Kogi BBQ Co-Founder Roy Choi to Curate Cuisine for L.A.’s Identity Fest; Full Music Lineup Revealed
Occurring May 12th and Headlined By Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda, the Asian Pacific American Cultural Festival Will Boast a Diverse Array of Asian-American Artists and Mouth-Watering Cuisine
05.2.2018
The Announcement:
A food and music festival for and by the massive Asian-American community in Los Angeles, IDENTITY LA will showcase the talents of some of the most notable cultural figures in the community. Today, IDENTITY LA announces that Roy Choi, the acclaimed chef and co-founder of the famous Kogi BBQ food truck, will curate the cuisine for the festival. To be fully announced in the coming days, the food truck and cuisine menu will reflect Choi’s wide, yet refined palette, and will comment on the influence of Asian Pacific cuisine on Los Angeles’ food scene and vice versa.
A classically-trained chef with a background in four-and five-star cooking, Choi turned the food community on its head when he started Kogi BBQ, using his expertise to elevate street food and fusion into an artform. Founded in 2008, Kogi BBQ was one of the pioneers of the food truck craze, using social media and word of mouth to become what Newsweek called “America’s first viral restaurant.” Since breaking through with Kogi, the Koreatown-born Choi grew into one of the world’s best and most influential chefs, bringing his classical training and diverse cultural background to redefine the burgeoning street food industry. Choi currently oversees some of the West Coast’s most popular and acclaimed restaurants, including Chego!, A-Frame, Alibi Room, POT, Commissary, and L.A. Times’ 2017 Restaurant of the Year LocoL.
“I’m just out here being a big bro to Far East Movement, the wonderful artists, and the city I love,” says Choi. “I told the board I’d be honored to help out. So I just handed over all my ideas of what I thought YOU the attendee would love. Because that’s one thing I do know, is how it feels to be outside and what you want to eat and how you want to eat it when you are outside.”
Occurring on Saturday May 12th at Grand Park in Downtown Los Angeles, the festival boasts an afternoon and evening’s worth of performances by internationally renowned APA artists. Headlining the event will be Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, multi-platinum Korean-American hip-hop artist Jay Park, and acclaimed DJ duo Hotel Garuda. Hosted by multi-platinum recording artists Far East Movement along with Wong Fu Productions, the festival will feature additional performances from Milck, Kinjaz, The Flavr Blue, G Yamazawa, DJ Zo, and Ruby Ibarra.
Presented by Pacific Bridge Arts Foundation & the City of Los Angeles, sponsored by Comcast | NBC Universal and Private Internet Access, and produced in tandem by Asian American Entertainment Group International Secret Agents (founded by Wong Fu Productions and Far East Movement) and L.A. Councilman David Ryu (CD 4). IDENTITY LA is a FREE and open-to-the-public celebration of the city’s vibrant Asian Pacific American (APA) community and culture, highlighting the community’s history in the city and showcasing the APA community’s role in shaping the cultural and socioeconomic present and future of Los Angeles.
“When I was elected to City Council I was the only Asian-American in City government – and the first in 25 years,” Councilmember Ryu said. “In many ways, this City is the capital of Asian America, home to so many strong and dynamic Asian-American communities, and millions of Asian-American individuals with something to offer. I knew right away that we needed a central event to bring our communities together and bring out what makes us unique. Identity LA is an event unlike any other – it not only unifies our identity as Asian-Americans but also declares to the city and to the world that we have talent, we have value, and we have a voice.”
Stay tuned for more announcements about the award honorees, food menu, and general information about the festival.
RSVP and get updates here | https://www.facebook.com/events/156519195036392/
IDENTITY LA
Saturday, May 6, 2017 | 5:00 – 10:00PM
City Hall / Grand Park in Downtown Los Angeles
200 North Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Check out the 2017 IDENTITY FEST recap: https://www.facebook.com/internationalsecretagents/videos/10155248380112593/
Please contact Michelle or Gavin for more info.
