Three choirs from diverse musical and cultural traditions will join together for a concert held at EMU this week.

The event, Love, Joy & Peace: A Choral Celebration!, will be held at Lehman Auditorium on Friday, March 14, at 7 p.m. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $10.

Dr. David Berry, director of the music program at EMU, described the event as a big celebration. “The idea for this concert was truly born out of a sense of community,” he said. “We’re not just bringing together different styles of music, but also we’re bringing together people from different communities.”

The concert will feature performances by:

• the EMU Chamber Singers, the university’s auditioned touring chamber choir, directed by Professor Benjamin Bergey, singing songs of hope and unity from its recent spring break tour;
• the EMU Gospel Choir, a talented group of students directed by EMU senior Kay Pettus, delivering uplifting gospel music; and 
• the Kush Anglican Choir, a choir from a Sudanese congregation in Harrisonburg, directed by EMU senior Rita Toto, performing traditional Sudanese songs in Arabic. 

Berry first heard the latter choir perform at a fundraiser last July at A Bowl of Good in Harrisonburg. The supported Pax Dei for Nuba, a nonprofit raising awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. “Their choir sounded incredible, and they perform a variety of music, including songs from their culture and in their native language,” Berry said. “I knew we had to invite them to perform on campus.”

After each choir performs their own selection of songs, the three vocal ensembles will combine on stage to sing “Let’s Come Together,” an original composition written by guest artist Makinto.

Makinto, a talented multi-instrumentalist and African Soul artist studying at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, will also perform solo selections throughout the evening and collaborate with Berry on a piano duet for the final musical number. 

Makinto previously performed as a guest artist at EMU’s 2023 Music Gala Concert. He and his wife, Mukarabe, co-founded Amahoro International, a mission organization promoting peace and development in East Africa. Learn more about his journey to EMU here!

The EMU Department of Music partnered with the Center for Interfaith Engagement and Multicultural Student Services to present this concert. It is sponsored by the Music, Peace and Justice grant, in conjunction with the Music & Peacebuilding major.

The simulated refugee tents are meant to create awareness and support for the people of Darfur, Sudan, a region in the western part of the country wracked by military conflict and genocide.

EMU Campus Pastor Brian Martin Burkholder (right) talks with student Larisa Zehr and a Tents of Hope spokesman during set-up Tuesday morning.

Peace Fellowship and campus ministries are sponsoring the tents and action/response tables. EMU students, faculty, staff and the broader community are invited to stop in and learn more about Darfar and paint messages of hope and support on a tent.

The tent will be set up and available from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Oct. 7 and 8. Campus pastor Brian Martin Burkholder (phone 432-4196 or e-mail campusministries@emu.edu) is coordinating the event.

The “Tents of Hope” project is a one-year process in which people respond as communities to the crisis in Darfur.

The tents become “unique works of art and ongoing focal points within communities for learning about, assisting and establishing relationships with the people of Sudan,” according to the website, . The tents serve as “points of entry for more concrete forms of Darfur advocacy.”

Small community “Tents of Hope” activities are part of an effort leading up to a national event in Washington, D.C., November 7-9, 2008, where planners hope to draw significant attention to Darfur.

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In Darfur, a roughly 200,000-square-mile region of western Sudan, as many as two million remain displaced in camps, while another 200,000 Sudanese refugees are in eastern Chad. Most are traumatized – terrified and demoralized by the war and violence they have witnessed or experienced.

While the world has not done nearly enough in Darfur, humanitarian assistance is making a difference.

Part of that difference has come about because of support Church World Service has provided to partners and fellow members of the Action by Churches Together alliance – the Sudan Council of Churches; Norwegian Church Aid; and Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development, and social service organizations.

Food, medicines, water and sanitation projects, education, agricultural inputs and tools, and counseling programs for the most vulnerable in the Darfur region have been underway since July 2004, and they continue.

Meanwhile, southern Sudan is preparing for major changes in the coming year. There are some four million people internally displaced by a generation of civil war in Sudan – three million of them, southern Sudanese living in northern Sudan. Some 500,000 southern Sudanese are refugees in seven neighboring countries.

With the January signing of a comprehensive peace agreement that ended a 21-year-long war in southern Sudan, so-called “spontaneous” returnees are starting to come back – but the situation for them is extremely difficult because organized returns by respective governmental authorities, the United Nations, and non-governmental organizations have not yet begun. As a result, returnees are in a precarious situation – hoping that help will come from somewhere. They are seeking support for food, medicine, and shelter.

Working with several partners, Church World Service is rehabilitating refugee centers in the region to assist the returnees. That program includes a component of CWS’s widely-praised Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) seminars – efforts to ease trauma and promote reconciliation.

In addition to those efforts, CWS is supporting programs by several partners in Sudan working in areas where “spontaneous” returnees are already arriving. This assistance includes post-war reconstruction work and peacebuilding activities.

In these and other efforts, Church World Service continues to accompany the people of Sudan on their journey for a better life.

Story by Chris Herlinger/CWS