Liberian Refugee "Chorus for Change"

About: Liberian Refugee "Chorus for Change"

The disaster of the Liberian Civil War has been followed by a cultural emergency in Philadelphia, which has the largest Liberian refugee population in the US, with estimates of as many as 35,000 Liberians from 16 different ethnic groups. 

Despite their numbers, the Liberian community is often invisible – sometimes even to itself. There is no Philadelphia Liberian community cultural center to celebrate and pass on Liberian African heritage, and young Liberians struggle to know who they are, while their elders often feel like cultural throwaways in a foreign land. 

Refugee Liberian artists, the Philadelphia Folklore Project www.folkloreproject.org, and Roadside Theater began collaborating in 2012 on the Liberian Community Performance Project. The collaboration created, through traditional Liberian music, dance, and storytelling, a community conversation about issues facing Liberian refugees including domestic violence, spousal abandonment, and children with problems mothers felt they couldn’t address. 

Over the next two years, the project developed into Women's Chorus for Change, featuring Liberian singers performing traditional and new songs to spark dialogue about gender violence within their communities. Chorus for Change creates pop-up concerts and dialog in the places where Liberians gather, and instigates other events that bring Philadelphia city officials and social service workers into the Liberian community conversation about self-identified women’s issues in the West Philadelphia Liberian refugee community. 

Chorus for Change founders Gayflor, Tete, and Tomah were all members of Liberia’s National Cultural Troupe, an ensemble of dancers, singers, and drummers who lived and trained together for years in Monrovia. Selected from their home villages when each was barely a teenager, they joined compatriots from all 16 of Liberia’s ethnic groups to form the troupe.

During and after Liberia’s 1989-2003 civil wars, each dedicated her music to peace-building in refugee camps and in her homeland. They are now using their music to address inequities and violence in their current home, West Philadelphia, a low income African American neighborhood challenged by poor schools, drugs, and violence, and in which many Liberian immigrants experience anti-immigrant bias, racism, poverty, and deportations, in addition to schisms among themselves.

Planning Document Phase 1

This is the completed version of the Community Cultural Development (CCD) form used for the first phase of the Chorus for Change project. The CCD form provides a standard structure to delineate the goals, resources, and criteria for success of each of the partners in a project. A blank copy of the worksheet is available as part of the Community Cultural Development Residency Planning Worksheet asset.

Article: Passing the Torch at the Philadelphia Folklore Project

Follow this link to an article about leadership change at PFP. 

Brief Overview of Liberian History
By Toni Shapiro-Phim

Liberia is a relatively small country that has seen a huge amount of devastation wrought by political instability and civil war. Settled in the early 1800s by free-born Blacks and former slaves from the United States who were being “returned” to Africa through the “American Colonization Society,” the colony became the Republic of Liberia in 1824, with a capital city called Monrovia, after U.S. President James Monroe.

The “returned” settlers recreated in Liberia many aspects of American society—speaking English and building churches and houses reminiscent of those of their masters in North America. And, even though there was intermarriage between the new arrivals and the indigenous population, discrimination against the local Africans was the norm. The Americo-Liberians, descendants of those early settlers, continued to rule the country for more than a century until a coup d’état in 1980 led by a man named Samuel Doe.

Although he brought indigenous people into positions of power, he was in over his head – inexperienced and overwhelmed by the daunting tasks of running a country – and soon started mistreating people from certain ethnic groups and pitting those in other ethnic groups against one another -- all of whom had previously co-existed peacefully. A full-blown civil war erupted in 1989. A fragile ceasefire took hold in 1996, but lasted only a few years. As a result of these back-to-back civil wars, most of the country's infrastructure was destroyed. People fled en masse, leaving whole villages deserted. Soldiers, some of whom were children, were responsible for horrific violence inflicted on the civilian population.

A quarter of a million people died, and double that number were displaced within Liberia. Even greater numbers sought safety in neighboring countries. There, in exile in the Ivory Coast and Guinea, were Fatu Gayflor and Zaye Tete, both accomplished and famous recording artists, as well as dancers, who -- separately, independently from one another -- found the strength to perform for fellow refugees in the midst of hopelessness and chaos, as a way of making a statement against war. Meanwhile, back in Liberia, Tokay Tomah, who had, along with Fatu and Zaye, been a member of Liberia’s National Cultural Troupe as a singer and dancer, was doing the same thing. Peace accords were signed among the fighting factions in 2003, in no small part because of the activism of the country’s women. And Liberians elected Africa’s first woman president in 2006.

