Tiger La Flor

I’ve always loved the art of collage. Growing up, I would spend hours in the basement where my mom meticulously stored her old magazines, combing through old issues for cool visuals to cut out and piece back together in my little black art journal.

To me, collage is simply the art of creating connections between otherwise seemingly disparate elements. Taking snapshots of items that alone may seem banal, but put in the context of the other items, form a vivid image that evokes an emotional response from the viewer.

Even as a musical artist, I’ve always viewed myself as a collage artist of sorts. But instead of combing through my mom’s old magazines, now I comb through fragments of my life—both the physical and the imagined—for what I like to call “the poetry in the wind”: the little glimmers of poetry in our everyday life that can easily escape us if we’re not fully present. The way sunlight illuminates the hue of one’s eyes, the crispness of a brand new sheet of paper, the tinge of nostalgia when you walk by someone wearing a familiar cologne.

Working on this record was one of the most intentional collages I’ve crafted to date. Originally I was drawn to the concept of creating a Country Americana record, since those are two genres I grew up loving. However, as an Asian American artist, the two snapshots I was working with: “Country Americana” and “Asian American” felt obtrusively disparate given Asian representation in these genres is trivial at best.

To create a Country Americana record as an Asian American artist felt awkward; most closely likened to the feeling of showing up to a friend of a friend’s intimate birthday party that the host didn’t invite you to, but your friend said you could join. Not wrong per se, but also not invited. When Mitski dropped her groundbreaking Country Americana album “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We,” to my knowledge, she was not referring to this concept. But that title nails it. Going into making this record, the musical landscape felt inhospitable.

Day 2 in the studio, I told the Producer I was abandoning the concept. I explained to him that I knew I had originally pitched the idea of a Country Americana record, but after reflection, I couldn’t think of a good reason to justify why I would be fit to make such a project. I knew people would ask why I had decided to make the pivot. I had no grand reason to present them, so I thought we would be better off heading a “safer” direction that would likely be better received, like Indie Rock or Synth Pop.

“Why do you need a reason?” He asked me bluntly. “If you like the music, that is reason enough.“

On day 3, we were back to the original concept, and we wrote “American Dreams,” the first single that would make it onto the final record.

After that conversation, I committed to the vision and began exploring how I could authentically connect to it. The dialogue brought me back to my roots growing up in the Pacific Northwest.

My mom was born the daughter of Japanese and Korean immigrants in a small farming town known for its sweet onions and wineries called Walla Walla. My dad grew up a bit North in a city along the Idaho border called Spokane. Some of my most fond memories growing up are from visiting their hometowns in the summers. The long drives across the desolate Eastern Washington desert; the shadow of rolling tumbleweeds, the giant windmills on the hilltops, and the bronze statues of wild horses in the fading light. Lazy warm afternoons riding razor scooters home from the Walla Walla County Fair in the cowboy boots and ruffled dresses my aunt picked up for my cousin and I at Dollywood in Tennessee after a long day sitting in the bleachers watching the rodeo and the local “Buckaroo Pageant.” My earliest performance was at that pageant when my sister, cousin, and I performed a rendition of “Buffalo Gals” and all won $5 coupons to McDonald’s, which we eagerly spent on chocolate dipped ice cream cones. The drives back home across the state we’d listened to my dad’s favorites: Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Woody Guthrie.

What I find most fascinating about Country and Americana music is that no other genre feels more explicitly in-your-face American to me. From the lyrical themes to the distinctive instruments traditionally employed, the genres feel particularly homegrown.

Ruminating on this, I realized releasing a Country Americana record as an Asian American artist feels not only like an artistic statement, but a political one.

This record was the first I ever made where I capitalized every letter of the song titles. In the past, the records I released felt intimate—more like sonic diary entries or unsent letters—warranting the all-lowercase titles. This record felt less introspective and more so like writing a soundtrack for a film loosely inspired by my own life; a commentary, an ode, and above all, a declaration.

Because America too is a collage. A land where previously distant cultures over time have become interconnected through the shared experience of the ethos of the “American Dream.”

As the music industry evolves, it too resembles a collage more and more each year as genres increasingly blend and bleed into each other, and the acknowledgment of artists like myself from underrepresented minority groups grows slowly over time. The popularity of genre-fluid Spotify playlists like “Lorem” and “Indigo” celebrates today’s experimental musical landscape, while playlists like “Jasmine” spotlight artists of Asian descent thriving globally. Although there’s still a ways to go, it’s a much more hospitable landscape for women and artists of color than the entertainment industry I entered when I first started releasing music in high school.

I would conclude this by saying something along the lines of, “so that’s why I decided to make this record,” but I think my producer put it best—if you like the music, that is reason enough.

In this cultural collage we all inhabit, the artist should always feel a CONNECTION to their art. But remember, you never need a REASON to make the art that calls you. If you love it, that is reason enough.

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Tiger La Flor’s debut country-pop single, “MOST WANTED MAN,” was released on September 5, 2024.