Listening session: Chinatown Records & friends

Chinatown Records lovingly invites rising DJ Buckley Yung 翁百里 to soundtrack the Ace Hotel Brooklyn lobby with the 1950’s-80’s Chinese records he grew up with in Boston Chinatown. Taught to DJ by YiuYiu 瑶瑶 last year, Buckley Yung taps into his long history of favorite records and memories to soundtrack Chinatown Block Parties and living room listening sessions with Chinatown Records. Join us as YiuYiu 瑶瑶 and Buckley Yung 翁百里 transport us back to their family living rooms, where they first listened and learned to loved these songs with their parents. 

Chinatown Records & friends brings together DJ historian YiuYiu 瑶瑶 and some of the Chinatown living room DJs who have taught her so much about the neighborhood’s favorite songs. Learning to DJ for the very first time through Chinatown Records, our guest DJs bring their love for music and favorite songs to play alongside Chinese records and CDs from the ever-growing Chinatown Records archive. From 1940s-2000s favorites, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 and our guest DJs will weave together like our iconic Canto/Mandopop duos to soundtrack the Ace Hotel Brooklyn living room – welcoming some of our brand new up-and-coming Chinatown DJs. In January, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 invites Buckley Yung!

Chinatown Records lovingly invites rising DJ Buckley Yung 翁百里 to soundtrack the Ace Hotel Brooklyn lobby with the 1950’s-80’s Chinese records he grew up with in Boston Chinatown. Taught to DJ by YiuYiu 瑶瑶 last year, Buckley Yung taps into his long history of favorite records and memories to soundtrack Chinatown Block Parties and living room listening sessions with Chinatown Records. Join us as YiuYiu 瑶瑶 and Buckley Yung 翁百里 transport us back to their family living rooms, where they first listened and learned to loved these songs with their parents. 

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ABOUT

Chinatown Records 華埠錄音 is a homegrown community effort to celebrate the richness of music, memory, and history that comes with inherited family collections. Lovingly steered by YiuYiu 瑶瑶, Chinatown Records activates a community archive of 30+ collections spanning 1920’s-2000’s Chinese music and beyond inherited from her family, friends, and neighbors. From Chinatown block parties to living room listenings to sonic histories, Chinatown Records is an ever-growing record of the people we love, who bring all this music back to life with us. Learn more about Chinatown Records on our website & @chinatownrecordsproject. 

YiuYiu 瑶瑶 is a cultural organizer, artist, & oral history educator based on Lenape land in NYC’s Manhattan Chinatown. She takes on her childhood name YiuYiu 瑶瑶 as a guardian and DJ historian for Chinatown Records 華埠錄音, alongside her family and neighbors in Chinatown and beyond.

Buckley Yung 翁百里 is a longtime music lover, starting with memories of music and records that his parents loved – many that then became among his favorites, alongside his own favorites too. Starting at the age of 13, he began searching out the latest direct-from-Hong Kong records in Boston’s Chinatown record stores. When he moved to New York to begin his first urban planning job after graduate school, he regularly frequented New York’s Manhattan Chinatown – the mecca for record shopping on the east coast. Today, he spends his days enjoying the nearly 1,000 Chinese pop records scattered in every nook and corner of the home that he shares with his partner, Charlie. And with every record he brings home, he remembers those happy memories with his parents that started it all!

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Flyers by YiuYiu 瑶瑶 from the Chinatown Records archive