{"id":61213,"date":"2013-06-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/university-of-rhode-choral-conductor-singing-his-way-through-mozambique\/"},"modified":"2013-06-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T00:00:00","slug":"university-of-rhode-choral-conductor-singing-his-way-through-mozambique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2013\/06\/university-of-rhode-choral-conductor-singing-his-way-through-mozambique\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Rhode choral conductor singing his way through Mozambique"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tNorth Kingstown resident helping village choirs in African wilderness prepare for festival<\/p>\n

KINGSTON, RI \u2013 June 25, 2013 \u2013 Forget lazy beach days. He sleeps in a pup tent in the Mozambique bush, gets his water from boreholes and walks more than 40 miles a week. But who\u2019s complaining?<\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 choral director Mark Conley can\u2019t think of a better way to spend his summer, especially since it involves doing what he loves: teaching people how to sing.<\/p>\n


\nConley is on the other side of the world working with choirs in 16 villages throughout the Manda Wilderness Community Trust that will gather after three months to compete in a choral festival on July 27. <\/p>\n


\nPhone and Internet access are spotty, so Conley is chronicling his journey through a spirited and beautifully written blog, http:\/\/intrepidconductor.weebly.com. The title conveys what he is: a fearless choir leader with boundless energy.<\/p>\n


\nMozambique, nearly twice the size of California, is located along Africa\u2019s southeast coast. A former Portuguese colony with 1,500 miles of undeveloped Indian Ocean beachfront, the country is settling down after nearly two decades of civil war. Although the economy is growing, Mozambique is still one of the poorest countries in the world, with a population decimated by the war and HIV.
A professor of music at 溏心vlog免费B站 who has conducted at Carnegie Hall, Conley is serving as the guest choir director for the Manda Wilderness Choral Festival, an annual event that showcases the region\u2019s talent and is held in the village of Cobue, on the steps of an historic Catholic church, in the country\u2019s northwestern corner.<\/p>\n


\nTo prepare for the journey, Conley, through his blog, says he studied ChiNyanja, or ChiChewa, the local language of the Manda Wilderness. He got in shape by walking in Rhode Island, a passion he was happy to pick up again after abandoning it for years: \u201cI already owe Africa the gift of restoring my love of walking.\u201d

\nHis blog posts are witty and heartfelt.<\/p>\n


\nAfter 24 hours of flying, one of his first stops is Lilongwe, a vibrant city in Malawi, which borders Mozambique. He immediately sets out on a long walk. He can barely contain his glee: \u201cWords and pictures cannot convey how alive the whole scene was,\u201d he writes. \u201cThe traffic, the honking, the shouts, the markets, the farm stands, the roosters crowing, minibuses packed to the gills with people. I loved the totally bewildering, foreign and absolutely vital scene passing before me.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHe quickly learns that men do not wear shorts \u2013 ever. Only boys wear shorts. Even young men are in trousers. Back at the lodge, he eats a $4.20 dinner of rice, beans, vegetables and peri peri sauce, a hot sauce of peppers and garlic. The meal, he reports, is \u201coutstanding.\u201d Other delicacies include quiche, fish steamed in grass, potatoes, carrots, green beans and citrus ice cream.<\/p>\n


\nA few days later, he boards a small plane that flies across the \u201cspectacular\u201d Malawi countryside to another city, where he takes a boat to his home base at the Nkwichi Lodge on pristine Lake Niassa, but not before spotting a \u201cfew crocodiles sunning themselves on the rocks.\u201d Vervet monkeys, skinks, geckos, bee-eater birds, huge African cockroaches and a giant flat spider that he coaxes out of his mosquito net are among his other sightings. Home is a one-room hut, with a roof porch held up by tree trunks.<\/p>\n


\nHe\u2019s in heaven.<\/p>\n


\nOver the weeks, he visits small villages \u2013 Utonga, Mataka, Chicaia \u2013 to teach people how to sing, focusing on breathing, posture, and pitch. His hikes are long, through tall grass that whips his face as he makes his way. The sun beats down. His water bottle is down to a few sips. He worries he might collapse from heat stroke and then passes women carrying 20-gallon buckets of water on their heads. \u201cI made up my mind to shut up and do my best,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n


\nIn his downtime, he selects two pieces to teach the choirs. The first is a canon he learned from a Burundian man to calm conflicts in refugee camps. The text is adapted from John 14:27: Let not your heart be troubled; I bring you my peace. The second piece is from the Caribbean \u2013 Balia di Sehu, by Eduard Toppenberg. Caribbean music, especially Reggae, is a favorite in Mozambique, which has a unique Afro-Iberian-Brazilian culture.<\/p>\n


