Portland Playhouse Passing Strange Portland Oregon

Saturday night in the marketplace

As white supremacists swarmed downtown Portland, Beaverton's Night Market celebrated global cultures instead.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL


The sky was overcast but the crowds were big and enthusiastic Saturday night at this summer’s second and final Beaverton Night Market at The Round – a successful wrapup to the latest annual run of special markets featuring the music, dance, food, and cultures of Washington County’s many immigrant and traditional communities.

Once again photographer Joe Cantrell was on hand with his cameras to capture the sights and sounds of the celebration. In his photo essay In Beaverton, a little night market Cantrell also reported for ArtsWatch on this year’s first Night Market, on July 20 at The Round. As he noted in that story, the event came about in 2015 after city officials asked immigrant groups what they missed most from their original countries: “The favorite answer was, ‘The smells of the food, the night markets where we could sit in the cooling dusk visiting with our community, sharing what we enjoyed most there.’” And so, through efforts of the city’s Diversity Advisory Board, a tradition was reborn. The contrast on Saturday night with what was happening a few miles away in downtown Portland, where the city was dealing with a largely fizzled inflow of nativist right-wing white supremacist demonstrators performing loudly for national television cameras, was striking.

Saturday’s crowds at The Round enjoyed an array of performances: Mesoamerican dance by Hueca Omeyocan; traditional dances from Central Asia by the group Dance Inspired; a demonstration by Lim’s Taekwondo Academy, Puerto Rican and African music by Grupo Borokuas; contemporary Native American music by flutist Sherrie Davis Morningstar and guitarist Joel Davis; violinist Joe Kye; Turkish piano and song by Mesut Ali Ergin. Miss it this summer or eager to dip back in again? Wait ’til next summer. You can’t keep a good Night Market down.


DANCE INSPIRED


The troupe performs dances from Tajikistan, Iran, and Afghanistan.

PAINTED FACES IN THE CROWD

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Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon


Sister and brother (below), at Night Market with their grandmother, watching the dancers.
He wanted to do a YouTube dance, but settled for a “passive hopstep.”

CONTEMPORARY NATIVE AMERICAN MUSIC


Flutist Sherrie Davis Morningstar grew up in Pendleton and lives in Vancouver, Wash.
Guitarist, riverman and photographer Joel Davis.

ALL DRESSED UP AND SOMEWHERE TO GO


A Filipina woman in the crowd. She was surprised and pleased when Cantrell, who spent several years in the Philippines as a photojournalist, greeted her in Tagalog.

OH, AND FOOD LINES, TOO.


It wasn’t all song and dance. The food booths did a brisk business, too.

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Photo Joe Cantrell

I spent my first 21 years in Tahlequah, Cherokee County, Oklahoma, assuming that except for a few unfortunate spots, ‘everybody’ was part Cherokee, and son of the soil. Volunteered for Vietnam because that’s what we did. After two stints, hoping to gain insight, perhaps do something constructive, I spent the next 16 years as a photojournalist in Asia, living much like the lower income urban peasants and learning a lot. Moved back to the USA in 1986, tried photojournalism and found that the most important subjects were football and basketball, never mind humankind. In 1992, age 46, I became single dad of my 3-year-old daughter and spent the next two decades working regular jobs, at which I was not very good, to keep a roof over our heads, but we made it. She’s retail sales supervisor for Sony, Los Angeles. Wowee! The VA finally acknowledged that the war had affected me badly and gave me a disability pension. I regard that as a stipend for continuing to serve humanity as I can, to use my abilities to facilitate insight and awareness, so I shoot a lot of volunteer stuff for worthy institutions and do artistic/scientific work from our Cherokee perspective well into many nights. Come along!

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