Baking "Like A G6" - Empowerment through Entertainment

I want to highlight two "movements" today: Kollaboration and Far East Movement.

I first found out about Kollaboration pretty much near its inception. That was already 10 years ago, and I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico where I was parched for Asian community. These were some of the first videos I saw that made me fall head over heels for what it was doing for the Asian community:

To see Asian talent being showcased on a legitimate stage truly was "empowering" like the movement had intended. It gave our Asian American community a voice and an audience to listen, watch, and be influenced to further the ripple.

It was founded back in 2000 by Paul Kim, more popularly known as "PK" (also a spin-off of his status as a Pastor's Kid, which he proudly proclaims). Though it initially focused on specifically supporting the Korean American community, it's grown into a huge movement supporting all talents of Asian and Pacific Islander heritage while impacting people of all races.

Where the movement can be seen as a glorified talent show, I think it's totally the contrary and completely meaningful than many might consciously realize. Malcolm X puts it far more succinctly and powerfully than I ever could:

"The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the mind of the masses."

Staying true to their mission - "Empowerment through Entertainment" - Kollaboration empowers the Asian American community by pushing them into the media, so that we can define ourselves.

"Stuckin fereotypes" - a phrase I've seen PK use. Like many other frustrated Asians, I was tired of our guys constantly being emasculated in mainstream media while us ladies were being exoticized, usually with a persona of submissiveness and timidity. Asians fall under the stereotype of being a "model minority," which might seem like a good deal, except it encourages a neglect and dismissal of the issues that our community does face. We're just like anyone else. We face abuse, poverty, crime, and diseases too.

Here is where Far East Movement comes in like a G6. As of just a few days ago, their song "Like A G6" reached the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, and it's already reached #1 on iTunes. This is huge. They are the first Asian American group to hit mainstream.

I had thought in my head a couple weeks ago how I wanted to promote Kollaboration, and hearing about Far East Movement's rising success made me want to bake them into cookies. Well, more or less, that's how the idea came about.

If you haven't already, you can watch the whole process on this video. It's the first I've made for this blog, and if there's a good response, I'll make more :)

The members of Far East Movement - Prohgress, J-Splif, Kev Nish, and DJ Virman - are from Korean, Chinese/Japanese, and Filipino descent (respectively). They're actually good friends with PK and have performed at Kollaboration. Far East Movement kollaborated with Wong Fu Productions to jumpstart a similar movement of their own to uplift the Asian American community called International Secret Agents (ISA).

I've been to one Kollaboration show back in 2005 in New York, where I fell in love with the smooth voice and powerful audience command of Vudoo Soul. I've yet to see Far East Movement or an ISA show, but I'm sure I'll get to some day!

Back to the cookies. I love this book. It totally helped me with a lot of useful tips and tricks for baking and decorating sugar cookies. I modified the recipe they offer in their book to make the Far East Movement cookies. It'll produce really hearty cookies that are ideal for decorating.

I used pearl dust and shimmer sugar/dust to get that shiny effect that made the FM fashion on my cookies a little more accurate. Good thing too, otherwise J-Splif's attire was looking like ketchup and mustard before I dusted it with bronze and gold.

Far East Movement performs with these crazy astronaut helmets lit by blue and red LED lights

Like I said, this baking project started in my head a couple weeks ago, and I'd say it took me 3-4 days to completely execute over time. I actually started out with sketches so I could better visualize my idea and see what icing colors I needed to make. I made all the colors except for the white, where I cheated by using a Wilton icing writer.

I still like using colored pencils

I'm sure you're all also curious as to how I baked the Far East Movement logo. I actually print and cut out their logo to use as a stencil. I laid it over the bare cookie and dusted powdered sugar on top and then filled in the outlines with black royal icing.

In a recent KoreAm magazine article that featured the four-member powerhouse, I read something that really caught my eye about the members. The writer, Oliver Saria, wrote, "DJ Virman and Kev Nish had the atypical Asian American artist experience," referring to how their parents actually supported their endeavors. Prohgress and J-Splif faced the expected disapproval from their Korean parents but has since come around with their noted success.

Asian parents are notorious for pushing dreams of law and medicine onto their children, but it's only because most of them come from a terribly impoverished time where education was a reserved opportunity for the wealthy and elite. Being a lawyer or doctor don't seem like "hungry" occupations, unlike endeavors in the arts. Though it often causes rifts and tension between the two starkly different generations, the concern of Asian parents comes from hardcore love.

I kept wanting to try and do my own thing apart from my parents too, even though I knew all they wanted was the best for me. I'm glad they allowed me to set off soul-searching though, because even if I'm making some loops and u-turns, I'm coming out a far stronger and better person for it.

And lucky for us that Far East Movement came together and persevered.

Don't let anything hold you back either! You owe your talents to the world :)

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." - Henry David Thoreau

Far East Movement cookies with a glass of milk in a Batman glass. Can't get any better.