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Arts/Review

Labour festival a 12-

For 11 years now, singers, songwriters
and other performers have gathered in
green open spaces to contribute their talents
for British Columbia’s only labour weekly.

Well, to be honest it’s been in the open for
i0 years. Back in 1984 rain forced the Burke
Mountain Labour Festival, as it was then
called, indoors.

But when performers took to the small
Stage inside the Sampo Hall at Websters
Corners, they helped make it one of the
most politically successful ever. And suc-
cessful is the word applied to the mainly
musical event every year — a success the
organizers plan to match this Sunday.

The newly elected general secretary of the
Communist Party of Canada was one of
those who started the yearly fundraiser back
in 1976. George Hewison donated, in addi-
tion to his own unique singing voice, the
spacious, shaded lawn outside his former
home on Burke Mountain in Burnaby for
the first instalment of what was to become
an institution.

Originally handled by the Burnaby press
club, the festival passed into the Tribune’s
hands in 1982. And when the Burke Moun-
tain house was sold, a few years earlier, the
festival moved to the former Sampo Hall in
Maple Ridge, retaining the Burke Moun-
tain name.

In 1985 the Tribune staff moved the festi-
val to Vancouver for a two-year run in New
Brighton Park, on the city’s east side. While
it drew crowds, and several new faces from
the progressive music movement, it involved
far more preparation and expense.

As such, the festival proved quite a strain
on staff resources. Although more than 300
people attended the second New Brighton
outing, we were ready to call it quits after
1986.

Readers and supporters wouldn’t let the
annual event die, however, and in 1987 a
new committee took over, naming it simply
the Labour Festival. They also moved it
back to the Websters Corners hall.

And that’s where it will be on Sunday,
June 5, beginning at noon.

The Labour Festival last year was a suc-
cess, and organizers say this year’s event
promises to match or surpass it.

Back for another performance are Jon
Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat, the profes-
sional calibre duo who proved such a hit in

LAST YEARS PER-
FORMERS... (I) Jon
Bartlett; Lyonok.

1987 with both witty political satire and
Canadian folk songs. Also a repeat is
Lyonok, the three-part a cappella women’s
group who add a new dimension to songs of
the Ukraine.

They'll be joined by the Solidarity Sin-
gers, a new six-member group of what
might be termed veterans of the folk song
movement of the late Fifties and early Six-
ties.

Perennial favourite at the Labour Festi-
val and other progressive events, Tom
Hawken, will perform, as will 805 East
Pender and Linda Chobotuck.

Children’s games have gained impor-
tance this year. The music program will stop
mid-way for an hour-long session of activi-
ties for the younger festival-goers.

Face-painting for children and the child-
ren at heart is also offered. For sports activi-
ties, there’s a horseshoe pitch this year.

Admission to the festival is free as usual.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney has
signed a deal to record 13 rock and roll
hits with the state-owned record com-
pany of the USSR, Melodia.

The anticipated date of release of the
album, limited to distribution in the
Soviet Union, is October.

McCartney told Komsomolskaya
Pravda, the newspaper of the USSR’s
Young Communist League, that the new

EI Salvador

This one may be worth watching. A
crew from Frontline, the news affairs ser-
ies of the U.S. Public Broadcasting Net-
work, travels behind the lines of El
Salvador’s Farabundo Marti National
Liberation Front to interview an FMLN
leader, Joaquin Villalobos. The instal-
Iment, “Our Forgotten War,” examines
the failure of U.S. policy in the small
Central .American nation where an
unpopular government backed by the
United States has lost ground in the
spring municipal elections to the fascist
National Assembly led by death-squad
leader Roberto d’Aubisson. It’s on
KCTS, Channel 9, on Tuesday, June 14, 9
p.m. The program is closed-captioned.

McCartney makes Soviet LP

openness in Soviet society and the fourth
leadership summit on arms talks make
the album particularly timely.

“T know that all my records, one way
or another, get to the Soviet Union. I
know that the Beatles’ music is loved in
your country,’ McCartney said in the
recent interview.

