Word: choir
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...author and his cast sweating to please a live audience, which hoots its disapproval of the naughty characters and its delight at all that vigor. Also, the shows are musicals, and it's during the singing that they really soar--Dreamgirls meets the Ebenezer Baptist Church choir, and the congregation's spirits raise the roof...
...some of the hardships of the past endure. Running water and electricity remain an ambition for thousands. Unemployment is 40%. Crime and drug addiction still thrive, and AIDS has decimated the population. Bryer says several of the choir members are HIV positive; many others are the sole breadwinners for extended families that include several AIDS orphans. Even if it had the money to flaunt its success, the choir decided early on not to do so, but instead to channel its energy and fund-raising abilities toward community projects, particularly the choir's own AIDS orphan foundation, Vukani. "We couldn...
Soweto's difficulties still provide the choir's musical inspiration. Soprano Fikile Sidumo, 34, saw one uncle shot dead in the street when she was a teenager, and another uncle died of AIDS in November. Before joining the choir in 2003, she earned just $25 a month from singing and dancing at weddings - not enough to support the three families living in her shack in the dirt-poor township of Alexandra, near Soweto. The choir, which pays members a day rate of $20 per rehearsal, seemed the answer to her prayers, until she collapsed during a performance and was diagnosed...
...large gatherings were forbidden. Church became the only place where blacks and coloreds could meet in numbers. Gospel music, with its themes of hope, strength and redemption, became their only legal form of protest and their only means of escape. "We sang to keep going," says Lucas Bok, the choir's musical director. "Singing was the only way to express yourself." That need spurred the creation of hundreds of gospel choirs in Soweto - the massive talent pool from which Mulovhedzi drew his recruits...
...million is emerging as the bedrock of South Africa's new black middle class. Clapboard shanty towns are being replaced by neat rows of brick and tile bungalows. BMWs and Mercedes are a common sight. And last September saw the opening of a vast steel and glass mall. The choir's success reflects Soweto's new dawn. "Soweto is a place of change," says Bok, "and the choir walks hand in hand with Soweto...