The Background
Mike Shinoda is a songwriter, performer, record producer, film composer and visual artist. He is best known as co-lead vocalist for multi-platinum Grammy-Award winning rock band, Linkin Park, which has sold over 55 million albums worldwide and commanded a massive fan following, holding the title as the most-liked band on Facebook and amassing over 5.5 billion YouTube views. Shinoda is a founding member of the group, which achieved the best-selling debut of this century with their Diamond-certified album, Hybrid Theory, selling over 10 million copies in the US alone. Collectively, they sold out stadiums around the globe and earned a multitude of accolades including 2 Grammy Awards, 5 American Music Awards, 4 MTV VMA Awards, 10 MTV Europe Music Awards, 3 World Music Awards, and most recently, “Rock Album of the Year” at the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Awards for their seventh studio album, One More Light. In 2005, Shinoda launched his first solo project, Fort Minor, releasing The Rising Tied to critical acclaim, with the single “Where’d You Go,” which reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and accumulated nearly 10 million YouTube views to date. In the months since the passing of Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington, Shinoda has immersed himself in art as a way of processing his grief. In January, he released the Post Traumatic EP, consisting of three deeply personal songs accompanied by visuals that Shinoda filmed, painted and edited himself, garnering an overwhelmingly positive response, including acclaim from The New York Times, Billboard, and more.
Jay Park: For over a decade, multi-platinum, Korean-American hip-hop artist Jay Park has been at the forefront of the K-pop movement that swept through Asia, before successfully cementing his place as an independent hip-hop and R&B artist recognized worldwide. In 2013, Jay Park founded the leading independent hip-hop/urban label, AOMG, based in Seoul, South Korea. Active as both an artist and CEO, Jay founded AOMG with the intention of supporting and developing artists and producers organically, by focusing on their individual artistry first, over their commercialism. His methods have proven successful – within two years, AOMG artists have topped all mainstream music charts in South Korea and Asian regions. This year Jay Park brings the international music community together with his newly minted label H1GHR MUSIC, which houses artists from various countries, and continues to support and influence tastemakers both mainstream and underground.
Hotel Garuda, composed of DJ/producer duo Manila Killa & Candleweather, have epitomized the DIY culture of modern dance music. Scaling the online tastemaker world with an array of remixes and remakes, their versatile sound has continued to beckon attention far beyond the music forums, garnering them more than 30 million streams on SoundCloud alone. Their run of four official remixes & consecutive #1s on the Hype Machine charts have also seen Hotel Garuda accompanied by critical acclaim from Billboard, Harper’s Bazaar, and Complex. 2016 marked the release of their debut original song “Smoke Signals” and its follow-up single “Fixed On You” on PRMD Music.
Roy Choi is a tastemaker, chef, and disruptor. In 2008, he and a crew of friends & family started what would be the beginning of the intersection between food, technology, culture, entrepreneurship, and long lines. That comet was called Kogi BBQ and it made a splash on the streets of LA, being the first to use Twitter and usher in a whole new generation of eaters and followers to what would be called America’s first viral restaurant by Newsweek. The Kogi taco and lifestyle were like nothing before it yet like everything you ever wanted. From there, Roy went on to reinvent the rice bowl, redefine the communal table experience, revitalize historic neighborhoods, flip the model on bar food, upend the staid hotel experience, bridge LA culture to the world, and stumble into becoming a revolutionary, all while kickstarting a multi-billion dollar street food industry. Roy was named Food & Wine Best New Chef 2010, TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World 2016, LA Times Restaurant of the Year 2017, and has an award winning New York Times Bestseller memoir called, L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food. He resides in Los Angeles, California where he oversees Kogi BBQ, Chego!, A-Frame, Alibi Room, POT, Commissary, and LocoL. In late 2018 he will open a new multi-faceted restaurant at Park MGM in Las Vegas, Nevada. So if you’ve ever shared food on social media or stood in a long line for anything or got out of one to start your own creative business, you can thank Kogi BBQ and Roy Choi
IDENTITY LA is a festival & celebration highlighting Los Angeles’ vibrant Asian Pacific American (APA) culture. The festival combines music, art, and food, as well as showcases the strong future of APA’s contributions in shaping the social, cultural, and economic life of Los Angeles. May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM), a celebration of Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) in the United States. For the last three decades, the City of Los Angeles has held a series of events throughout the month to highlight the significant contributions that APAs have made to the city’s past, present and future.
Links:
RSVP and get updates here | https://www.facebook.com/events/156519195036392/
IDENTITY LA: http://identityla.org
Roy Choi: http://kogibbq.com/
Councilman David Ryu: http://davidryu.lacity.org/
Watch the IDENTITY LA 2017 recap here: https://www.facebook.com/internationalsecretagents/videos/10155248380112593/
International Secret Agents & IDENTITY LA Social Media: http://insatgram.com/ISAtv