Poster: Liberian National Artists Awareness program

Story: Gbahtuo Comgbaye

Last year, we were engaged in a project using arts to solve our everyday problems. The artists involved were: Kormassa Bobo, Fatu Gayflor, Zaye Tete, and me—Gbahtuo Comgbaye. Our host was the Philadelphia Folklore Project, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. We also worked with Dudley Cocke from Roadside Theater in the mountains of Kentucky. 

The Project lasted for one year. Stories were collected by us all from our Liberian community -- from young to old, from women to men, from single mothers to married couples. We learned a great deal from these stories and interviews. Significant themes included: Issues of aculturalization and identity among our youth; kids raising kids as a result of their parents working long hours; problems with care of the elderly; and the struggles of many single Liberian mothers. 

At a certain interval in the project, there was a performance in a southwest Philly community center/music hall that we shaped from the stories we had heard and those we told each other. Our story, song, and dance performance was framed by a traditional Liberian story in which two Elephants are manipulated by a wiley Jackal to fight one another against their common interest. The story resonated with the audience's experience of the fifteen-year Liberian civil war. 

After telling the story, we asked audience members to say who their Jackal was now. As a result of their insights and their delight in the dance and music, we realized the need to continue the work and especially for these powerful Liberian musical icons -- Fatu, Tokay, and Zaye -- to work together and produce musical tools to address key problems here in the diaspora, as well as to help solidify the fragile Peace prevailing now in our homeland. Fragile, because since the war, the first democratically elected President will be ending her second term in 2016. Thank you all for listening.

About: Philadelphia Folklore Project

Before organizing as an independent agency in 1989, Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP) began in 1987 as a centennial program of the American Folklore Society – as such, it was part of a small but significant movement of newly-created independent public folklife not-for-profits. Committed to paying attention to the lived experiences and traditions of local people, PFP believes that folklife— diverse vernacular traditions, local knowledge, and cultural heritage—are powerful resources for social change and vital and necessary elements of community well-being.

PFP’s work falls under three broad headings: community projects, documentary resources, and services. PFP has produced more than 260 public events, 75 artist residencies, and 23 ethnographic exhibitions. Landmark programs include the concerts of Philly Dance Africa; the exhibition Folk Arts of Social Change; the concert, video documentary, and exhibition Plenty of Good Women Dancers; and Art Happens Here residencies supporting local artists and community members in challenging cultural stereotypes and developing new work. PFP’s documentary resources include 41 magazine issues, 24 other publications, 15 video productions, an active website, and an archive of 64,000 items. PFP services include free technical assistance and workshops which over 25 years have supported 350 local tradition-bearers and their organizations in developing projects and raising more than 3.2 million dollars in grants. In many cases, these were the first outside dollars to be invested in low-income communities of color for folk arts preservation and performance.

In 2005, PFP moved into a building of its own, and, in partnership with Asian Americans United, PFP co-founded the Folk Arts - Cultural Treasures Charter School, a public K-8 school serving 450 students with a curriculum grounded in the study of folk arts. Both city and national awards have recognized the leadership, excellence, and impact of the Philadelphia Folklore Project in its field and in the communities that it serves.

A New Initiative

Prompted by the decline in local, regional, and national funding for emerging folk arts groups, PFP has designed a new initiative, Folk Arts and Social Change Residencies (FASCR). The initiative offers stipends and hands-on workshops on community-based folklife fieldwork and how to link folk arts and social change. These residencies document what communities hold dear and in doing so create critical dialogue across generations and cultural communities.

FASC residencies have four stages of development. During the first stage of Fieldwork and Planning, community residents are supported in sharing their own experiences with one another and documenting significant community folk arts and history. This process stimulates collective consideration of local experiences and generates resources (folk arts, people, guiding questions, and story-lines) for exhibition and performance. Excerpts (recordings, testimonies, images of artifacts and people) are circulated online to solicit community response.

