Music to the ears

Musician/composer Shlomo Gronich's recalls that one of his childhood dreams was to be part of a UNESCO team. "I wanted to find new tribes and communicate with them through music," he explains. "Since I still like to erase borders - between eastern and western cultures, religious and secular people, "black" and "white" nations, even between modern and classical music - establishing the Sheba Choir was really my way of creating a dialogue."

Gronich's first meeting with the Ethiopian children who were later to become the Sheba Choir happened quite by chance. One day in the late 1980s, a producer from Israel TV called and said, "We're doing an entire day of programs about Jews from Ethiopia who now live in Israel. Would you like to take part and make some music together?" The producer told Gronich that forty Ethiopian children were in the TV studio, and invited him to come and meet them.

"I immediately jumped in my car and drove to the studio," recollects Gronich, whose compositions encompass film scores, music for theater and ballet, serious, popular and rock pieces. "The children were very shy and giggled when they saw me. They lowered their eyes and were quiet. I wanted to communicate with them, but realized that communication had to be made differently. So I lowered my eyes as they did, and spoke to them as they spoke to me. I asked them to sing for me, but first, to put them at ease and lighten the atmosphere, I sang for them. Afterwards, very carefully, one by one, I chose six children." Those six children became the nucleus of the Sheba Choir.

Gronich hired a minibus to pick up the children from school every day and bring themto his home to rehearse a repertoire. The choir's first songs were "The Stork Song" and "The Journey", composed by Gronich and set to lyrics by Israeli poet Haim Idissis. Now, ten years later, they remain Sheba's most popular numbers; but before writing them, Gronich knew little about the children's home lives and culture. So he supplied them with tape recorders, and asked them to bring examples of Ethiopian music from home.

"When I entered into this sea of Ethiopian music," Gronich explains, "I found it different from anything I knew. It does not resemble African music, but is based on a five note, "pentatonic" scale. It is usually sung in unison in very high-pitched voices, with words articulated at lightning speed over the "heartbeat" of a drum - a kind of music that is not easy for the Western ear to grasp. I immersed myself in it, and once I understood its essence, I began writing on my own.""The Stork Song" tells the story of large flocks of storks which migrate every year from Europe, passing over Jerusalem on their way to warmer climes. Tradition has it that as the storks flew over Ethiopia, the Jewish children there would sing a song to them: "Oh stork, oh stork, how is our city of Jerusalem?" These words, in the original Amharic - the language spoken in Ethiopia - are incorporated into Gronich's composition.

The second song he wrote, "The Journey", has no connection to traditional Ethiopian music, says Gronich, yet it has become the most popular song of their repertoire, and has even been adopted as the unofficial hymn of the Ethiopian community in Israel. Its moving lyrics tell the story of their exodus from Ethiopia, their trek through the desert of Sudan, and the hardships and fears they faced on their journey to Israel. Performing both in Israel and abroad to sold-out audiences, the choir has accumulated many awards and fine reviews. However, says choir manager Dalya Meidan, "we always bear in mind that these children are just teenagers, that they go to school and have other responsibilities and commitments. For this reason, our tours are limited to holidays, or short periods when school work can easily be made up."

The members of the choir view participation as a boost to their self-confidence and as their way of contributing something to the Ethiopian community in Israel. Sara Malasa, 14, comes from a family of nine children and has sung with the choir for three years. She enjoys the choir's extracurricular activities. "Whenever we go somewhere, either in Israel or on tour, Dalya and Shlomo plan some fun activity, like a museum visit, or a barbeque on the beach." The best "extra" to date, according to Sara, was during the last tour, when the choir visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. "There was so much popular music to listen to there," she enthuses, "and so many beautiful costumes and pictures. It was incredible!"

Yitzhak Ambarabar, 14, is the youngest of seven boys in a family of nine, and a six-year veteran with the choir. Succinctly summing up his singing and solo dancing activities with Sheba, he relates, "Without the choir, I would not have anything special in my life. I think I speak for everyone when I say that the choir gives us a great deal of fun. Even more important is that Shlomo, who has created this wonderful choir, composes beautiful music which represents us and our community to the world."