Kind Beats dance nights featured in this week's City Pages

Photo by Pahua "PJ" Thao

​In this week's print edition of City Pages (also known as Gimme Noise: The Dead Tree Edition), freelancer Ty Forve wrote an in-depth profile of dance party promotors Kind Beats, led by Hmong DJs Ville Thao and John Vang. In addition to providing descriptions of their dance nights and a history of Thao and Vang's immigrant families, Forve talks about the segregation that exists in the Twin Cities dance community, despite "white parties" and "asian parties" playing essentially the same type of music at the same type of clubs.

From the article:

"It's hard to get out there to the white folks," Thao says. "It's like people don't see people of a different race as just being here to party; it's like people think Asians only want to party with Asians and whites only want to party with whites." He smiles and shakes his head. "We're all just here to party, baby, just dance and have a good time!"

What do you think? Have you noticed this segregation in our community, and what can promoters like Thao and Vang do to help attract a more diverse crowd?

Read the article here: Kind Beats DJs fight to desegregate the dance music community.