Destiny came together as a band in 1998, and they self-produced two albums in a studio in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, the first in 2000, the second in 2002. They sell most of their CDs through family and HMong community events like New Year. They are mostly self-taught musicians, and their fan base is spread all over the U.S. Their August 2002 tour, for example, took them to Warren, Michigan, where the HMong population is not very big, but they have a lot of fans, and Green Bay, Wisconsin for a Labor Day gig. October will bring them to Lacrosse, and Thanksgiving to Sacramento, California. They are planning a HMong New Year gig in Fresno, California, where there is a big Hmong population.

Sometimes event organizers give them travel money to perform, other times they host their own parties where they have enough fans to make their money back from admission and CDs. They play some cover tunes, and their first song was the Eagles' "Hotel California," but now Destiny writes all their own songs, which are mostly in HMong, with occasional English titles and some English lyrics. Niko, Kace, and Kao do most of the songwriting, but the whole band consults on the musical arrangements.

Destiny band members, from left to right: Kace Vang: keyboard, main vocals Kao (Blaze) Vang (front): bass guitar, backup vocal Chong Vang (striped shirt): keyboard Phong Vang: drums Niko Vang: lead guitar, backup vocal

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The band members

Kace Vang, the lead vocalist and keyboard player, was born in Thai refugee camp Ban Vinai in 1979. He lived there until he was thirteen and came to the U.S. in late 1991. He lived first in Fresno, California for four or five years, then Sacramento, where he graduated from high school. He moved to Minneapolis in 1998 to join his brother Kao and the other band members. He has taken private keyboard lessons, and a music theory class at Minneapolis Community College, but he is mostly a self-taught musician. He is a pharmacy student.

	Kao Vang, the bass guitarist and backup vocalist, is the oldest band member, born in 1976 in the northeast Laotian city of Lon Chen. He and his family moved to Thailand when he was a baby, and they came to Minnesota in 1992. Kao started playing music in Thailand when he was nine years old; he started on the guitar. He works as a microchip technician.
	Chong Vang, the keyboardist, is the only non-original member of Destiny; he joined the band in 2002. Chong was born in a Thailand refugee camp in 1986 and came to Minnesota with his family in 1996. He started playing keyboard when he was fourteen, took classes at school, liked it, and started playing on his own. Destiny is his first band; he was recruited because he is cousins with the other band members. Chong is a student at Washington High School.
	Phong Vang, (pronounced "Pong") the drummer, was born in Fresno, California, in 1984, and came to Minnesota in 1997. He started on the drums at fourteen at his brother's suggestion, and his parents bought him his first drum set. Lao music is what first inspired him to become a musician. He is a high school student.
	Niko Vang, the lead guitarist, was born in 1976, also in Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand. He came to the U.S. in 1995, to Green Bay, Wisconsin. He was in a band there, but some of the members moved away, so he moved to the Twin Cities at Kao's invitation to join Destiny in 1998. He studies graphic design.

Destiny's musical influences
Four of Destiny's five members were either born in, or spent a part of their childhoods in, refugee camps in Thailand, so Thai pop music has had an influence on their music. They say that Thai pop is similar to American pop, but it has more guitar, whereas American pop limits its use of guitar. Lao music is also part of their listening repertoire, but Lao music is more oriented toward older HMong people, because its rhythms are more traditional Latin beats for ballroom-style dancing like the cha-cha-cha and the folk dance rhythms of lam vong music, which is the music for a traditional group circle dance. Says lead vocalist Kace, "We mostly listen to Thai music because we were born there, we understand Thai better, we prefer it." Drummer Phong says that Lao music is easier to play, and Thai music is almost like hip-hop, with its complicated beats.

The band members name American pop bands 'N Sync and the Back Street Boys as influences in addition to some Thai pop groups, whose names they don't know, they just found cassettes of theirs in Asian stores where Thai pop CDs are sold. In Thailand, they also heard some American rock and roll, and Latin-influenced pop-rock such as Santana's "Black Magic Woman."

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Thai pop was also part of a young refugee's early music experience, as Kace describes it: "You don't do anything much in the camp, you go to school, mostly they don't teach you anything, you just go learn basic stuff ... you see popular Thai singers sometimes tour in the camp, you see them with guitars and all this music stuff, you really want to do that, but in the camp, it's not possible for you, because we're refugees in the camp, so dreams never came true there ... until we came here. Then we have the opportunity to get things that every other band in America gets."

The Twin Cities Hmong music scene
Most of the local HMong bands, Kace says, are oriented toward older people: "We came over here, we saw a few bands around the cities, most of them play older-folk songs, so we kind of decided, 'hey, we could start a band for the younger generations,' kind of pull each other together. Just looking around, I said, 'oh, my cousin over there knows how to play the drums, my friend over there plays guitar, so we kind of called each other up, to try and see how it goes, and it went pretty good, so we decided to become a band.'" There are also many HMong pop singers locally who sing without bands, karaoke style.

There are about three or four HMong bands for young people in California, some of which have been together much longer than Destiny. The Destiny band members used to listen to their music and they were very impressed; these California bands actually encouraged them to form their own band. What makes Destiny unique, they said, is that they are little bit like Thai pop and a little like American pop, "kind of in the middle," as Kace put it, whereas the California HMong bands are directly copying the pop sounds of American groups like 'N Sync, or they have a more straight-ahead rock and roll style.

Destiny's message
Their main focus was to form a band for teenagers around their own ages, or younger. They wanted to make a difference in the community and impress the younger people. Niko commented on another reason why they want to appeal to younger HMong people: "I guess we're just trying to let the younger HMong generation know that even though we haven't really seriously gone to school for music or anything, we can still create music ... that's the message, that they don't have to be really professional, like a Hollywood star, to make music if they want to."

Destiny's songs are about their personal experiences such as love experiences or their dreams for the future. There are HMong recording studios, but they do not sign bands for long-term record contracts where the studio actually brings the product to a market, so their big dream as a band is to merge into the mainstream American music industry. They hope their next album will be professional enough to use as a demo to submit to recording studios.

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Some Destiny songs

Nyiag Hlub Koj
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MP3 Download (4.87 MB)

Lub Paj (excerpt)
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MP3 Download (1.97 MB)

The Love of my Life (excerpt)
RealMedia Download (1.45 MB)
MP3 Download (3.23 MB)