Global Folk Music Workshop
October 8
Mike Van Liew is a living repository of folk songs from around the world -- and he’s going to share some of them with us.
Van Liew is a composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist. He has played klezmer, blues, jazz and Latin. He has toured with dance and juggling groups. He has collaborated with members of Three Leg Torso and Pink Martini.
He also taught children every summer for 25 years at Grace Art Camp. And that’s where he learned folk music from 25 cultures.
“There were 175 kids and counselors. And every year we would do a different country,” he said. The counselors would research and learn some of the traditional music, art and dance of that year’s culture. “And we would sing and dance together.”
Van Liew will teach some of those songs to grownups (children also are welcome) at a Global Folk Song Workshop, co-sponsored by Portland FolkMusic Society and Eastside Jewish Commons. It takes place 7-9 pm Oct. 8 at Eastside Jewish Commons, 2420 NE Sandy Blvd. Admission costs $10. Tickets are available through https://ejcpdx.org or at the door.
Van Liew is picking out his favorites for the workshop. “The songs are from Kazakhstan, Haiti, Spain, New Zealand, Macedonia, India, France, Alaska, and Hawaii,” he said. “I'll send everyone PDFs of charts and lyric sheets with translations, and URLs of audio files. We will encounter a variety of rhythms, languages, and melodies. Hopefully this will inspire us to expand our musical knowledge, and deepen our understanding of other cultures. And hopefully we'll have fun!”
Accompanying the vocals on piano or hand drum, Van Liew will sing parts of the songs, and then ask the audience to choose which ones they would like to learn and sing. The goal is for the event to turn into a singalong. “We'll start with your favorites, because we may not have time to go through all of them,” he said. “We'll warm up a bit and sing through them, taking time to learn melodies, pronunciation of lyrics, etc.”
Van Liew did not grow up with any of these folk-music traditions. He was born in 1951 in Norwalk, Conn., and raised in Ohio. His early musical training was on the trumpet, and he later taught himself piano and flute. He cites as his musical interests klezmer, jazz, blues, Bach, Afro-Cuban music, Spanish-Arabic music, Irish music, and gospel music.
Van Liew has lived in Portland since 1983. He spent eight years as bandleader for the Flying Karamazov Brothers, a juggling and comedy group that toured nationally. He also worked with Oslund+Company/Dance, directed by his then-wife, dancer Mary Oslund, in the late 1980s-early ’90s. He then spent another 10 years with DoJump, a movement-theater company that also toured nationally.
He also has played in various bands and artists including the Klezmorim (considered the first US-based klezmer band, with whom he toured Europe), Klezmocracy, The Original Cats; Lung Tung, Yankl Falk, Tarik Banzi, POD, Mazel Tov Orchestra, and Robin Lane, and worked with dancers Judy Patton and Minh Tran, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and the International Tap Festival.
Van Liew has taught music at Jefferson High School, and continues to teach privately at his North Portland home.
He has recorded albums of his own compositions, and collaborated with other composers including Courtney von Drehle of Three Leg Torso and Brian Davis of Pink Martini.
The upcoming folk-song workshop will be a new experience for Van Liew, building on his teaching at the art camp. But it might not be the last such workshop:
“I will give people songs to take home. And ask at the end if they want to get together to do this again!”
No special skills or familiarity with folk traditions is required to attend this workshop. But Van Liew welcomes anyone who is familiar with any of these traditions to help out with lyrics, translations, accompaniment etc.
“One year at camp we had a camp cook who was from Haiti and spoke French -- he helped us with extra verses,” Van Liew noted. Although the focus is on singing, attendees may bring instruments, especially ones appropriate to these traditions.
By Steve Cheseborough