January 11, 2013 – CMU welcomed guest artists Carol Ann Weaver, composer and pianist, from Conrad Grebel College, University in Waterloo, Ontario, and Rebecca Campbell, singer and songwriter, to present their unique recital, titled, “Paraguay Primeval.” The recital took place on January 11, 2013 in CMU’s Laudamus Auditorium before an appreciative audience.
“Paraguay Primeval” by Carol Ann Weaver is a musical work featuring stories of Mennonites who fled to Paraguay from Russian and Canada in the 1920s and beyond.
“The January 2013 Manitoba tour takes this music to some of the very people who were born in Paraguay but have moved back to Canada,” says Dean of CMU’s School of Music, Dr. Janet Brenneman. The hope is that the stories will be thus celebrated.
Recently released on CD, “Paraguay Primeval” helps to tell the extraordinary story of Mennonites finding new “Promised Land” by moving to Paraguay from Canada in order to retain their own schools, and from Russia to flee the Bolshevik Revolution and the Stalinist regime. Once in Paraguay, theseMennonites settled in the “green hell” of the Chaco, suffering typhoid and other illnesses, but ever building colonies, growing crops, and maintaining livestock, while creating schools, churches, hospitals, and industries that lured back many indigenous peoples.
Weaver says about the work: “My brief visit to the Chaco, in July, 2009, following the Mennonite World Conference in Asuncion, Paraguay, was a moving experience. What stole my heart, while travelling to these colonies, was a sense of incredible dedication to this new land as voiced by these Mennonites in their strong singing. I was particularly struck by a statue of a woman behind a plow, representing women who had lost their husbands during Stalin years in Russia.”
Weaver notes that texts are derived from Rudy Wiebe’s Blue Mountains of China (with its vivid and poetically written Paraguayan sections), Dora Dueck’s Under The Still Standing Sun, and Henry and Esther Regehr’s translated Schoenbrunn Chronicles, compiled by Agnes Balzer and Lieselotte Dueck and written by Paraguayan Mennonite settlers. “Basic journal entries (in Schoenbrunn Chronicles) yield starkly perfect lyrics,” says Weaver, “especially those recounting deaths in the Harms family, or adventures of Uncle Hans in the well.”
Carol Ann Weaver is an eclectic composer, pianist, writer, and music professor atConrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo. Her music has been heard throughout North America, in Europe, Africa, Korea and Paraguay. She has produced seven CDs and tours extensively with vocalist Rebecca Campbell, often doing African or Mennonite-themed music. She previously taught at WLU, at [then] Mennonite Brethren Bible College (a founding college of CMU) in Winnipeg, and at EMU in Virginia.
Acclaimed singer and songwriter Rebecca Campbell is one of the most evocative, exquisite vocalists in Canada. Singing professionally since 1986, she has toured extensively with Justin Haynes, Jane Siberry, Fat Man Waving, Three Sheets to the Wind, Lynn Miles, Ian Tamblyn, and Carol Ann Weaver. She has performed across Canada, the United States, England, Ireland, Spain, and Trinidad-Tobago. Her CDs receive high critical acclaim.
For a description of the project and performers, recital schedules, and information on purchasing CDS, visit
http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~caweaver/concert.html