Biography
Julian Saporiti channels his work as an Asian-American vocalist, composer, and researcher through the No-No Boy moniker, fusing contemporary folk material with visual components and narrative delivery to illuminate overlooked chapters of the past, above all those connected to migration. His first full-length effort, issued in 2018 under the title 1942, drew directly from oral accounts gathered from survivors of the WWII-era camps that held Japanese Americans. The follow-up, 1975, issued in 2021, turned inward to trace his own relatives’ passage through the Vietnam War. Educational outreach and advocacy have likewise taken him to the U.S./Mexico border, where performances have reached asylum seekers, relief personnel, and individuals held in detention facilities. After reassessing his working methods, Saporiti issued the more expansive and free-form Empire Electric in 2023.
Born to a Vietnamese mother and an Italian-American father, Saporiti spent his childhood in Nashville. He first entered the music scene in the mid-2000s as frontman of the Oregon indie-rock outfit the Young Republic, which issued multiple albums and traveled across North America and Europe. Academic pursuits later absorbed his attention, centering on questions of race, immigration, refugee populations, and musical recollection. In addition to his Berklee College of Music credential, he attended Brown University in Rhode Island and earned advanced degrees in American Studies and Ethnomusicology.
While investigating the WWII Japanese American internment camps in 2016, he began converting collected survivor testimonies into songs. Noting pointed parallels with present-day U.S. immigration enforcement, he captured the self-released album 1942—its title marking the year federal authorities began relocating Japanese Americans to camps in the Texas desert. He adopted the project name No-No Boy in homage to John Okada’s novel of the same name. Following the 2018 release, he toured atypical spaces, pairing live sets with projected archival photographs and interspersing historical context and conversation. A 2019 journey to the border left him unsettled by the conditions facing asylum seekers and the severity of the detention system; he performed for displaced people and aid workers on both sides of the divide. After signing with Smithsonian Folkways, No-No Boy delivered his second album, 1975—named for the fall of Saigon that concluded the Vietnam War—in 2021.
Once the promotional cycle for that record concluded, Saporiti confronted a decisive juncture. Rather than continuing deeper into scholarly specialization, he sought respite at Blue Cliff, a Vietnamese-founded monastery in upstate New York. The interval prompted a recalibration, allowing a lighter touch on the next recording. Working once more with his wife and co-producer Emilia Saporiti, he wove together accumulated stories and portions of his personal history, yielding the stylistically varied 2023 album Empire Electric.
Born to a Vietnamese mother and an Italian-American father, Saporiti spent his childhood in Nashville. He first entered the music scene in the mid-2000s as frontman of the Oregon indie-rock outfit the Young Republic, which issued multiple albums and traveled across North America and Europe. Academic pursuits later absorbed his attention, centering on questions of race, immigration, refugee populations, and musical recollection. In addition to his Berklee College of Music credential, he attended Brown University in Rhode Island and earned advanced degrees in American Studies and Ethnomusicology.
While investigating the WWII Japanese American internment camps in 2016, he began converting collected survivor testimonies into songs. Noting pointed parallels with present-day U.S. immigration enforcement, he captured the self-released album 1942—its title marking the year federal authorities began relocating Japanese Americans to camps in the Texas desert. He adopted the project name No-No Boy in homage to John Okada’s novel of the same name. Following the 2018 release, he toured atypical spaces, pairing live sets with projected archival photographs and interspersing historical context and conversation. A 2019 journey to the border left him unsettled by the conditions facing asylum seekers and the severity of the detention system; he performed for displaced people and aid workers on both sides of the divide. After signing with Smithsonian Folkways, No-No Boy delivered his second album, 1975—named for the fall of Saigon that concluded the Vietnam War—in 2021.
Once the promotional cycle for that record concluded, Saporiti confronted a decisive juncture. Rather than continuing deeper into scholarly specialization, he sought respite at Blue Cliff, a Vietnamese-founded monastery in upstate New York. The interval prompted a recalibration, allowing a lighter touch on the next recording. Working once more with his wife and co-producer Emilia Saporiti, he wove together accumulated stories and portions of his personal history, yielding the stylistically varied 2023 album Empire Electric.
Albums
Empire Electric
2023
Little Monk
2023
Onion Kings of Ontario
2023
La Banda Más Chingón En Wyoming
2023
1975
2021
Singles
