Legions of Boom

"As a writer and scholar Oliver Wang is relentlessly insightful and compulsively readable. Here it's impossible not to feel his passion for the pleasures and follies of immigrant and second-gen Filipino American youth, as he follows them from their suburban garages into the rapture of flashing lights and rising tempos, and the warm electricity of bodies moving together on a Saturday night. With Legions of Boom, Wang has created something indispensable—a singular document of a forgotten yet influential era in west coast hip-hop and dance music, a rare and rich account of protean Asian American creativity, and a subtle, poetic work of ethnography."
- Jeff Chang, author of Who We Be: The Colorizaton of America

"For more than a decade Oliver Wang has produced some of the keener insights on what’s been happening in popular culture and popular music in particular. Legions of Boom is the best evidence of what Wang’s instinctive intellect looks like when allowed to flourish in the long form, and will prove to be indispensable to future analyses of the cultural formations that coalesce around popular expression."
- Mark Anthony Neal, author Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities

“Wang's account strikes a careful balance between oral history and analysis, grounded in ethnography while also working to interpret and elaborate the significance of the story. … [W]ith an annotated oral history at its core, Legions Of Boom is centred on the words of the scene's participants and Wang's insightful perspectives as a scholar, a journalist and a DJ.” - Wayne Marshall, The Wire

"It's not easy to write a book that works both as an academic text and is readily accessible to the general public, but Wang does an excellent job walking that line with Legions of Boom. His research is great, and he explains things in a way that is very easy to digest. I couldn’t recommend this book enough." - Chi Chi, Scratched Vinyl

"Legions of Boom makes a fascinating contribution to popular music history and to studies of music scenes by sharing the practices behind the mobile DJ crews of the Bay Area." - Brian Fauteux, IASPM@Journal

"This highly readable book significantly advances our understandings of music scenes and their symbiotic relationship with marginalized communities of youth. Since historically Filipino Americans have been excluded from U.S. racial/ethnic discourse, Wang does sociology a tremendous service in shining further light on a key aspect of this important group’s history." - Anthony Kwame Harrison, American Journal of Sociology

"Legions of Boom is a tangible resource for researchers interested in grassroots developments by marginalized communities who adapt mainstream American popular culture as a source of income and social currency." - Bernard Ellorin, Notes

"The greatest strength of Wang’s work, above and beyond providing important historical documentation of a neglected musical scene, is that he offers a sophisticated theoretical analysis that highlights how social class, gender, and ethnicity structure the distribution of various types of capital (symbolic, erotic, cultural, economic) within mobile DJing." - Athena Elafros, Contemporary Sociology

"Wang writes in an accessible style appealing to both scholars and casual readers.... Legions of Boom is a substantial work that shines light on yet another example of a musical genre’s relation to the formation and maintenance of cultural identities."
  - Niel Scobie, Perfect Beat

“The insight and method used in Legions of Boom serves as a model to expand how historians and social analysts can ask new questions to find ethnic identity formation in migrant communities.”