In the second phase of a residency, each team begins to synthesize what they are hearing and learning and to identify themes. Community Gatherings invite an expanding group of community members, artists, and activists to participate, and project leaders use exhibition, performance, story-circles, and reenactments to generate animated dialogue. Outcomes include sharper project themes and story-lines. In the third residency phase, Production, PFP folklorists with the assistance of consultants support FASC residents in developing public exhibitions and performances. The Folk Arts and Social Change Conference is the culmination of the year’s work, where there are performances and exhibitions from the residencies and structured opportunities for both critical reflection and additional community participation.

The open call for 2012 FASC residencies generated 32 community proposals. Three were selected for in-depth development.

• Rites of Resistance is exploring the untold stories of three generations of Southeast Asian immigrants who have faced decades of violence. The project team will create an exhibition sharing the cultural and social history of Asian Americans in Philadelphia, 1970 to present, documenting different generational experiences with cultural traditions and social justice struggles. One goal of the exhibition is to challenge stereotypes across generations and communities. The project team includes Southeast Asian teenagers from South Philadelphia High School who are organizing against anti-immigrant violence; 20- and 30-year olds from Southeast Asian immigrant communities whose early experiences of shattered families and war- zone neighborhoods were a bitter legacy distancing them from elders; elders who still practice their traditional arts; and long-time activist group, Asian Americans United.
• African Ancestors is documenting the history of a local cultural movement that began in 1950 and that has never been widely recognized for its impact on community well-being. As elders in this movement are passing, young people are interviewing and documenting artists who learned and extended Akan, Yoruba, Ga, Guinean, Senegalese and other continental traditions as direct responses to specific community plagues, including racism, drug culture, and gang violence. The project, in collaboration with Dance Africa-Philadelphia, will create an exhibition and annual community ritual honoring elders and opening paths to unity.
• The Liberian Community Drama Project includes local Liberian immigrant artists who are collaborating with Roadside Theater to create an original performance reflective of contemporary concerns in Philadelphia’s Liberian community, the largest in the country. Addressing the impact of two nearly back-to-back civil wars in Liberia and anti-immigrant violence here, the project will provide the means for the Liberian community to tell the stories of its hopes and challenges.

Article: Philadelphia Yoruba Performance Project
By Toni Shapiro Phim

The Philadelphia Yoruba Performance Project employs story circles. March 13, 2019

Little Red Hearts
Friday, February 14, 2014
By Donna Porterfield

From collaboration with an Appalachian women’s shelter to working with Liberian refugee artists in Philadelphia, Roadside Theater and its collaborators use cultural expression to address domestic violence.

I remember the Valentine’s Days of my childhood, when our elementary school teachers cancelled math lessons and passed out red and white construction paper, scissors, and glue so we could make Valentine cards for our mothers. When my brother and I presented our cards to Mom, she would give us a big Valentine hug, and display our cards prominently in the living room for our father to admire when he returned from work with a small paper bag of tiny red cinnamon hearts for “all his Valentines.”

In 1965, when I was sixteen, I worked the summer breakfast shift as a waitress at my Uncle’s diner. One day, the nineteen-year-old daughter of a co-worker came sobbing into the diner with a black eye and large bruises on her arms. She told her mother that her boyfriend was mad at her because he thought she was flirting with another boy. Her mother told her that this was just part of life, and that he wouldn’t be mad at her for long. I thought that was the craziest thing I’d ever heard, and said as much. My co-worker turned to me with a pitying look and said, “Honey, you’re young. You’ll understand these things when you’re older.”

In 1999-2000, I conducted a year-long Roadside Theater residency with the staff and clients of HOPE House, my local women’s shelter. We worked together through Story Circles to write Voices from the Battlefront, a play that weaves the personal stories of victims and survivors of domestic violence with Appalachian folk stories and murder ballads passed from generation to generation as warning tales. The play’s script is free for the taking on Roadside’s website, and has been performed around the country as part of domestic violence workshops.  

