ABOUT THE EVENT
Myths awaken memory and stir our senses with sound, rhythm, story, and image allowing us to recall the ancient resonances of Oral Tradition tales that have been gifted from generation to generation for tens of thousands of years. On Thursday, December 29th, 2022 from 7-9pm PST, the Mythsinger Legacy Project (MLP) re-kindles mythsinger and storyteller Daniel Deardorff’s annual year-end community custom of sharing three very different Creation myths: one Norse, one Sumerian, and one from the Toba of South America.
Each story will unfold truths about need, renewal, loss, sacrifice, possibility, courage, beauty, and love. Each will open the imagination, showing us ways to re-member and re-store ourselves and our love and care for humankind and the Living World. The online magic of the Zoom platform will allow us to come together around the virtual hearth from near and far to hear Daniel Deardorff, albeit posthumously. Although he “flew out of this story into the next” in 2019, Deardorff’s music, his storytelling and his voice via a live recording will give all who are present an opportunity to hear the man who the poet Robert Bly called “a true inheritor of Joseph Campbell” and of whom the mythologist Martin Shaw said “Deardorff was the greatest storyteller I ever saw.”
RSVP on Eventbrite for the Zoom link.
ABOUT THE ONLINE “VIRTUAL HEARTH”
This event is the last in a series of 2022 Community Storynights in this online format. Judith-Kate Friedman, MLP’s Steward and Deardorff’s life partner and collaborator for his last 14 years, describes how this event differs from many online presentations: “It’s quite uncanny how we’ve been able to create a genuine community feeling as we gather online to listen to Danny drumming and telling around the virtual hearth. When we started this experiment combining live interactive conversation and performance with archival footage of Daniel himself, we had no idea if the balance of past and present would be successful. Yet ancient myths transcend boundaries of place and time and Daniel Deardorff also does this as a mythteller.”
“Those who were present for his local Storynights (from 2005-2015), have shared with us that the pairing of high quality archival video and audio plus our live music and everyone’s collective online interaction truly bring Daniel and the Community Storynight experience into the virtual room,” Friedman notes. “Many younger generation tellers and listeners who didn’t have a chance to meet Daniel say that communal listening in this format awakens their sense of proximity to his presence far more than hearing his recordings or reading his book. It’s this spirit of community we wish to ignite, keeping Daniel’s voice as well as these ancient stories alive.”
FEEDING THE STORY
The online event will begin with a welcome from Judith-Kate Friedman and music from Daniel Deardorff (recorded) and Friedman (live). The virtual hearth will then be lit as Deardorff calls fire in the old manner with flint and steel, and sings about the relationship between myth and fire (on video). He’ll then tell three rarely heard Creation Myths, accompanying himself on drum (audio) while Friedman layers in her own live drumming and Annie Clark, known internationally for her ASL artistry, provides interpretation for the stories. Following the stories, everyone will be invited to “feed the story.” As Deardorff taught: “The stories carry medicine and food for us. They are alive and feed us; we must feed the stories in return and reciprocity for the nourishment we receive.” Once the story is “well-fed”, Friedman will close the evening with one of her own songs inspired by the Mythsinger experience.
***
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Internationally recognized as an innovator in community building through music, Judith-Kate Friedman is an award-winning songwriter, performer, and producer, as well as author, poet, curator and founder/director of Songwriting Works Educational Foundation. As Deardorff’s life-partner since 2006, she now serves as Steward of the Mythsinger Legacy Project. She is representing his book The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture and Psyche (Inner Traditions, 2022) and narrated the audiobook (forthcoming in 2023). Her own multi-modal work increasingly addresses kinship with the Living World and the arts as a path to aliveness and transformation. https://judithkate.com/ https://mandorlarising.net
Renowned American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter Annie Clark has worked internationally giving people with auditory disabilities full access to enjoying and participating in music, arts, humanities, and science events. She has interpreted for a wide range of music festivals, conferences, and television, and for a variety of public figures including Deepak Chopra, Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D. (Discovery Channel’s "The Know Zone”), adventuress and international rowing record holder Victoria Murden, and musicians Ani DiFranco, Arlo Guthrie, and Cephas and Wiggins among many others. Of her ASL work, The Entertainer said “…(This) is a dimension to music you have never experienced before. You can't help but be moved by it.”
