Updated
They both love hip-hop, they are both storytellers, and musicians Joel Ma and James Mangohig both say they get weird reactions when people find out it is their dads who are not white.
"We basically bonded through conversations on how much people often assume that it's our mothers who are the Asian ones," Mangohig, also from the band Sietta, said.
"And possibly a mail order bride," Ma, from music group Joelistics, added.
"And then when you tell them it's the dads who are Asian, part of you is like 'yeah that's right, we did steal your jobs and your women folk'."
Ma's father is Chinese and Mangohig's father is from the Philippines, and the pair say they both came of age watching Pauline Hanson warn Parliament that Australia was being "swamped by Asians".
The duo said the assumptions, ignorance and racism they encountered growing up came to serve as inspiration for In Between Two, their show currently playing in Darwin after previous incarnations in Sydney and Melbourne.
On stage Ma and Mangohig combine live music, spoken word and projections of old photographs and home videos to tell their families' stories.
"Representation is a big part of it," Ma said—the pair are well aware that their faces were not the kind of they saw on Australian screens or stages when they were younger.
"But also I think that as honestly as possible telling your story and sharing with people the intricacies of growing up in Australia for our families, the generations that came before us, is paying respect to the idea that what might be perceived as the classic immigrant story is actually a classic Australian story."
The show uses intricacy as a kind of antidote to ignorance, painting complex portraits of Ma and Mangohig's parents and grandparents in order to reclaim their identities from stereotypes.
As they see it, some things have changed since Asian-Australians were targeted in what Ma calls the "racism du jour".
The pair said the focus has shifted to Muslim Australians and social media has helped ramp up conversations about race and representation in Australian media, politics and broader society.
"There is a generation of people, like James and I, who are all starting to kick back," Ma said.
"And I think with that kickback comes, like, an overwhelming force of people who just don't want anything to change."
Topics: hip-hop, theatre, race-relations, darwin-0800
First posted