blond-haired, blue-eyed Argentians might confound people), is probably more accurate than the typical picture of Asians, which I'd guess is based mostly on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants. Hell, even as to the idea of "Chinese", our picture is not very accurate -- China has a lot of ethnic groups that are not accounted for by our standard picture.

So maybe, in particular relative to population size, Asian-American representation in American pop music is completely normal.