Wednesday Folk Traditions
Amandla
Community Chorus
July 8 at 6:30 pm
HADLEY, MA. -The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum continues the 28th season of its Wednesday Folk Traditions Concert Series on July 8, 2009 with a performance by Amandla. Based in Greenfield, Massachusetts, this multi-voiced choir specializes in songs of freedom, peace, and justice from South Africa, Japan, Vietnam, Croatia and elsewhere around the world. With the concert fittingly falling just after Independence Day weekend, the group will perform their own brand of freedom songs in a historic setting.
No less an authority than legendary folk singer and activist Pete Seeger has said of the group, “If you have not heard Amandla, you are in for a treat!” The group has performed with Seeger at Lincoln Center, and has also performed for Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Cesar Chavez, in addition to singing at the bedsides of the dying and for inmates in maximum-security prisons.
Considering themselves to be activists first and singers second, Amandla is a community chorus that sings to celebrate life, and also to reflect and articulate pressing social concerns. They simultaneously enlighten and entertain, encouraging the audience to join them in finding liberation through song. Amandla sings in a number of the languages of South Africa—including Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho—as well as other languages from around the world, and they use this multi-lingual aesthetic as a means of facilitating cross-cultural appreciation and understanding.
The WEDNESDAY FOLK TRADITIONS concert series continues July 15 with MarKamusic, performing songs with roots in the folkloric, pop and traditional genres of Latin and South America. From the Andes to the Amazon and Caribbean, they weave ancient, modern, aboriginal, and popular themes and rhythms that call out to the senses of our collective human memory and to the doors of our ancient hearts.
The concerts are funded, in part, with generous support from People’s Bank, Easthampton Savings Bank, Gage-Wiley & Co., MicroCal, LLC, and Western Massachusetts Electric Company, and many other local businesses.
The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is located at 130 River Drive (Route 47) in Hadley, two miles north of the junction of Routes 9 and 47. The Museum is open for guided tours Saturday through Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and by appointment. For further information about the tours and the WEDNESDAY FOLK TRADITIONS series, call the Museum at (413) 584-4699.
