Oliver S. Wang

The first time I ever watched Bruce Lee was in a hotel rec room. It was 1980, I was eight, and the San Diego …

The most formative musical memory of my youth occurred 30,000 feet over central California in the summer of 1…

For 20 years, the Los Angeles hip-hop duo People Under the Stairs forged a career as independent artists that…

Book review of Vikki Tobak's "Ice Cold" and W. David Marx's "Status and Culture"

When Wayne Wang's Chan Is Missing began to draw national attention upon its release in the spring of 1982, tw…

A personal essay on both growing up - and returning - to the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles as an Asian Am…

Getting fired from a soap opera may have been the turning point in Wayne Wang's life and career. In 1974, Wan…

One of my favorite recordings of Betty Davis isn't a song. In the summer of 1974, the funk singer/songwriter …

Shorty's Portion was the creation of Steven J. Salazar, a young, twenty-something Angelino who rocked shaggy,…

If you arrived after dark to the Nisei Week carnival back in the 1980s, you likely would have encountered the…

ON JUNE 16, 1976, at 10:34 a.m., an excavation machine helping to widen the 7500 block of Venice Boulevard at…

In the 1990s, Hong Kong was home to a staggering number of the most gifted and charismatic actors in the worl…

Valerie June has just released a new LP called The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers. The album fore…

Coproduced by King Curtis and Atlantic Records producer Joel Dorn, Roberta Flack's cover of the Impressions' …

In 1968, Dusty Springfield - then an established pop star in the U.K. - flew across the pond to conquer the U…

Donny Hathaway's 1970 hit "This Christmas" represents a holiday classic for many. The soulful Christmas song …

"Everything is everything..." In early '70s Chicago, somewhere within the tiny 250 watt evening range of AM 1…

The Gospel Truth was a subsidiary of the famous soul label Stax Records. A new anthology, The Gospel Truth: T…

When my teenage daughter was younger, my wife and I used to joke that she took her style from her her paterna…

If you'll forgive some self-promotion, Labi Siffre's 50th anniversary box set, My Song , drops today. I wrote…

In the liner notes to John Coltrane's 1964 album Live At Birdland, Amiri Baraka (then writing as Le Roi Jones…

IN THE FALL of 1994, American radio and club DJs began receiving a promotional single in the mail: "Shook One…

In 1966, Betty Wright dropped by the offices of Deep City, a Miami label located in the back of Johnny's Reco…

SOMETIME DURING THE 1920s, noted Harlem historian and bibliophile Arturo Schomburg composed an ambitious prop…