Black artist collectives such as the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) of Chicago, the Black Artist Group (BAG) of St. Louis, as well as the Union of God's Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA) of Los Angeles. Reparations Now! Concerto for Jazz Ensemble and Taiko was one of Jang's first major works of this period, referencing the Redress and Reparations movement. Inspired by Horace Tapscott and his Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Jang named the performing ensemble the Pan Asian Arkestra. Tapscott taught Jang about “passin’ the magic” onto future generations through the Ark and the music. Additionally, Jang learned from Black mentors such as Max Roach, Amiri Baraka, Horace Tapscott, and Wendell Logan that, as James Baldwin noted, "this music begins on the auction block." As Jang and Francis Wong have described, 1988 marked a turning point both for the Asian American movement and their own work as artists and activists:"The Redress and Reparations movement was a civil rights victory for the 1980s. One of the first major works after Are You Chinese or Charlie Chan? was Reparations Now! Concerto for Jazz Ensemble and Taiko. From 1980 to 1988 we were informed by the movement. After that, the Asian American movement was re-defined."Jang's work during the 1990s reflects an increasingly international perspective on social justice struggles and a deeper engagement with Chinese American history, the latter resonating artistically with his expanding use of Chinese traditional musical materials and instruments. His 1996 composition Island: the Immigrant Suite No.2 reflected on San Francisco's Angel Island Immigration Station, and his major work with the Pan Asian Arkestra, Tiananmen! was released on Soul Note in 1993 and performed on the main stage of the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1994. Francis Wong describes the latter as a significant breakthrough in exposure for the work they had been cultivating in the early 1990s, noting that although AIR was still too small an organization to receive significant funding, they nonetheless succeeded in finding enough community support to enable performances and recordings that led to this broader exposure and enabled Jang to be signed by the Soul Note record label . One of Jang's next major projects, When Sorrow Turns to Joy (2000), is a collaboration with composer James Newton and poet Genny Lim that also reflects the shift to internationally framed political themes as well as Jang's expanding network of artistic collaborators. The work is