They’ve sung for Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. They’ve sung for Ceasar Chavez.
And when the Greenfield-based Amandla Chorus sings for Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai this month in Providence, its members will be introducing their original song “Malala” to the 19-year-old champion of education for girls.
“To share the song with Malala, in person, is a marvelous dream come true,” says Amandla Chorus founder and musical director Eveline MacDougall, who wrote the “song to honor a courageous young woman” shortly after the Pakistani native was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
When she learned from long-time chorus member Joan Featherman this spring that Yousafzai was scheduled to speak at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence on July 28, it was just before a rehearsal, and it took several hours for the possibility to sink in, says MacDougall, who lives in Northfield.
Singing in a large public venue for the world’s youngest-ever Nobel Prize recipient, who was shot in the head at age 15 by the Taliban for speaking out for educational opportunities for women and girls, MacDougall says, “makes it even more meaningful. It’s been my life’s work to sing messages of justice and to advocate for human rights, and I am inspired by Malala and others to continue, given the number and scope of incidents of violence around the globe fueled by hatred.”
It took a few tries to convince organizers of Yousafzai’s talk in the 12,400-seat civic center that the 28-year-old chorus, which specializes in singing songs of peoples’ struggles for peace and freedom in a variety of languages, has had a long history of singing against oppression and singing at festivals and commemorations of liberation.
The chorus, singing with as many as 40 members at times, has performed at Lincoln Center with Pete Seeger, at the Clearwater Festival in New York, on the Esplanade in Boston at a rally to welcome South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela.
MacDougall, who will travel with a busload of 50 singers and teen guests to sing the one song at the event, said she sent a copy of the song, including a chorus sung in Yousafzai’s native language of Urdu, to be shared in advance the speaker — now living in England.
“I didn’t want to spring anything on them,” she said. “Like, all of a sudden there are 50 people on stage singing in Urdu and Yousafzai’s going, ‘Who are these people?’ So now they all know everything.”
The song begins, “Malala! You stand fast for freedom! Your spirit courageous and true. Malala! Your voice was not silenced. You did not let violence stop you … Some say that these are the dark times, that hope is in shortest supply. Your bravery provides us a beacon, and your wings teach us how to fly.”
When Amandla sang in 1990 for Mandela, recently released from prison, at a Boston rally attended by more than 250,000, MacDougall recalls seeing the South African leader getting into his limo with Ted Kennedy and Danny Glover, ready to leave the six-hour event before the chorus had had the chance to regale him in one of their South African liberation songs.
She seized the moment to lead an impromptu singing of “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika,” the Xhosa pan-African national anthem.
“The limo stops, the door flies open and Nelson Mandela ejects himself, comes over and stands in the middle of us,” recalls MacDougall. “He stood with us and he put his fist in the air and closed his eyes and sung every word with us. And then he shook our hands.”
Two years later, at the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center in Amherst, South African Archbishop Tutu also surprised the chorus by coming onstage to join their warm-up rendition of the anthem as well as several South African hymns.
For Providence, MacDougall has invited area teens to fill a handful of empty seats on the Amandla bus “to come along on this adventure. I’ve been talking with teens who believe that we can and must heal some of the many divisions in our world. Young folks who want to make a difference deserve to be encouraged. In fact, we must support them! Who else will carry the torches?”
MacDougall, whose chorus will be augmented for this event by a few singers from India and South Africa, says Yousafzai’s message of freedom has resonance not only in Pakistan, but also in empowering young people around the world — and some who are not so young.
Her own 84-year-old mother, who is visiting from Quebec, told MacDougall, “We were treated similarly: Women had no right to own things, there was no future for us, economically or politically.”
But Yousafzai, who marked her 16th birthday with a speech at the United Nations in which she said, “One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world.”
And MacDougall figures, “One song, one bus ride, one day will utterly change the Amandla chorus” and help it try to change the world.
On the Web: youtu.be/YvVEz9Wrl50
You can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 269