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Thao & the Get Down Stay Down plays the 2018 Noise Pop Music and Arts Festival at the Fox Theater in Oakland.
(Estefany Gonzalez)
Looking back at the early days of her career, Thao Nguyen remembers times she didn’t feel whole. Navigating a mostly white indie rock scene since the late 2000s caused her to downplay aspects of her Vietnamese-ness in the face of covert and overt racism. And she wasn’t out as queer to everyone in her life, which made it impossible to share her full self with some of the people close to her.
After years of searching and processing, she’s arrived in a secure place where she lives proudly in her truth.