URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Winter_2015_Melissa-McCarthy

“Music—singing in particular—is a basic human right. It is something that even oppressive regimes cannot take from an individual.” -Mark Conley

sleeping bags... The ground was rock hard, but I knew it wasn’t going to make a bit of difference that night. Five days after landing in Africa for the first time, I found myself in one of the remotest parts of the continent, sleeping as a guest of an absent chief in a village I did not know. Choir training tomorrow.” He worked with the choir in the village, stayed overnight, left the next morning and hiked to the next village with guide and translator, Joe. This became Conley’s routine as the visiting choral director for the people of the Manda Wilderness, ultimately traveling to 15 of 16 villages in the region and working with as many choirs. One of his final trip entries, from the last village, Mala, offers yet another tiny glimpse of the vast cultural divide: “Joe and Andrew [Conley’s guides] are stunned when they learn that URI has 16,000 students… They shake their heads as I tell them the University has its own housing, many school buildings, its own police force, places for people to eat, etc. Andrew is trying to figure out where the money comes from for me to get paid, and I try to explain how a university works and how students sign up for classes.” At the end of his time working with the individual village choirs, Conley helped organize the festival. After the event, he put on a workshop for the local choral directors, exploring issues they faced and new ideas to incorporate in making music.

Mark Conley, professor of music and director of choral activities

In hindsight, Conley says the result wasn’t so much a transformation because music already plays such an integral role in the life of the Manda Wilderness people. The music would be there regardless of whether he had set foot in the villages. Instead, the work that he did with the individual choirs and the festival production represented an opportunity to share knowledge. He says he is excited that some of the choirmasters who composed songs for the festival will have their songs published by earthsongs, an Oregon based publisher of world music. “This is an example of the economic activity the arts produce—an endlessly renewable resource that does not involve any exploitation of the land or its inhabitants, bringing new money into the area,” Conley explains. “In the developed world

they might not have been able to witness otherwise. His students have performed some of the songs and dances. Looking back, Conley contemplates the totality of the entire experience, noting it is impossible to truly live in another culture and not feel innate change. He says it is difficult to find the words to explain without reaching for clichés that ultimately fail to measure up to the magnitude. He recalls, in particular, the most moving experience of arriving at a village and hearing children singing the song he had brought with him to teach to the choirs. People, especially children, sang this same song to him wherever he was, whether getting off a boat in the village of Cobué, hiding from police (a story, he says, for another day), or following him on a path. “It looks as if I brought a song that may become part of the folk repertoire there,” Conley says. “And that is more than enough for anyone to dare hope for.”

this goes unnoticed, but there it is, a burgeoning field with great potential for economic advancement.” He also brought the music of the Manda Wilderness people back to Rhode Island. Conley has shared videos of musical concepts with his students that

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