SEATTLE — A Seattle musician is one of 22 people being inducted into the Asian Hall of Fame this year.
Daniel Pak is the frontman for Kore Ionz, a reggae band in Seattle. He's performed with some reggae legends including The Wailers, Steel Pulse and Toots and the Maytals.
But his great accomplishment might be the work he does with youth in the Seattle area through his non-profit organization Totem Star, co-founded by fellow musician Thaddeus Turner. It's a record label and music program that provides teenagers with a space to produce and record music and be mentored by industry professionals.
It started in the summer of 2010 when Pak and Turner were asked to work with 10 teens who had just been released from juvenile detention.
"I would say the first few weeks was all about building trust with these with these young men," Pak said. "And once that trust was built, the music just started to flow."
All 10 teenagers completed the program, but a couple of weeks later, a third of them had been rebooked into juvenile detention. That's when Pak realized there was a need to have a permanent space and program for kids to be exposed to music, keeping them engaged and off the streets.
"We have to provide ongoing space for young people to come and feel safe to be encouraged to receive mentorship, to bring their best self, their worst self and every self in between, to take creative risks and to do it within a community, to feel loved to feel love and belonging," Pak said.
Over the last 12 years, Totem Star has served over 3,000 kids out of a small recording studio at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center in West Seattle.
"But that 225 square foot recording studio just doesn't cut it," Pak said. "Our artists are overflowing into the hallways or taking up the theater, the control room, the stairwell, the hallway. And that's when in 2018, the idea to find a new space came to us."
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Totem Star broke ground last month on a brand new space at King Street Station, which is set to open next Summer. In a partnership with the city and Cultural Space Agency, four other local cultural and arts organizations will also occupy the 11,000-square-foot space, focusing on serving BIPOC youth.
"Mental health is such a crisis right now," Pak said. "And we know that when young people have access to music, they're happier, they're joyful, they're confident, they feel like they're in community."
Pak is among the honorees being inducted into this year's Asian Hall of Fame which also includes Muckleshoot Chairwoman Virginia Cross, musician and Soundgarden founder Hiro Yamamoto, and Washington State University Director of Athletics Pat Chun.
The Asian Hall of Fame was established by Seattle's Robert Chinn Foundation in 2004 to overcome anti-Asian bias by increasing awareness of Asian contributions in America and the world.