Reflections From the Team Behind the 'Sing Your Heart Out' Project
Inspired by song and fueled by the power of connection
Before the Coronavirus pandemic forced us to socially distance and stay indoors, a group of our dedicated supporters travelled to our visit our program in Rwanda. In collaboration with our program participants, they recorded a beautiful collection of songs in Kinyarwanda, the local language, and English.
Here are the reflections from the team behind this special project.
Brita Fernandez Schmidt
Women for Women International – UK
What inspired you about the project?
I am passionate about finding ways to connect with other humans across cultural, geographical and other identity-related divides and singing creates such a deep connection. The idea that we could come together to sing songs for each other about each other really inspired me.
What is your favorite song and why?
Turashima – the power! The force of women singing about speaking out and silence not being an option! Not an option! The song reminds me of the immense power that resides within us all! It is something that connects us deeply as humans. Singing together made us feel each others’ power! Such joy.
What role do you feel singing plays in bring communities together?
Singing is a powerful force that brings us together, it is a part of storytelling, of spreading joy, of defining our culture, our identity. To learn each other's songs is a way of getting to know each other, to sing them together is to bridge divides!
Dominique Lesourd
Women for Women International Supporter
What inspired you about the project?
What inspired me about our singing project was to explore a new connection with our sisters. The opportunity to travel to Rwanda nourished the idea to sing with them. Being a singer myself, the emotions I feel when I sing are deep and precious. Singing connects to the heart, the soul, the emotions. Singing is about sharing and connecting in whichever language you sing! Singing with our sisters in Rwanda became a very exciting idea. It was for me another way to open my heart and share more naturally.
What is your favorite song and why?
We arrived in Rwanda with a greeting song, Muraho that expressed the happiness of meeting together. We also sang in the choir with our sisters an original song composed by Léon Bailly, Esse Nemeye. This song is very special. It is the translation of a poem, “What if”, written by Zainab Salbi, the founder of Women for Women International a few years ago, a poem that expresses love and resilience and questions forgiveness.
We started to learn to sing the song with our sisters. The following morning I could hear, in the basket weaving workshop, women singing Esse Nemeye on their own. It has become their song…I was so happy! Another song that really strikes me is Turishima, a local Rwandan song that, by the rhythm and the melody, expresses the women fighting spirit. That song carries the women’s drive to turn fears to fierce: “Not an option!"
What role do you feel singing plays in bringing communities together?
What I experienced in Rwanda is unique. Suddenly cultural gaps faded away to leave only joy to sing together. I will never forget the big smiles when our group started to sing in Kinyarwanda, the big hugs we had with our sisters, the happy dances, the vibrant clapping.
We were becoming part of the same community of women. I could feel the women's power and strength through their singing voices.
Singing is a natural expression. It is the foundation of a community, the essence of a group. It celebrates life in all aspects: joy, sadness, love, friendship. It connects people together, it connects to their hearts and souls to share more.
Akaligo
Sing Your Heart Out Project Volunteer
What inspired you about the project?
It is a mutual aid project between women around the world. In my experience, I have observed that in very difficult times, the maternal instinct is stronger than physical and moral depression. The exchange of experiences with each other gives comfort.
What is your favorite song and why?
My favorite song is Pure Water. The song talks about women's rights. By singing it, women will learn their rights.
What role do you feel singing plays in bringing communities together?
Singing together creates strong bonds especially in Rwanda because we still have a strong singing tradition after work to enjoy the result of our labor together.
Léon Bailly
Women for Women International Supporter
What inspired you about the project?
It‘s inspiring me that singing could be a strong educational tool and improve the quality of teaching (English, women's rights) and that it can really heal and bring forgiveness and empathy.
Singing is a way of building self-esteem, strengthening joy, pride, identity, and right of expression.
In the communities we visited, music is not only a support for life but also a platform for expression and self-confidence. We saw the women's joy and pride when the microphones and cameras were turning to them. It's inspiring me also that we could communicate on another emotional level about the connection that exists between people from all around the world.
Singing can bring awareness to the world about the strength, the resilience, and all the great values the Rwandan women carry through their history and daily life. Through singing, we could also go deeper into understanding one another's struggles and hardships.
What is your favorite song and why?
I love the song Wamanawé because it’s a blessing song, and might be an original one from our sister. And because the emotion says everything about hope, about women's fragility and creative potential. It tells us the courage that the women can get to stand in front of a microphone and sing their heart out.
What role do you feel singing plays in bringing communities together?
To sing a great song together, you need the best confidence in yourself, you need me and him, you need to trust in someone else, and listen to him while you are singing at the same time!
We will not change humanity only with singing, but from that singing place, we can start building up "sustainable humanity," based on mutual respect and understanding, and on community sharing. Singing should be the place where freedom, self-confidence and charity begin.
It reveals that you can be yourself truly and freely but in a relationship with one another. You just meet what he needs; shout, cry, hit, express the higher joy, the higher blessing, or the deepest wound. And you do that within your community, and everyone is unified harmonically. When people sing together, they are scientifically reaching a sort of "harmonic collaboration." In that place, in that state, our differences become our greatest human quality.
Aidan O'Neill
Women for Women International Supporter
What inspired you about the project?
With a practice based firmly in the emotive power of the visual, the exploration of sound and singing, pardon the pun, opened my eyes to new pathways of connection and expression.
As an observer and very much a new student to the world of singing, I arrived with an open, inquisitive, yet somewhat skeptical mind. I wasn’t entirely sure where the skepticism came from as when on assignments around the world, I find there is no better way to connect to a community than by attending a ceremony. Sitting with people and engaging in a collective experience triggers a connection that, I at least, can’t articulate.
What role do you feel singing plays in bringing communities together?
People with far superior minds to mine can discuss music's ability to improve brain plasticity or can map neural pathways enhanced by singing. What I can attest to, is a smile, an interlocking of hands, a simple glint in an eye, connection. What I see is a safe place where vulnerabilities are explored without the weight and burden of specific issues.
A place where we recognize ourselves in others. A place where we can allow ourselves to be completed by another and a place where we offer a hand, when we are the ones with strength.
