The Gateways Festival Orchestra: The Color of Concert Music
Protected: Blackberry Farm: Featuring The Pony Ride
Vana Liya in the Midwest
In early May 2024, Vana Liya did her first Midwest shows. Leaving Philly on May 1st, she and the band—which includes my son Daniel on guitar—played Indianapolis on the 2nd, Chicago on the 3rd, Milwaukee on the 4th, and St. Paul on the 5th. Life on the road. Martin Scorcese’s film on The Band’s farewell concerts, The Last Waltz, came back again 
and again to the difficulties of being on the move so constantly. At least every city’s name can become part of a song’s lyric. The 8-minute video below shows highlights of the Chicago and Milwaukee shows, which we were able to catch on the 3rd and 4th. It features some songs not captured on other videos I’ve posted, particularly “Vana Liya: We’ve Got A Brand New Dance.” Like a brand new sing-a-long on Creedence’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” where in Chicago Vana sings, “I wanna know, Have you ever seen the rain / Coming down on a Chicago day.” Next night it was, Have you ever seen the rain / Coming down on a Milwaukee day.”
There’s also a few seconds of Vana’s “My Island Heart” and “Come Away,” and two others that are on “We’ve Got a Brand New Dance,” but they’ve been transformed so they almost seemed like new. On her signature song, “Gold,” Derek (aka Man of the Forests) and Daniel do a beautiful violin/guitar duet, with Daniel and Vana signaling Derek to join Daniel center stage. Then there’s Vana’s “Feelin’ Good” that’s been turned into a vehicle to feature drummer Logan Tyler! That was the evening’s biggest surprise in Chicago, and it works so well. “It’s our basic show we’ve been working on for a long time,” said Daniel. You take it on the road, see how it goes, see it evolve audience by audience, city by city by city.
A sad update: On Monday, July 1st, we learned of the sudden passing of drummer Logan Tyler, “the evening’s biggest surprise in Chicago.” Logan and Daniel were close. He was the drummer for Daniel’s former group, Light the Band, and brought Daniel over from that group into Vana Liya’s. As of today (July 3rd), I’ve received no definite cause of death. Our deep condolences to Logan’s family. He was a wonderful musician and friend.
♦ Go Here for more music from Dan Guzman, including more with Vana Liya and others.
Anti-Racism for Youth
On May 18, 2024, the committee I chair met for the second time with a few youth leaders from the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church. The committee had developed the conference’s anti-racism workshop “Becoming the Beloved Community: How to Talk About Race in America,” and this was a follow-up to the first meeting a month earlier, both organized by the conference group DAY: Discipling Anti-Racist Youth. In that first meeting we spent most of the time getting to know one another in hopes that this would lead to forming a community of youth leaders concerned about racism and how to lead youth towards a life of anti-racism. We spoke very little about racism issues directly, however, which we did much more of in our second meeting.
But we began this second meeting again stressing the importance of community, of being together in the fight against racism. That was as important as gaining a deep knowledge of the presence and workings of racism itself. Afterall, our workshop was called “Becoming the Beloved Community,” so we stayed with that theme as we began. The term comes from the philosopher Josiah Royce but was popularized by Martin Luther King, Jr., for whom The Beloved Community was perhaps the key element in his thinking, something 
most people don’t realize. That seems like heady stuff for youth…but not necessarily. Our first suggestion in engaging youth in a discussion that might open the door to deepen their awareness and understanding of racism was to ask, What’s your “community” like?—as well as important variations on that theme. How do you get in (or thrown out) of your community (your group of freinds, your clique)? How big is your community and who is not in it? What would be your ideal community? Do you feel Beloved in your community? This last one is perhaps the most important of all, but must be handled carefully.
Below, in newest to oldest order, are suggestions and comments from those who were at the workshops. What have you all been thinking? What have you tried and how did it work? This is a modest way we’ll try to keep this community of youth leaders going, and hopefully deepening and growing.
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