The Best Goddamn Band In Wyoming
A song by No-No Boy that feels appropriate right about now
Well, this has been a shitty week. You can extrapolate the rest of my opinion from that sentence. I don’t think you need anymore platitudes, plus I can’t think of anything new and interesting to say about it. It knocked me way off balance. So I’m going to amplify someone else’s story, a story about art, music, performance, community and joy during an awful era. I suppose it is my job to try to deliver on a few of those promises.
So here is a tune called ‘The Best Goddamn Band In Wyoming’, originally by the band No-No Boy.
It is the work of Julian Saporiti. He writes songs that double as history, chronicling the Asian-American experience. This is a great little documentary that tells his story:
Some might know No-No Boy as a 1957 novel by John Okada, the story of a Japanese-American after WW2. What is a no-no boy? Here is an explanation straight from the Densho Encyclopedia:
“A colloquial term for those who answered no to questions 27 and 28 , the so-called "loyalty questions" on the Application for Leave Clearance form (aka the loyalty questionnaire ) … though stigmatized as "disloyal," the no-nos had a wide variety of reasons for their actions. No-no status was stigmatized after the war, and many have remained reluctant to tell their stories.”
To paraphrase EE Cummings’ ‘I Sing Of Olaf Glad And Big’, they would not kiss the fucking flag. America wanted their assured loyalty but either way they were probably going to the internment camps.
The song tells the true story of a swing band formed inside a Japanese internment camp during the 1940s. It is told very clearly and beautifully, I won’t try to summarize it here. It is a real story about people that made music, created joy, at a time when there was little joy. I’ve tried to keep it pretty simple. If feels like a song that should be sung at summer camps, despite the use of the words “goddamn’ and “fucking”, both used very effectively and properly in context. I’m sure it would be popular with the kids.
It almost always brings a tear to my eye when I hear it. The No-No Boy version is so beautifully played and arranged, with a great video, I highly recommend it to you. This version is me around the proverbial campfire, along with some phased out synth strings and mellotron of course, performed with the utmost respect for Julian Saporiti and his work. It’s a song that should be passed on. Trying not to be overly critical and precious about my arranging and playing and singing, just trying to pass it on. I hope you like it.
Love that song and his 2 recent records. Still need to see him! He's only been to Chicago once in last couple years and I was out of town. Wagh.
I remember reading Farewell to Manzanar when I was 13 or 14 and being stunned by yet another dark chapter in American history. Thanks for linking the Smithsonian documentary; the section at the end cutting between the Japanese internment camps and the camps at the Mexican border was stunning. Thanks for telling this story.