Mai Khôi & the Dissidents Album Release Event “Five Years in Exile”

ACFL&MH is pleased to welcome Mai Khôi & the Dissidents for their Carnegie Carnegie debut in the Music Hall, celebrating the release of their new album “Five Years in Exile.” The album follows Khôi through her first five years in the United States, where she fled to in 2019 to avoid political persecution in Vietnam. Unlike her previous album “Dissent,” recorded in secret in Vietnam and dedicated exclusively to protest music, “Five Years in Exile” is more personal and introspective. Protest music sits alongside songs that deal with love, nostalgia, loneliness, and grief. The songs, co-written with keyboardist Mark Micchelli, deftly weave through genres as diverse as jazz, experimental music, math rock, art song, and even a bit of the pop and dance music Khôi used to sing in Vietnam.

About Mai Khôi
Mai Khôi is an award-winning singer, composer, and activist. She rose to stardom in 2010 after winning the Vietnam Television Song and Album of the Year awards as one of the first female songwriters in Vietnam. As a pop star, Khôi released seven albums in genres of Vietnamese pop and dance, and made regular nationally televised performances. Several years later she became increasingly uncomfortable having to submit her work to government censors and, thinking she could reform the system from within, nominated herself to run in the National Assembly elections on a pro-democracy platform. 

Since 2019, Mai Khôi has lived in exile in the USA. In 2019, she was a resident artist at SHIM:NYC, and in 2020, she was awarded an Artist Protection Fund Fellowship in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh, City of Asylum, and the International Free Expression Project. Mai Khôi was an Exiled Writer and Artist in Residence at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh from 2020-2023; she has continued to reside in Pittsburgh after the conclusion of this residency. 

In recognition of her work at the intersection of art and activism, Khôi has been awarded the 2018 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent and the 2022 Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Speech.

Read more about Mai Khôi on her website at mai-khoi.com

TICKETS AVAILABLE SOON!