Make a stage for Pan-Asian and Pacific Islander Musicians

Hello! We are PAPIAC! The Pan Asian Pacific Islander Artist Collective. We are raising money to run our showcase room at the Folk Alliance International music conference, this Feb 18-23 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Folk Alliance is an international conference of folk musicians, presenters, promoters, artistic directors, activists, agents, managers and educators. Around 2500 people attend this 4 day gathering, where there are hundreds of showcases, workshops and panels. In 2022, at the first Asian American Pacific Islander affinity group at Folk Alliance, we all met and decided that next year we would host a private showcase. This will be our second time hosting a private showcase.

Because of our collective nature, and being artist-run, we are not incorporated or have any staff. Since September 2024, we have been organizing the Virtual Concert fundraiser, which we streamed live on January 27th, 2025. We postponed it for 2 weeks due to the LA fires, as several of our members were directly affected. The first time we held a virtual fundraiser in 2023, we raised $1480 USD. This year we raised $598 USD, significantly less, which at this point won't cover our costs. January has been politically and environmentally disastrous as you know, and it turned out to be a super rough time to try and run an arts fundraiser.

We are asking our supporters around the world to sponsor our remaining $800 USD / $1200 CAD to cover our costs of the showcase room rental.

We have 23 artists coming from Canada, the US, Malaysia, Australia, China, Spain, Hong Kong, and have cultural heritages from China, Korea, Philippines, India, Samoa, Aotearoa, Hawaii, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia. The performances are ways for our artists to meet festival directors, presenters, agents and artists from all over the world for future opportunities.

Working with my music colleagues in the PAPI collective has been such an encouraging experience, to have a group of peers who are on the same journey, with cultural backgrounds in common.

We hope that gives you a full picture of what we are doing. Thank you so much for considering supporting our project.

-Janice Jo Lee (Toronto, ON)

Pi Jacobs (Los Angeles, CA)

Tennyson King (Hong Kong/Mississauga, ON)

Paula Fong (Los Angeles, CA)

Aireene Espiritu (Oakland, CA)

Jimi Yamagishi (Los Angeles, CA)

Terry Uyeki (Humbolt County, CA)

Ayappa Ponnappa Biddanda (Nashville, TN)

Amrita Soon (Malaysia)

Trevor Turla (New York, NY)

Reese Tanimura (Seattle, WA)