\nHis rehearsals with the villagers are memorable and, in some cases, fun. He\u2019s impressed with their talent and dedication. He uses his cell phone, charged by his solar backpack, to give them immediate audio and video feedback. It\u2019s the first time many people have seen themselves on video. They are mesmerized.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe competition aspect of the festival is very important,\u201d he writes. \u201cI am learning that villages take these honors seriously. People know which village won the choir festival, the canoe races, the netball games, and the soccer games for many years back.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nOn his travels people communicate the old-fashioned way \u2013 in person: What did you do today? How\u2019s your mother? Are the fish biting? \u201cAs we kept meeting people I felt I had entered a Dickensian novel,\u201d he writes. \u201cIn so many 19th century stories, the characters meet other characters by chance at a dock or on a path and suddenly circumstances change as a stranger brings unexpected news. I always thought such events were a little far-fetched, but here a minor version of it was happening to us every 10 minutes or so! Life is indeed very different without 21st or even 20th century means of communication.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nConley gets a tour of a community farm, a treat since he tills the soil back home in North Kingstown. \u201cStudents are working hard to learn the names of many herbs, vegetables and fruits that are foreign to them: lettuce, arugula, peppers and even passion fruit,\u201d he writes. \u201cOne older boy in particular is interested in everything on the farm. He has no paper of his own and is writing everything down with a broken ballpoint pen on his left arm.\u201d After the tour, the staff brings out big buckets of tea, steaming hot but irresistible.<\/p>\n


\nIn one village he watches a woman make a floor mat for sleeping by \u201cweaving a long thin strand of palm leaves, about five or six inches wide and many feet long.\u201d Her husband, the village chief, sits under a fig tree mending his fishing net. After lunch, Conley reluctantly eats a banana: \u201cThese bananas are very different from the ones at home! They are a quarter the size, and they have a drier, meatier texture, not that slimy texture I can\u2019t stand. I end up eating two, which is probably a banana record for me.\u201d He takes his tea without sugar, a puzzle to villagers, who like their beverage sweet.<\/p>\n


\nBack at the lodge, he indulges with a shower. He washes his clothes in the freshwater lake, crystal clear and teeming with fish. \u201cI put the clothes on rocks to dry before the sun is too low in the sky,\u201d he writes. \u201cThen I hang everything on a bamboo rafter in my hut to finish drying.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nTomorrow, he will visit another village and then another. In one trek, he is alone on an \u201cAfrican path\u201d for the first time. He is calm, at peace. He eventually greets a villager, who clasps his hands as they talk.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cMen only hold hands with one another in public while conversing,\u201d he writes. \u201cI have been told this comes from a time when tribal conflicts were quite common. Hands that were clasped could not produce a weapon. Contact between men and women in public never happens, even between spouses. Women also do not touch one another in public.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nVillagers are impressed with his language skills: \u201cAtithandiza,\u201d he says in ChiNyanja. She is helping us.<\/p>\n


\nIt takes a village to transport Conley to another world. His project is funded in part by grants from the Andrew Lloyd Weber Foundation, the Career Enhancement Program of the 溏心vlog免费B站 Council for Research, the 溏心vlog免费B站 Center for the Humanities, the 溏心vlog免费B站 music department, the Richard Beaupre Arts and Sciences Hope and Heritage Fund, as well as Conley\u2019s choral students in the University\u2019s music department who raised money for the trip.<\/p>\n


\nConley is scheduled to return to 溏心vlog免费B站 in time for fall classes, eager to share what he\u2019s learned abroad. Meanwhile, expect more blog posts about the \u201cadventures of a choral conductor moving about in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\u201cSpeak softly,\u201d he writes, \u201cand carry a medium-sized baton.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above:

\n Mark Conley, choral director at the 溏心vlog免费B站, stands with the Mbueca Anglican Church choir in Mozambique. Conley, of North Kingstown, is in the African country for the summer to help village choirs prepare for an annual choral festival.<\/p>\n


\n Members of the Utonga Anglican Church Choir in Mozambique, with Eduardo Lembalemba as choirmaster, show the pencils they received as presents from the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s music department.

\nPhoto courtesy of Mark Conley.\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North Kingstown resident helping village choirs in African wilderness prepare for festival KINGSTON, RI \u2013 June 25, 2013 \u2013 Forget lazy beach days. He sleeps in a pup tent in the Mozambique bush, gets his water from boreholes and walks more than 40 miles a week. But who\u2019s complaining? 溏心vlog免费B站 choral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61216,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}