In the summer of 2017, Josh Fu approached me about scoring a new comedy anthology web series he was working on, called Ching Chong Blues, about racism that Asian Americans face daily. Looking back on the project's genesis, Josh wrote on No Film School that "The Asian community was atwitter with heated discussions about stereotypes, representation, and larger questions of Asian identity—topics that were absolutely long overdue.

"My co-writer (and Ching Chong Blues star) Nelson Cheng and I wanted to be part of this conversation, but not in the vitriolic, torch and pitchfork manner that dominates the Reddit threads and comment sections of the interwebz. In the way that The Twilight Zone used speculative fiction to tackle the anxieties of the day, we dreamed of a show that would use dark, satirical comedy to tackle these rather unfunny issues"

Each episode has its own distinctive tone, both musically and cinematically, but the theme music at the end of each episode has a consistent melody. You'll recognize it as tokenizing, and that's by design. When I was in college, I learned about a series of boilerplate music cues that silent movie accompanists had on hand to play with movies, in the days before scores. They included race cues: think about the stereotypical music you hear in old movies to paint a character (usually a white person in black/brown/yellowface) as Other. There was the "Indian" cue, the "Chinese" cue, the "Arab" cue ... they're still a part of our collective musical language. So it seemed like ending each episode in this way, and using this melody ironically, was an appropriate choice in calling attention to the show's central thrust.

Rather than try to recap the three standalone episodes myself, I'll let Josh do it (text from the Ching Chong Blues Website):

“Rickshaw to Hollywood:” When an Asian filmmaker is told by a festival that his work isn’t “Asian” enough, he creates a racist film to troll them and accidentally attracts the attention of Hollywood.

“Erhu’s the Boss?:” Anne revels in being the only Asian employee in an all-White office in Oklahoma. But when a “more Asian” co-worker joins, she's sent into a crisis.

“C4C:” When Walter discovers his girlfriend's history of predominantly dating Asian men, he questions his romantic worth. In an attempt to reorient his worldview, she introduces him to an underground community of women with an Asian male fetish.

www.chingchongblues.com