Esprit De Humanidad:
Creating a Connection Through Music
Between Women in Darfur and America
At a time when globally there is so much pain and suffering, music, the universal language, music can communicate feelings of support, of caring, of humanity, of the unity of the human family. And, often musical artists of the global community, is often in the forefront of reaching out, of caring, of helping.
In such a sharing caring spirit, earlier in 2005, for two weeks in January and February, a group of Boston women traveled to the devasted, heart-wrenching inhumane crimes against humanity that are being perpertrated against the people of the Dafur region of the Sudan, where more than 250,000 people have been killed, 2 million have become refugees and some 200,000 have fled to neighboring Chad. And, those suffering most are women and children. Women and girls are being systematically raped, often gang-raped, tortured and brutalized by Janjaweed militia hired by the Arab Sudanese government (which is locked in battled with the people of this area) to kill the Sudanese of Darfur and reclaim the very fertile land of this region. But the delegation of women also "also witnessed their extraordinary resiliency and learned that music written by Berklee students helped them forget their troubles for a brief moment."
The delegation of women that was made up of Bright Horizons chair Linda Mason, whose husband Roger Brown, is president of the Berklee School of Music; Rev. Dr. Gloria E. White-Hammond; and Mercy Corps global emergency operations officer Susan Romanski, delivered and played two songs, We Are All Connected by Andrea Whaley and To the Sudanese Women, which were composed by two Berklee students for the women of Darfur. The music was created for and presented to women there as a way of helping create a connection between women in Darfur and America.
After the women had listened intently to the songs which had been translated into their language, the Sudanese women who had gathered at the community forum in the refugee camp, responded with their own musical presentation of appreciation. Margot Edwards, Margot Edwards, a publicist in Berklee's Office of Public Information, noted that, reporter Liz Walker said, "The women of Darfur, by Farah Siraj despite the violence against them, sang and danced for us. A sign of hope." Linda Mason added,
"If you can imagine these women who are living through hell, who feel that...no one understands what they're going through. To hear these songs, of women singing to them, there were tears, there was trilling, there was ululating. And then at the end, one of the women summed it up for all of them. She said, 'When I see you Westerners come to see us, we feel ashamed, we are poor, we are dirty, we have no shoes, our robes are torn and we're ashamed. But when we hear you singing to us, you have captured our emotions to the utmost, we are no longer ashamed and we feel that you are our sisters.' So that's why we're here today, to support our sisters."
Linda Mason made field recordings of the women of Darfur, which she made available to Berklee School of Music students who are creating compositions from the recorded audio. The resulting compositions will be recorded on a CD that will be used raise fund and consciousness about the crisis in Darfur.
To hear the two compositions wrtten and performed for the women of DarFur, visit the Berklee School of Music's Darfur Forum page, Taking Action.
On the Darfur Forum page you'll also be able to read more about the journey to Darfur, reports on Darfur from other journalists, and what support organizations such as Save Darfur and Sudan Activism are doing. And, more important, you can find out how you can get involved.
The article quoted from was written and reported by Margot Edwards, a publicist in Berklee's Office of Public Information.
©Nokhanya 2005
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