Listening to the stories of abused women and children for a year was definitely an eye-opener, but not in the way my former diner co-worker imagined. She was right about her daughter’s boyfriend not being mad at her for long. I heard many tales about extravagant romantic acts with flowers, jewelry, and chocolates delivered lovingly by an abuser to the abused the day after a horrible beating. Forgiveness by the victim was almost always the result. The connection to our commercialized idea of romantic Valentine’s Day gestures didn’t escape me.

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, in the U.S. 85% of domestic violence victims are women; one in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime; females 20-24 years of age are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence; and most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police. These are just the U.S. statistics.

Globally, one in three women will experience physical and/or sexual violence by a partner or sexual violence by a non-partner. This statistic, from the World Health Organization, doesn’t take into account bride burning, acid throwing, or genocidal rape campaigns carried out as acts of war.

In 2013 Roadside began working with the Philadelphia Folklore Project and a group of Liberian refugee artists who have now joined together to create drama and music that names and laments the injustice of domestic violence, encourages women to make their voices heard, and provides ways to get help. They are the “Liberian Women’s Chorus for Change,” and they are producing “pop-up” performances wherever their Liberian community gathers – most recently at Faith Emmanuel Lutheran Church.

Watch "Chorus for Change" speak for itself:

Chorus members describe their work – “We want our families and community members to have access to information and resources that will allow them the chance to flourish with dignity, in their adopted home.” Toni Shapiro-Phim of the Philadelphia Folklore Project, the organization coordinating the Liberian Women’s Chorus for Change, says, “Stories evoked publicly through song and drama are the starting point for conversations that can lead to imaginative and realistic paths to addressing pressing concerns.”

“One Billion Rising,” an online organizing site, is a global call to women survivors of violence and those who love them to gather safely this February 14th outside places where they are entitled to justice – courts, police stations, government offices, colleges, work places – to tell their stories through art, ritual, marches, and other peaceful means. On February 14, the Liberian Women’s Chorus for Change was scheduled to be part of the Philadelphia celebration of “One Billion Rising at Love Park,” which was canceled because of a winter storm. The Chorus, and others in Philadelphia, will now join a social media campaign addressing violence against women and girls.

Some things have changed since I was a sixteen-year-old waitress. More of us have learned about the cycle of abuse and what happens to the children who witness it, but the statistics still scream we have a long way to go. The expressions inherent in our cultures – story, music, dance, ritual – can help us get to the real meaning of little red hearts.

Playwright's Hanging: Appalachia in a Globalized Economic Reality
By Dudley Cocke

One ruthless corporate interest, two devastated cultures: Roadside’s public response to the November 1995 execution of African playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight fellow Nigerian activists, murdered for opposing Shell Oil International. Originally published as a letter to the editor of Knoxville News Sentinel, November 14, 1995.

The hanging of African playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight fellow Nigerian activists four days ago by the country’s military dictator, Sani Abacha, hits home for members of Roadside Theater/Appalshop here in the central Appalachian Mountains. Mr. Saro-Wiwa was murdered for opposing Shell Oil International which has substantial oil producing operations in Nigeria’s Rivers State.

Shell also has extensive coal operations in Appalachia. Appalshop’s 1986 video, “Mine War on Blackberry Creek,” documents the two year, bitter strike of the United Mine Workers of America against an Appalachian coal mining subsidiary of Shell. The pitting of Appalachian union miners against miners in the international corporation’s South African coal operations, who are paid much less, was an issue in the 1986 strike.

The long-term effects of Shell’s presence in central Appalachia are similar to the effects in central Rivers State: the impoverishment of Appalachian people and the destruction of their natural environment.

As reported in the New York Times, Saro-Wiwa in a 1993 interview stated, “What Shell has done is to wage ecological war against the Ogoni people.” He noted that “people in oil-bearing regions get nothing . . . the oil the U.S. government is buying from Nigeria is stolen property.” He concluded that in order to better their circumstances, “the Ogoni people are ready to die.” It is with empathy for the Ogoni people that we contemplate what the nine hangings mean for us, thousands of miles away in the Appalachian Mountains. One wants to know what social vision the leaders and stockholders of Shell Oil follow?

