Hsu-Li Explodes onto Scripps Music Scene
By Lori DesRochers
Staff Writer

Anyone who expects Asian women to be submissive, quiet wallflowers should catch one of Magdalen Hsu-Li's shows. Taking the stage at Scripps' Balch Auditorium Wednesday night, the multitalented Hsu-Li proved herself to be an amazing singer and musician with an explosive personality to match.

Performing songs with titles like "Fuck Bush" (prefaced with a warning to any Republican audience members), tossing her fire-engine red hair to the wild beats of her own drum solos, and laughing loudly at her self-described "male alter ego," she is both unapologetically opinionated and fearless.

As a bisexual Chinese American who is an accomplished singer, composer, instrumentalist, poet and painter, Hsu-Li represents everything that the Intercollegiate Women's Studies Department's "Women, Music & Activism" series hopes to promote. She grew up in the rural south of Martinsville, Va., where she and her family were among the few Asian. Though she can unequivocally affirm that she experienced prejudice on a daily basis, her signature positive outlook turns the experience around to remind us that "the great thing about adversity is that you can take it and turn it into art."

She proved just that with a performance that was both entertaining and artistically sound. Her music runs the gamut from Tori Amos-like acoustic ballads to rousing spirituals to good old-fashioned ho-downs. Accompanied by Dale Fanning on the drums, she ripped through a combination of politically and emotionally themed tunes, pausing briefly between songs to give some background information.

Songs like "Divided States" and "Assimilated" depicted her sentiments about America as a place where we put blind faith in images of solidarity, but which quickly unravel in relation to racial and sexual minorities. She describes her own experiences with assimilation as she confronts the stereotypes of Asian women.

Apologizing briefly to her relatives in the audience, Hsu-Li launched into "Chink" with great spunk, spewing out lines like "Bet you wanted a nice girl / With a limp and a curl / Bet you wanted an Asian girl." A devilish grin never left her face as she tore into the keyboard with flourishes of arpeggios and brutally hammered chords.

Hsu-Li and Fanning were visually separated, as the tiny stage was split by the giant nine-foot Steinway and pinned the performers on opposite sides, but the duo was never so much as a fraction of a beat off. Songs like "Spirit of the World," which featured an exhilarating extended percussion section, showcased their astounding partnering. The two seemed even to breathe in unison, their fluid banter of drum beats and rhythms marking their cohesive sound.

Her latest CD's title "Fire" represents one of the five basic elements in classical Chinese culture-one of the few things that Hsu-Li is proud to have retained from her heritage. She considers herself to be like fire, building and connecting communities. Outside of music performance, she also runs Chickpop Records, an "indie label that can rock the majors," and founded Femme Vitale, The Seattle Women's Music and Arts Coalition.