Van Lefan and Chynna Lewis were born at opposite ends of Taiwan and grew up in Canadian cities 4,000 kilometres apart. Yet these two Taiwanese Canadian recording artists still share some similarities in their journey through life.
Vancouver-based Lefan and Toronto-based Lewis will both sing at the free Echoes of Formosa concert from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday (August 22) on the Concert Stage at Harbourfront Centre. It marks the opening of this year’s Toronto TAIWANfest, which runs from Friday through Sunday (August 24).
Here are some things that they have in common:
- Lefan and Lewis both immigrated to Canada with their parents at the age of 11. Each had to adjust to the Canadian school system at a difficult age, after being acclimatized to their lives in Taiwan.
- There is a stereotype about Asian immigrant parents pushing their children into the professions. However, the parents of Lefan and Lewis both love music and strongly encouraged their child’s decision to launch songwriting and performing careers.
- Lefan released her first full-length album, What Holds Us Together?, in 2022. Lewis’s debut EP, What Are Friends For, was also released in 2022.
- Lefan’s second full-length studio album, Unsent Letters: To Whom It May Concern, was released earlier this year. Lewis plans to issue her second album later this year.
- Lefan and Lewis have both returned to Taiwan as adults and performed live at the Jade Music Fest in Asia.
- Both musicians are reconnecting with their Taiwanese roots after denying aspects of themselves as teenagers to fit into the Canadian school system. And they each speak about their personal story with great eloquence.
Taiwanese Canadians artists find their voices
Yet they each followed different musical paths, in part due to their preferences but also due to where they grew up in Canada. Lefan spent her formative years in a northern Taiwanese farm town and later in Maple Ridge, B.C. Like many progressive British Columbians, she views herself as a settler on unceded Indigenous territory. And her music reflects a change-the-world zeitgeist that permeates West Coast folk-music culture.
Lefan’s song “Beyond the Clouds on her new album embodies these sentiments. She has described it to Pancouver as a “love letter to anybody who needs a reminder that there is always hope between the darkness and evils we face”.
In addition to being a singer-songwriter, Lefan’s artistic practice includes sound art, visual media, theatre, northern Shaolin kung fu, dance, and aerial hoop. She has also written songs in Mandarin.
Lewis was born in southern Taiwan. She sings a mixture of classic pop, soul, jazz, and R&B, which are central to the Toronto music scene. In fact, Lewis wrote the title track on her debut album during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, which dominated social discourse in Toronto that year. “What Are Friends For” looks at the world from the perspective of a racialized woman. Other Lewis songs reflect her life as an immigrant. While Lewis speaks Mandarin, all of her songs on her first album were in English.
Toronto TAIWANfest will present the free Echoes of Formosa concert from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday (August 22) on the Concert Stage at Harbourfront Centre. Learn more about diverse communities from the Toronto Spark website. Follow the Toronto Spark on X @TOSparkOfficial and Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
