"Sống dầu đèn, chết kèn trống."

(The living need light, the dead need music)

—Vietnamese proverb

In Vietnamese tradition, funerals are imagined as celebrations rather than laments, a transition rather than an ending. These funerals begin with a procession from the dead’s house to their local church or tomb accompanied by a brass band or traditional Vietnamese ensemble, depending on their religion. The festivities can last up to three days, and even longer for important familial figures. The purpose of this tradition is to pay tribute and to comfort the deceased on their journey.

Yellow Peril, titled after the racist color-metaphor used for East Asians, acts as a musical response to the recent rise of anti-Asian racism and hate crimes, while still recognizing America’s long history of anti-Asian discrimination. The work quotes a Vietnamese funeral song in a heterophonic texture as a homage to Vietnam’s folk music. This specific song, Lưu Thủy, is meant to express the happiness that the living feel when the dead return to the immortal world, but I chose to slow down the pacing of the song to create a more solemn and melancholic mood. This song is framed by cacophonous sections that are reminiscent of Vietnamese funeral celebrations. Yellow Peril is bookmarked by slow, ethereal sections that make excessive use of flutter-tongue, glissando, and wide vibrato, which are all techniques used in Vietnamese and other Asian folk music traditions that Western colonizers and missionaries deemed as ugly, unclean, discordant, and inferior.