This Birdie Can Sing
She may come from a small Minnesota town, but this 19-year-old Laotian American carries a big voice.
It was supposed to be Birdie's time to shine.
Sept. 23 was the night the 19-year-old songstress was going to raise her voice as the headliner at the Trocaderos, a popular restaurant and nightclub in downtown Minneapolis, Minn. Clad in a red leather outfit, she was going to silence the critics with her powerhouse voice.
"It was my show," she said breathlessly over the phone days after the event. But like a lot of things in Birdie's life, her debut was marred with drama - not the epic kind, just lies and broken promises.
She was only able to perform half of her 12-song routine. Plus to add insult to injury, every time she walked offstage for a breath, the house DJ would start playing over her music.
"We all had our hands in the air like, what?"
But while onstage, Birdie looked out into the crowd of over 300 mostly Asian Pacific American faces and felt right at home.
Birdie (born: Souphak Xaphakdy) has found some relative fame in Minnesota thanks mostly to the Twin Cities' exploding Hmong population. She's seen cars drive by blasting her songs and fans recognize her on the streets when she is "hustling" her newly released debut CD "Underground Pop Xposed."
To be successful in the Twin Cities, you have to have charisma. Birdie oozes it. She chats with patrons at Hmong stores, dishes out a few compliments and then simply asks people to buy her CD - most do without question.
"Asians just buy it. They don't even ask about the genre until after," said Birdie, who describes her music as mostly R&B and pop. "You know, like Beyonce."
Birdie wants to become the first Laotian American pop star, but in a country that most likely first got to know Laotians through the animated Fox television show "King of the Hill," Birdie knows the odds are stacked against her. But then again, she's used to it.
While pregnant with Birdie, her mother Somphiane and father Kaemphet fled their war-torn Laos for America in 1988. Birdie was born in Sacramento, Calif. Soon after, the Xaphakdy family moved to Minnesota to join relatives who had also made the journey from native soil to their adopted homeland.
Birdie's family settled in Magnolia, a Southern Minnesota town so small it lacks its own gas station and high school. Birdie attended Luverne High School, about seven miles outside of Magnolia.
In a small town, there were small town mentalities. When Birdie was six, a neighborhood boy started spewing racial slurs at her.
"He was saying things like, 'go back where you came from,'" said Birdie. "He even broke my new chair - brand new from Goodwill. My mom was so mad. She went over to the boy's house and talked to the boy's mom. He had to apologize."
The self-described shy girl would come out of her shell when her father, a Lao folk singer who performed at weddings and other community functions, pulled her onstage with him.
she said.
Growing up, Birdie's universe was crowded with Mariah Carey and Britney Spears. She also admired Thai singers like Kathleeya English, but there were no APA pop stars to look up to.
So Birdie bought some editing software, recorded herself singing with friends and uploaded the tracks to Soundclick.com, a social networking Web site for amateur musicians.
Birdie's voice caught the attention of Disraeli Davis, a music producer.
"I thought that she had a lot of potential," said Davis. "I wasn't sold on her until I saw her work ethic. She is very hardworking and focused. She is also very intelligent and understands that a lot of the glitz and glam you see on TV is for show."
Last fall, Birdie moved to the Twin Cities to attend community college. She worked at UPS "punching in zip codes" until her 18th birthday. Then she contacted Davis and began working on her album fulltime.
The resulting "Underground Pop Xposed" is filled with catchy original tunes that show off Birdie's range. She croons about love and heartache in ballads like "Beautiful" and "Behind the Moment," but easily slips into hip hop and melodic techno.
But the standout song is "Text Wars," an ode to modern love that Birdie wrote with a friend after trading angry text messages with her boyfriend.
Birdie's next few gigs are local. She's performing at talent shows and her high school in Luverne, but in the future she's looking to expand beyond the Minnesota scene. There jealousy runs rampant, she said.
First they need to deal with the drama of auditioning new band members and finding a good choreographer. Then Birdie can fly.
But once in awhile, she's grounded by some sobering thoughts.
"There's a lot of pressure," she said about the possibility of being the first breakout APA pop star. "I gotta' work hard and watch myself."
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