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Africa University choir tours Western Jurisdiction for first time

 


Africa University choir tours Western Jurisdiction for first time

LINK: Click to open full size version of image
Photo courtesy of Western North Carolina Conference

The Africa University Choir performs during the Western North Carolina Annual Conference session June 9-12.

June 22, 2005

A UMNS Report
By Linda Green*

The Africa University Choir has crisscrossed the United States visiting annual conferences six times, but it has always missed the Western Jurisdiction—until now.

The Western Jurisdiction appearances are part of a busy summer for the choir, which will perform in other U.S. regional conferences, at local churches and at the biggest United Methodist Men’s event of the quadrennium.

Wearing luminous-yellow traditional African clothing, the choir comprises 11 women and five men who sing African-based spiritual choral music in 15 different languages. Two members are recent graduates—Domingas Palmira Lunga and Adilson Almedia, both from Angola.

The choir hadn’t ignored the West; it just couldn’t get its schedule worked out to perform there until now, according to James Salley, the university’s vice chancellor of institutional development.

“We have been supported from the beginning by the Jubilate Choir of the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference,” Salley said. “They have started a music endowment, and we’ve always wanted to provide support for that effort and have the choir itinerate in the Western Jurisdiction. We just could not make it happen in the past.”

The choir has been performing throughout California and in parts of Washington state, New Mexico and Arizona. In addition to western performances that began June 9, the choir has sung at this year’s Mississippi, Louisiana and Western North Carolina conferences, as a way of showing appreciation for major financial campaigns that those conferences have launched for the school.

LINK: Click to open full size version of image
Photo courtesy of Western North Carolina Conference

The Africa University Choir performs during the Western North Carolina Annual Conference session June 9-12.

The choir will give three performances at the United Methodist Men’s conference July 15-17 at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. More than 9,000 are expected to attend that event.

Tour arrangers, including Betty Henderson of Philadelphia, worked to do everything possible to enable the choir to perform in annual conferences in the west during the 2005 annual conference season, which runs from May through June in the United States.

“We find that there are people all over the church that do not even know that the United Methodist Church has a university in Zimbabwe,” Salley said. The United Methodist-related university is based in Mutare and serves students from all over Africa.

The choir will not perform in all areas of the Western Jurisdiction, “but we will be able to itinerate in the majority of them,” he said.

The choir members are “wonderful ambassadors” for the university, and they understand that their mission “is to interpret the ministry of Africa University and help the United Methodist Church and people beyond understand that we are a United Methodist-related institution that is unique to Africa and is making a difference in countless lives around the continent,” he said. 

When the Africa University choir departs the United States on July 18, following a July 17 evening concert at St. Mark United Methodist Church, Chicago, the members will have 40 performances under their belts, according to Henderson, the 2005 choir tour coordinator. Although this choir is smaller than previous choirs on tour and the gender ratio is not equal, “they have been making beautiful music together,” she said. 

LINK: Click to open full size version of image
Photo courtesy of Western North Carolina Conference

The Africa University Choir performs during the Western North Carolina Annual Conference session June 9-12.

Normally the choir reflects the pan-African composition of the student body and faculty. This year, due to challenges in obtaining visas for the international students to travel to the United States, the choir has a large number of Zimbabwean students as well as a higher number of women than men, Salley said.

The tour gives the choir members an opportunity to thank United Methodists for supporting the school—and for providing the students with an education that otherwise might have been difficult or impossible to obtain. The choir also promotes the Africa University Fund, scholarship support for students and general awareness of the school in the church.

“Further,” Salley added, “it provides an opportunity for local churches and annual conferences to see a return on their investment (the students) in this ministry.”

Africa University was launched by the denomination’s 1988 General Conference and officially opened in 1992. It has six schools or academic disciplines, as well as an Institute of Peace, Leadership and Governance that promotes good government on the continent. More than 1,900 students have graduated from the school.

*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.

News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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