Video Trailer: "Because of the War"

From 2002 - 2014, Roadside's Artistic Director, Dudley Cocke, served as an adviser to the Philadelphia Folklore Project's Community Performance Project, which developed into the Liberian Women's Chorus for Change, the ensemble that the film depicts. The Liberian initiative engages local Liberian immigrant artists in drawing on folk performance traditions to surface and share current community challenges.

"Because of the War," a film by Toni Shapiro-Phim, explores relationships between traditional cultural knowledge and community well-being, especially in situations of violence and loss. It sets the stage for discussions about heroes in our midst, and how each one of us might hold the potential for constructive action in the face of indignities and inequities.

The film was produced by the Philadelphia Folklore Project (copyright 2017), and is a resource for people and organizations with particular interest in: Women’s Actions/Achievements/Leadership; Music, Dance and Ethnomusicology; Traditional Arts; Immigration and Refugees; War, Conflict Transformation and Reconciliation; African and African Diasporan Studies; Liberian Cultural Practices and Recent History; Biography and Storytelling; Philadelphia Communitie; Anthropology and Cultural Studies. 

WATCH THE TRAILER!      
http://www.becauseofthewar.org/trailer

TO REQUEST A SHOWING OR FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: PHILADELPHIA FOLKLORE PROJECT
(215) 726-1106  [email protected]

Audio: Chorus for Change Songs

Kweyengeh is a Kpelle song that comes from the Sande Society. When young girls go away to the Sande Society for initiation their mothers sing this song, missing their daughters, wondering what’s happening to them. Why am I doing this song?

I’m singing this song because it’s about women who lost their children in the war. It happened a lot. Even to me. Around this time, I had left for the Ivory Coast to do a recording, and, unfortunately for me, when I returned to Liberia, it was too late. My 2 year old son … up until now we have not found him.

Traveling from one place to another, people I met told me different, yet similar, stories. So I made peace with myself by going to refugee camps and singing to women who had the same problems I had. I would go on UN shows and talk to women. And they would come up to me and say, “Oh I haven’t found my child, either. I am looking for him.”

This song is actually saying, “Where are you? Are you in a forest somewhere? Is it just time for a nap, and you have nowhere to sleep? Is it raining? Is it dry?” You wonder every night what happened to your child. What condition she or he is in. So giving that back to the people through my voice and my dancing and singing, it helped me a lot. Not to forget my problem, but to give me ease with it.

Just telling a story to women and singing a song to the women from camp to camp, I felt so good doing that. Because each time I’d come from the stage, I’d have someone waiting for me to say “Oh my God. I was crying. I couldn’t stop crying because I have the same problem.” And I’m like, oh. I should hold my problem in my pocket and help this person. We have our talent, and we use our talent to help people. We are not therapists, but in our natural way, we can become the therapist to the people. So now I will sing the song for the woman looking for her child, still looking for her child.

Photos: Three Women Share Their Lives: Chorus for Change March 5, 2013

On Tuesday, March 5, 2013, in a packed Philadelphia west side community center, three women, each an accomplished singer and a refugee from the Liberian civil wars, shared their lives through the "Liberian Artists: Changing the World Through Song" performance sponsored by the Philadelphia Folklore Project.

Fatu Gayflor began by introducing the song, “Kweyengeh.” In the Kpelle language, it’s traditionally sung by women whose daughters have left for the Sande Society, an association for the initiation of girls in Liberia and elsewhere in West Africa. Wondering how their child is faring, mothers share their worries and their longing to hold their child once more.

“For me, explained Gayflor, “it is the same as during the war, when people didn’t know where their children were. I was separated from my two-year-old child at that time. And though I’ve been told many stories, I’ve never found out what happened to him. I found that by singing this song, especially to other mothers who experienced the same things, I could tell them they’re not alone.” And together, she went on to say, they could tell the world that war isn’t worth it.

She then sang “Kweyengeh” in such a powerful and open-hearted way that many in the audience of young and old, some in chairs, some sitting on the floor, others squeezed in and standing, were moved to tears.

Chorus for Change performance of "Liberian Artists Changing the World Through Song."  Performers include Fatu Gayflor, Tokay Tomah, Zaye Tete, Marie Nyenabo, and drummer Friday.  Photo Credit: Toni Shapiro-Phim