Fred Ho

On August 4, 2006, Ho was diagnosed with colon cancer. After chemotherapy, his health improved, but a second tumor was found on September 24, 2007. He wrote two books about cancer: Diary of a Radical Cancer Warrior: Fighting Cancer and Capitalism at the Cellular Level (2011), and Raw Extreme Manifesto: Change Your Body, Change Your Mind and Change the World While Spending Almost Nothing! (2012). He received numerous grants, including from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, and among the honours accorded him were a 1996 American Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, in 2009 the Harvard Arts Medal, and in March 2014 (almost 1 month before his death) the Harlem Arts Festival Lynette Velasco Community Impact Award. At the 17th Annual Black Musicians Conference, Ho received the Duke Ellington Distinguished Artist Lifetime Achievement Award, which he was the youngest person to achieve. Ho died on April 12, 2014, aged 56, at his home in Brooklyn, New York.

In his 2000 book, Legacy to Liberation, Ho, recapitulating an aesthetic vision first presented in 1985, wrote:

Ho also co-edited four books: Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution (1996), Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America (2001), Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans (2008), and Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz (2013). Ho's contributions to the Asian-American empowerment movement are varied and many. He is credited with co-founding several Asian-American civic groups such as the East Coast Asian Students Union (while a student at Harvard), the Asian American Arts Alliance in New York City, the Asian American Resource Center in Boston and the Asian Improv record label.

Of Chinese descent, Ho specialized in the combining sometimes asynchronous tunes and melodies of various musical traditions, creating what many have described as both brilliant and chaotic sounds. He was the first to combine Chinese opera with traditional African-American music. He led the Afro Asian Music Ensemble (founded in 1982) and the Monkey Orchestra (founded in 1980). He lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York.

Ho held a B.A. degree in sociology from Harvard University (1979). He recorded for the Koch Jazz and Soul Note labels. Some of his final works include Deadly She-Wolf Assassin at Armageddon, which premiered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in June 2006, and Voice of the Dragon I, II, and III. As Ho was a prolific composer, writer, playwright, his list of works grew continually. Some of his first CDs include Monkey I, Monkey II, The Underground Railroad to My Heart (Soul Note), We Refuse To Be Used And Abused, and Tomorrow is Now!

Fred Ho (Chinese: 侯维翰 ; pinyin: Hóu Wéihàn ; born Fred Wei-han Houn; August 10, 1957 – April 12, 2014) was an American jazz baritone saxophonist, composer, bandleader, playwright, writer and Marxist social activist. In 1988, he changed his surname to "Ho".