Fred Ho

Fred Ho (; 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.

Biography Ho was born into a Chinese-American family in Palo Alto, California. When he was six, his father took a job teaching political science at the University of Massachusetts and the family moved with him. As a teenager he began teaching himself baritone saxophone and auditing college courses taught by Archie Shepp and others.

Ho 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 envisioned 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." Ho, recapitulating an aesthetic vision first presented in 1985, wrote:

On August 4, 2006, Ho was diagnosed with colon cancer. After chemotherapy, his health improved, but a second tumor was found on September 24, 2007. He wrote two books about cancer: Diary of a Radical Cancer Warrior: Fighting Cancer and Capitalism at the Cellular Level (2011), and Raw Extreme Manifesto: Change Your Body, Change Your Mind and Change the World While Spending Almost Nothing! (2012). and in March 2014 (almost a month before his death) the Harlem Arts Festival Lynette Velasco Community Impact Award. At the 17th Annual Black Musicians Conference, Ho became the youngest recipient of the Duke Ellington Distinguished Artist Lifetime Achievement Award.

Discography

1985: Tomorrow is Now (Soul Note) 1985: Bamboo That Snaps Back (Finnadar) 1987: We Refuse to be Used and Abused (Soul Note) 1988: A Song for Manong (Asian Improv) 1993: The Underground Railroad to My Heart (Soul Note) 1996: Monkey Part I (Koch Jazz) 1997: Monkey Part II (Koch Jazz) 1997: Turn Pain Into Power (O.O. Discs) 1998: Yes Means Yes, No Means No, Whatever She Wears, Wherever She Goes (Koch) 1999: Warrior Sisters (Koch) 2001: Once Upon a Time in Chinese America (Innova) 2009: Celestial Green Monster (Mutable Music) 2011: Year of the Tiger (Innova) 2011: Snake-Eaters (Big Red Media) 2011: The Sweet Science Suite: A Scientific Soul Music Honoring of Muhammad Ali (Big Red Media)

With the Julius Hemphill Sextet Five Chord Stud (Black Saint, 1994)

Books by Ho

As author Ho, Fred. Diary of a Radical Cancer Warrior, Skyhorse Publishing, New York, 2011. As editor Sakolsky, Ron, and Fred Ho. Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1996. Ho, Fred. Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2001. Ho, Fred and Bill V. Mullen. Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.

Books about Ho Fujino, Diane C., ed. Wicked Theory, Naked Practice: A Fred Ho Reader. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Buckley, Roger N., and Tamara Roberts, ed. Yellow Power, Yellow Soul: The Radical Art of Fred Ho (Asian American Experience). Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013.