Our Stories

In April, students across the Fox Cities had the opportunity to meet and learn from Neng Thao, a Harvard-educated Hmong musician and researcher who was born in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand. His family moved to Wisconsin when he was young, and it’s the place he’s called home ever since.

Thanks to a grant from the Performing Arts for Youth Fund within the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center partnered with Thao to visit area schools and give local students a chance to experience music, language and identity in a whole new way.

Thao first began presenting on Hmong music and culture as a career in 2018, driven by a deep love for its importance and a desire to preserve and share its unique history.

Musical surrogacy, he explained to local students, is an art form in which the speech of tonal languages – like Hmong – are imitated by the sounds made by instruments. In Hmong culture, music is more of a language than a series of notes.

“The main goal is to teach people that… languages work different all around the world. As a musicologist… my main goal with Hmong music is that it talks, like it imitates the Hmong language,” Thao said.

From kindergarten classes to high school seniors, Neng visited and shared an awareness of Hmong music – a subject rich with history – while tailoring his message to each audience. But the heart of every visit remained the same: a celebration of Hmong culture, told through the lens of music, language and his personal journey.

To present to each class, Neng brought traditional Hmong instruments like the qeej (pronounced roughly like “kheng”), a free-reed mouth organ played during ceremonies and storytelling. He explained that, unlike Western instruments, the qeej speaks – literally. It is used by its players to mimic the tonal sounds of the Hmong language. So, what it produces are messages, more than they are melodies.

In fact, Thao said that Hmong music challenges Western ideas about what music is or should be. For instance, it wouldn’t make sense to perform it in a group, as a band.

“The vast majority of the time, Hmong people play alone because it’s a language,” Thao explained. “If like 10 people are speaking at the same time, then you can’t hear what anyone is saying.”

But playing music one instrument at a time is very different than playing it without company.

Thao described moments of connection central to Hmong music and its preservation. When Hmong musicians gather to teach each other, practice and keep traditions alive, that is their concert.

“So, maybe it’s not like a band session where you play together, but it’s like you teach each other. …There are instances where it’s similar to a jam session, but because it is like a language as well, maybe it’s more like a talking and discussion session,” Thao said.

To each class of his visit, Thao offered more than a performance. For the younger ones, he offered folk tales. For the older students, he offered context. Students learned how Hmong music sounds, and they also learned why it matters. How language preservation is tied to identity. Why understanding our neighbors – both local and global – is essential in a changing world.

With the high schoolers, he also shared his own story, growing up as a refugee, becoming a first-generation college student, and finding meaning in helping others understand what it means to be Hmong in America.

He said that though his journey is distinct from what many of these students have experienced in their own lives, it was vital to include it in his presentation.

“It’s just important – even if they don’t have the same personal journey – it’s important… Refugees like myself… we’ve got to make our voices heard… It affects all of us in one way or another. Our neighbors are no longer just the house next to us. In the age of globalization, our neighbor might be halfway across the world because of how trade and international relationships work. So, we really have to understand each other if we’re gonna make that leap forward,” Thao said.

Culture is all around us. And in Wisconsin, where a significant Hmong population has taken root, the opportunity to listen, learn, and change how we think about music and identity is right on our doorstep.

Thao said that while he hopes to continue speaking on these important topics and interests of his, he believes that his environment will dictate whether they are his career or his hobby. But he said he will never stop studying, because he loves it.

“It depends on what the world needs. If the world is like, ‘we need Hmong music; we need to learn from it,’ then I’ll continue,” said Thao. “In terms of going out into the community and talking and like speaking to people, I hope I will be able to do that forever as well. But really, it’s… if the community wants it, it’ll happen. …I will always put my effort towards making it happen because I know it’s so worthwhile.”

Want to learn more? Visit organizations like Fox Valley Literacy, Northeast Wisconsin Hmong Professionals, or your local library. Attend cultural festivals and community events, like Roots of Resiliency: Honoring the Hmong Experience hosted by your Fox Cities P.A.C. in April. Read memoirs like The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang. Because culture doesn’t just live in museums. It lives in us. And when people like Neng Thao share their stories, we all become better neighbors.

Watch and hear news coverage of Neng’s visit to Fox Cities schools by FOX 11 and Local 5.