In her lecture Music and the Arts, Accessible to All, Clark states: “I bring music [and spoken word] to a silent world. When I interpret… I see the power it has, the effect on all peoples lives (deaf and hearing)… to see the excitement of a deaf person discovering music; or the pleasure of those who thought they would never experience (it) again; even restoring the will to live for one who had a sudden, severe hearing loss. Everyone, including those with disabilities, should have the same opportunity for access and participation in the arts. Music, art, and the humanities are uplifting, powerful, and transcendent expressions of the human experience… (among) the purest expressions of a culture helping to define and unite people… These cultural expressions are a means by which we can all grow and evolve.” http://www.breskin.com/annie-clark/
ABOUT DANIEL DEARDORFF and the MYTHSINGER LEGACY PROJECT
Daniel Deardorff (1952-2019) was a master storyteller, author, singer, beloved teacher, and carrier of ancient oral tradition stories. A lifelong performing musician whose five-decade career included songwriting, national touring (Seals and Crofts, Deardorff and Joseph), and producing (Tingstad and Rumbel, Michael Tomlinson, Jim Valley, Tickle Tune Typhoon). A survivor of paralytic polio and resulting paraplegia, he believed that one of the greatest oppressions is the suffering of meaningless wounds. When post-polio required him to retire from the music business, he became an independent scholar of myth, collaborating internationally with Robert Bly, Martin Shaw, and others. Throughout his career, Deardorff lived in Seattle, Bellingham, Vashon Island, Lummi Island, and Central Washington, with his last two decades based in Port Townsend, WA.
In November 2022 Daniel Deardorff’s acclaimed book,The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture and Psyche was published in an expanded 3rd edition by Inner Traditions https://www.innertraditions.com/books/the-other-within. An initiatory journey through ancient myths, wisdom literature, and personal revelation, the book addresses oppressions of exclusion, outsiderhood, and the betrayals endured by all who are “othered.” Deardorff guides us to discover our own true identity and honor the “other” that lives within each of us and within society, the exiled part that carries wisdom so desperately needed for ourselves and the culture at large. Originally published in 2004, this 2022 edition includes an introduction by Robert Bly, and new commentaries by Martin Shaw, and Robert Simmons as well as words from Judith-Kate Friedman.
The Mythsinger Legacy Project (MLP) https://mythsingerlegacy.org/, a fiscally-sponsored project of Songwriting Works Educational Foundation, continues Daniel Deardorff’s work of restoring myth to culture and community. In 2019, when Deardorff “flew out of this story and into the next,” he left an archive of writings, three albums worth of music, and many live hearthside recordings of his mythtelling and other teachings. In early 2022, MLP began hosting Mythsinger Community StoryNight events online, welcoming an international community of all ages and cultures to gather with us around the virtual storyfire hearth to hear one of the 10,000 year old stories from one of the finest mythtellers of the 21st century.
A PORT TOWNSEND COLLABORATION
Annie Clark has lived in Port Townsend since 1994, and notes that she savored coming home to the quiet and beauty here from countless tours over the decades. In 1997, Deardorff found Port Townsend to be the ideal community to retire to when post-polio required he make a change from the intense schedule of the music business. Friedman met Deardorff on Orcas Island in 2003 (after he began his third career as a mythteller and teacher). When their friendship took a romantic turn she followed him to Port Townsend (as had his family members and several musicians before her) making Port Townsend her home since 2006.
Although known to each other in the local community for many years, this will be the first time that Friedman and Clark are collaborating in a full performance. They share in common a love for the arts and a passionate commitment to access and inclusion of people with diverse physical, cognitive and emotional abilities, as did Deardorff.
ASL interpretation of this pay-as-you-can event is supported by a grant from the Port Townsend Arts Commission along with generous support from the Human Family Unity Foundation, the Jubilation Foundation, a project of the Tides Foundation, the Lipmanowicz Family Fund, KPTZ.org 91.9FM (media sponsor) and the generosity of all who attend. All funds raised at this event will support the ongoing programs of the Mythsinger Legacy Project (MLP).
RSVP on Eventbrite for the Zoom link.