A Showcase for ‘Generations’ of Unknown California Stars

What is this thing called fame?

For some a sound bite, for some the tabloids.

Fame also can be something subtler and different, something closer to heart and home, like “California Generations,” a first-time, three-week theatrical festival that is hip-hopping through the state. It hits Southern California with its diverse musicians, dancers and talkers this week and stays through mid-November.

The idea of “Generations” is to show off a lot of famous Californians. People most of us never heard of.

If there’s irony in that, so be it. “California Generations” may well be redefining that show-business thing called fame.

Most concerts and theatrical bookings in this state are handled by large companies. Few theater people commission new works or new artists . . . Who can afford the gamble? Some take on occasional capital ventures by pooling their resources, like the alliance of theaters that underwrote Sir Ian McKellen’s “Richard II.” But travel the state and what you see city to city are the same performers. It’s almost like Paris. Stand on a corner long enough and you’ll see every act you’ve ever known.

Now comes “California Generations” with a couple of different ideas.

* It’s dealing only with non-mainstream stars, eight groups of California residents--some whose families have been here for generations, others who are recent arrivals. The common ingredients: performing skills and California ZIP codes. Its program is as diverse as a Sunday afternoon walk on the Venice strand: a cowboy poet, native California and Afghan musicians, Tibetan dancers, Hawaiians, Hmongs, Belizeans, Mexicans.

* It’s also an original, a commissioned project involving the state’s largest organization of theater operators in a mutual statewide effort.

It’s “Star Search” with a new attitude.

In certain Fresno neighborhoods where 30,000 new Californians--the Hmong people--live, 32-year-old Ge Xiong is as famous as any MTV rap master for his traditional music and athletic dancing.

And up along the Sierra Nevada near Porterville, the fifth-generation California cowboy and rancher Jesse Smith could, if he wanted to, claim fame for his work-hardened poetry.

In some Los Angeles communities Sidney Mejia and his drumming-singing group, Chatuye, is almost as well-known as, say, Hammer, especially when it comes to Belizean Black Carib garifuna music.

In Downey, Jose Gutierrez and his “Los Pregoneros del Puerto” are famous for their harp and jarocho music from Veracruz.

For some, elusive fame depends on where we sit, sing and stamp our feet.

And what box office we visit.

Mark Cianca credits Los Angeles freeway gridlock for the idea that became “California Generations.”

Cianca is director of arts and lectures at UC Santa Cruz and is president of California Presenters, the largest theatrical booking consortium in the United States, with 167 civic and university/college theaters under its umbrella from big halls in Los Angeles and San Diego to scattered small community-based centers in the Central Valley.

Three years ago, he became stuck, stalled and bewildered in the customary Ventura-405 freeway afternoon crunch, thinking about how East Coast theaters commission new works while little original stagings came from the West, especially from his large group of programmers who tended to fill season schedules with visiting artists.

“I was just sitting there in the rental car. No telephone. No movement. Just the radio and a report about a study of attitudes of Los Angeles people toward new immigrants. It was pretty negative stuff about people taking away jobs, working for lower wages, moving into neighborhoods, crime going up. I had to laugh. I had heard all this before. People said the same thing about my grandparents when they came from Europe. It was the same old story with new faces.

“Then the epiphany. I had just finished working with the National Council for the Traditional Arts on one of its tours of American folk performers and saw how those shows attracted large numbers of people. Why not do the same thing in California? Why can’t we search out and discover people within the state--natives, ethnics, immigrants--and develop a show of our own?”

Joe Wilson directs your attention to the world’s two Parthenons. One is the sparsely visited, incongruous concrete job sitting on green lawns in the “Athens of the South,” Nashville, Tenn. The other is the weathered, battered original atop the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, where crowds of tourists come in constant streams.

“There is something to the real, the absolutely real stuff, that turns people on without any limits,” he says. “It’s when popularization takes over that the sharp edges are lost and plastic takes over.”

Wilson likes sharp edges and originals. He’s director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts, a non-profit organization that for 59 years has been searching for authentic folk artists and getting them into concert halls. His group doesn’t wait for an act to show up via transom delivery. It leaves the office, takes back roads and goes looking and listening.

Wilson is producer/artistic director of “California Generations,” the person the Presenters enlisted when they decided to do something original. Three years ago, he and his researchers hit the road, all armed with video cameras and recorders, ready to identify traditional artists among the estimated 240 cultural and ethnic groups in this state.

California Presenters guaranteed $100,000 for the project, the state arts council provided $150,000 and the NEA’s state regional program came up with an equal amount. The project was to have been staged last year but the planners decided more field work had to be done. There was no need to rush. No one was leaving.

The tour lasts only three weeks because for most of the performers their art is a cultural expression, not a job, although since the tour was organized two groups have received recording contracts. Some potential performers turned down the tour because they couldn’t give up jobs. Some members of Chatuye from Belize had to get permission to be out of school for the tour.

Last week, the performers met for the first time at the Visalia Convention and Visitors Center. Julian Lang, a member of the Karuk tribe whose descendants have lived along the Klamath River for at least 1,000 years, was chosen to be master of ceremonies--the youngest member of the oldest group of Californians would introduce audiences to the more recent Californians. The first presentation was last Saturday night at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium. Tonight “Generations” are at UC Santa Cruz. The program moves to UCLA on Nov. 8, then will appear at UC San Diego, Caltech, Saddleback College and UC Riverside.

That will be windup week . . . for now. Both Wilson and Cianca talk of a “Generations 2” next year. Wilson plans on getting East Coast bookings for some of the groups. A PBS crew is doing an hour documentary on the performers.

“We only touched on a few of California’s cultures,” says Cianca. “It’s hard to think that after all of this birthing effort that we won’t have a son or daughter.”