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Arts & Entertainment Brown, Black And Blue All Over: Lyndee Mah’s Story By Renault Catalani Special to the The Skanner News T here’s a big differ- ence between an artist and say, a doctor. Between an artist and an engineer, a structural engi- neer or a social one. And that’s lucky for us as indi- viduals, as a society, as a species. It’s lucky because, artists try and try to tell us some- thing these other specialists cannot. An artist’s work is producing us something simple, simple like joy or like longing. Artists are likewise tasked with getting us to the core of ugliness, like hating and like warring – essentially human stuff that doctors and engineers are not so good at handling. An artist’s product, unlike an MD’s prescription or an do, it’s “the How” of you or me getting a grip on our human situation, right here on our wobbly little planet. What we do to fix all that, happens later. So when local performing artist Lyndee Mah takes her turn on stage beginning April 10, her audiences will see and hear her very best shot at diagnosing that most destructive disability of our shared 240-year American experience: Our American race-thing. Mah is an established musical voice in the River City art scene, teaching local vocal artists, co- founding and lead-singing for Pink Martini, touring with Quarter Flash, jazzing with Ron Steen and Janice Scroggins. Credentials like an internist’s medical asso- ciation certificate or a civil engineer’s license, each Her audiences will see and hear her very best shot at diagnosing that most destructive disability of our shared 240-year American experience: Our American race-thing. engineer’s solution, is not concrete. World Affairs Council’s program director and Portland’s late-night jazz drummer Tim DuRoche insists that art is not “the What” of what we hung high on an office wall. Resume aside, Lyndee Mah’s Sanctuary Theater performances owe their actual authority to Ms. Mah’s ethno-cultural com- plexity. Her authenticity flows from her Chinese and her Welsh heritage; from her son’s and his African American elders and ances- tors. And of course, from each of those robust ethnic stream’s intersections with America’s mainstream. E`-Bon E`-Bon (Mandarin for one-half one-half) is an original work funded by the Regional Arts & Culture Council and fueled by Lyn- dee Mah’s essentially American story. Mah’s per- formance is a melange of music, monologue, and dra- matic images, buoyed by Grammy-nominated gospel, blues, and ragtime jazz pianist Janice Scroggins. Here’s the story: Mah’s mother’s family sailed to the US during a surge of one of the 1700’s mass migra- tions from the UK’s crop failures. Steamers packed with optimistic emigres, each with a one-way ticket. It is a twisted trail that ulti- mately sets up Lyndee’s beginnings in Idaho Falls. Like all laboring migrants – the kind alternatingly wel- comed and expelled by our country – Lyndee’s dad comes with all kinds of dif- ficult discontinuities, including his suddenly motherless kids. Lyndee’s mom was what we would now call a social worker, with the Salvation Army, last century’s stand-up sup- porter of urban family welfare. She was moved to help him, and his. Hazel Delores Welch and Phillip Lip Gee Mah, Lyn- dee’s Welsh American mom The show includes music, monologue, and dramatic images, buoyed by Grammy-nominated gospel, blues, and ragtime jazz pianist Janice Scroggins and her Chinese laborer dad settle in Idaho Falls, run downtown’s Chinese Restaurant, and make babies. Back then, the US Supreme Court had not yet declared state anti-misegi- nation laws (no marrying outside your race statutes) unconstitutional. And even after it had, Idahoans took a while longer getting used to it. That is, getting used to Mr. and Mrs. Mah, and of course getting used to kids like Lyndee. And from there forward, as Mah would have it, it’s all music. And history. E`-Bon E`-Bon is all of this, the sorrow and the joy, the braiding of an ambitious immigrant nation’s many- many narratives. Mah’s performance is indeed – as promised by jazz drummer Tim DuRoche’s proposition – “the How part.” How do we find meaning and momentum in America’s shocking violence as well as in our awe-inspiring cre- ativity. “The “What part:” What to do about our beautiful chaos? Will have to come to us, like it comes to Lyn- dee Mah. “Performance,” she says, “is my reassur- ance.” E`-Bon E`-Bon runs for four days, April 10-13. That’s five performances about one mixed-blood woman’s search, and by implication one energetic society’s search, for identi- ty, for legitimacy, and for legacy. Ms. Mah will tell it via visual and video imagery, interwoven with musical stylings and impro- vised performance art. Some of the latter, she char- acterizes as “border-line stand-up comedy.” There’s lots of irony and word gags at play here. Most ironic, so ironic that Lyndee Mah needs a long moment to lay it out for you, is how E`-Bon E`-Bon plays at The Sanctuary, the cathedral-like historic site of Portland’s Salavation Army, the kind corps where her personal story starts. It’s How things work. It’s How we are. E`-Bon E`-Bon An Ameri- can Immigration Story By Lyndee Mah. Sanctuary Theater at Sandy Plaza, 1785 NE Sandy Boulevard, Portland 97232. Thurs, Fri & Sat: 7:00 PM Doors open, 7:30 PM Curtains rise. Sat & Sun Matinee: 1:30 PM Doors open, 2:00 PM Curtains rise Performance and ticket information at www.e- bon.lyndeemah.org March 26, 2014 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 9
