Twenty years ago this week massive crowds of East Germans flooded through the gates of the Berlin Wall, symbolizing the end of Soviet communism and the beginning of a new, better era.  To celebrate the anniversary, artists and activists across the globe have staged tributes.  In Berlin on Monday, 1,000 eight-foot-tall foam blocks were knocked over domino style along the wall’s former route.  In Los Angeles and at Westminster College in Missouri, where Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech, wall replicas were built and then joyfully destroyed.

On Friday night in Tacoma, as part of Art at Work Month and the seventh incarnation of the Tacoma Round — the popular grassroots series in which artists, poets and musicians share a stage — a team of nine SOTA students led by Beautiful Angle gorilla-art conspirators Lance Kagey and Tom Llewellyn will build a wall of their own.  Its purpose won’t be to remind the audience of the dark days of communism but to draw attention to Tacoma’s own darkest day, Nov. 3, 1885, when more than 600 Chinese immigrants were systematically and mercilessly expelled from the city.

New day of grace

At 9:30 a.m. that day, the shop whistles blew.  Men came running from all directions until a crowd of hundreds swarmed Pacific Avenue in downtown Tacoma.  They marched en masse through the streets toward the jumbled collection of houses where much of the city’s Chinese population resided.  In a series of hate-fueled, mob-ruled public meetings days prior, a vocal minority of citizens had decided that the Chinese — who were accused of taking jobs from whites, among other crimes — must go.  Some Chinese had heeded the message while many others had not.  Now the message was clear: There would be no more warnings.

“It was apparent to everyone that there would be a solution to the question so often asked: ‘What are you going to do about it, if the Chinese do not leave when their time for departure has elapsed?’” wrote the Tacoma Daily Ledger the next morning.  “The day of grace had expired ... .”

The China Team, as Kagey calls the SOTA group, hopes to usher in a new day of grace and redefine the term that came to describe the brand of ethnic cleansing the City of Destiny espoused: the “Tacoma Method.”  As part of SOTA’s China Service and Study Tour, the team will travel to a rural community outside Beijing in December to aid orphans, the elderly and others in need.  But first they will participate in the Round at the Warehouse in an effort to raise both money and eyebrows.

“We thought, ‘Oh, that’s a great connection!’” says Kagey, who will accompany his daughter on the trip to China.  “‘What is the new Tacoma Method?’”

The new Tacoma Method, says trip leader Monika Scheffe, is a spirit of compassion and understanding embodied by the China Service and Study Tour.  Working with the nonprofit group New Day Charities, which runs a foster home, language school and elder care program in the town of Qingyundian, students will witness firsthand the harsh realities of life in the developing world.  They will bring blankets and warm clothes to the elderly and help teach English pronunciation.  They also will work alongside nannies at the foster home, where victims of China’s one-child-per-family rule are sheltered.
 
“For the kids, it’s extremely eye-opening just to see the world through the eyes of another culture.  Most of the world is focused on survival while we’re focused on achievement,” says Scheffe.  “They get outside of their view, and they get a worldview.”

Kagey, Llewellyn and the China Team hope to share that worldview with Tacoma through their performance at the Round. 

Llewellyn, who writes the text for the coveted Beautiful Angle letterpress posters he and Kagey surreptitiously hang around town, will perform original, streetwise, Tacoma-specific writings, including a new piece focused on the Tacoma Method — past, present and future.  Audience participation will be encouraged.

“I think that people want engagement more than just about anything else,” says Llewellyn.  “They want to be part of the scene. So we’re going to try hard to make the audience part of the scene.”

Kagey, who also printed broadsides and T-shirts that will be sold at the Round to benefit the trip to China, was cagey when asked about his model Great Wall, saying, “We’ll have the wall in place, and it will become a work of art.”  Like the wall in Berlin, he hinted, it will be breached.

When pressed for more details, he grinned.  “It’ll be built out of products made in China.”

Round roundup

For the uninitiated, the Round works like this: Songwriters and musicians join one another onstage taking turns, swapping songs, adding licks, sharing harmonies, and generally having fun.  Between sets a spoken word artist performs.  Meanwhile, a visual artist quietly works in the background, his creation materializing before the happy crowd’s eyes. Burning incense, to the Round’s credit, is neither required nor encouraged.

While it will be exciting to see what exactly Kagey, Llewellyn and the China Team have up their sleeves, Round no. 7 will still be, as all rounds are, about the music.  Representing Tacoma and releasing his beautifully crafted new EP will be singer-songwriter Luke Stevens.  He’ll be joined by Drew Grow and Kelli Schaefer (also releasing a new disc) of the Portland label Amigo/Amiga and their mutual backing band, The Pastors’ Wives. 

Visitors to last summer’s Doe Bay Music Festival on Orcas Island have been raving ever since about Grow, Schaefer and The Pastors’ Wives, describing their performances in near mystical terms. 

It’s a good bet Round goers will be raving about them next week.  

The best little Warehouse in Tacoma

When longtime resident/curator Daniel Blue moved out of the Warehouse recently, scenesters worried it would be the death of Tacoma’s official unofficial arts venue.  But the Warehouse — which under Blue this year hosted huge Kulture Lab and Nightgowns shows as well as numerous under-the-radar events — is still going strong in the care of new residents Adam Ydstie, Doug Stoeckicht, Julie Rex, and Emily Nollmeyer.

Fears that the tenants just wanted a cool apartment and had no intention of hosting shows have proven unwarranted. 

“We all came in with that common vision of wanting to run a place that cultivates the art scene,” says venue manager Ydstie.

Round no. 7 will be the third Warehouse show in just two weeks, following a Matt and Laura Eklund production on Oct. 30, for which an indoor forest was constructed, and a Halloween night bash featuring Tacoma duo Goldfinch and San Francisco band Birds and Batteries.

“A huge part of what we want to do is create a home for artists,” says Ydstie. 

That means providing a place for local musicians and artists to grow.  That means giving out-of-town bands not just a place to play but a place to stay, a good meal and enough cash to survive at least until the next tour stop.  That means hosting this weekend’s Round and helping redefine our home’s legacy.

Round no.7 will take place Friday, Nov. 13, at the Warehouse in downtown Tacoma – 1114 Court E.  Admission is $8 at the door or through Brown Paper Tickets, brownpapertickets.com. Proceeds will benefit the Tacoma School of the Arts China Service and Study Tour.  To learn more or make a donation, contact Monika Scheffe at monikascheffe@gmail.com.