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