“One more reason is your glasnost
and the dialogue between President
(Ronald) Reagan and Soviet leader Mik-
hail Gorbachev.”

Recently, more rock music has been
aired on state-run radio, and music
videos have been shown on Soviet televi-
sion.

A previous album by McCartney,
Band on the Run, was released through
contract on the Melodia label several
years ago.

Arlo performs

Fans of things strummed acoustically,
and other music addicts will want to
catch The Arlo Guthrie Show on KCTS,
Channel 9. It features Woody’s famous
son, plus Pete Seeger, Bonnie Raitt,
David Bromberg and Jerry Jeff Walker. It
airs Saturday, June 18 at 10 p.m. for two
hours.

6 Pacific Tribune, June 1, 1988

There will be a variety of refreshments and a
full meal available for a price.

To get to Websters Corners, head east
(from Greater Vancouver) on the Lougheed
Highway until the town of Haney appears.

year tradition

Turn left at the first light and drive a block
to Dewdney Trunk Road. Turn right and
drive for a few miles until reaching Websters
Corners. The address is 25470 Dewdney
Trunk Rd.

Vietnam nurse series"
has anti-war potential

China Beach, the new ABC series, opens
with a serene postcard setting, a lush tropi-
cal paradise with a solitary sunbather. The
stillness is suddenly broken by what at first
appears to be crashing surf and a blaze of
sunlight. It is — but we soon realize that
the senses are also being assaulted by the
sights, sounds and grim rituals of war, as an
endless procession of army choppers bring-
ing the wounded and dying to what is really
a U.S. hospital and army “rest” area on the
coast just outside Da Nang during the Viet-
nam War.

Like its unusual setting, China Beach,
written by anti-nuclear war filmmaker John
Sacret Young (Testament) is not just
another Vietnam War drama. The charac-

ters are not soldiers, but the service workers,
mostly women, who tend the wounded,
comfort the dying, clothe the corpses, and
entertain or distract, with songs or dough-
nuts, those being sent into slaughter.

In this way, China Beach, by remaining
literally on the outskirts of the actual war, is,
like every Vietnam War epic to date, conve-
niently able to avoid all those hard political
and economic questions regarding U.S. mil-
itary presence there.

On the other hand, the series, by physi-
cally distancing itself from the conflict, pro-
vides a vantage point for contemplation and
analysis, and is showing a great deal of
promise so far in its willingness to begin to
talk about some of the contradictions
involved, like the absurdity of nursing the

wounded, who have been methodically sent
out to face injury in the first place, or easing
the dread of death with donuts.

This acute sense of the meaninglessness
and horror of this war repeatedly flashes
through the otherwise low-keyed plot, with
moments of depth and insight — from the
jaded army mortician (Michael Boatman)
confronting the crazed U.S. warhawk
ambassador who pontificated about “vic-
tory through firepower” and solving the
conflict by “blowing the hell out of them,”
to the lecherous embassy official and the
chillingly realistic “Rambo” soldier, here a
dazed, freaked-out, weather beaten war
zombie, whom we discover to our shock is
only 19 years old.

The main characters — a nurse (Dana
Delaney), Red Cross worker (Nan Woods)
and USO singer (Chloe Webb) — all small
town working class women with strength
and feeling — are vividly drawn. They hold
each other up emotionally, as they are
exposed to and traumatized by war. In the
most compelling and inspiring scene, the
nurse, Colleen McMurphy, and a captured
pregnant Viet Cong nurse manage to save
one life and bring another new one into the
world together (leading McMurphy to
allow the Viet Cong woman to escape). This
gesture of cross-cultural female and human
solidarity transcends political differences
— an exceedingly rare occurrence for tele-
vision,

China Beach is not without its flaws. The
Vietnamese are generally the aggressors and
the U.S. soldiers the victims, with sideswipes
taken at U.S. activism. Also, much of the
war setting is just a little too recreational.
But with a little less beach party, and a little
more serious coming to terms with a mostly
undiscussed past, China Beach could turn
out to be a model for other such timely,

i in the future.
topical shows in the fu ure. Prairie Miller

People’s Daily World

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