Traveller's Tales - Not many degrees of separation

Published in 2009 by David Kay

The other day I went home at lunch time for some decent coffee. I was listening to Radio Australia. For years I have been madly in love with Isabelle Genoux’s voice. Isabelle has been there for me in PNG, Samoa and now East Timor. She was interviewing someone from a choir in Melbourne who at the time was visiting East Timor. The woman’s name is Theresa. Some of you will know her. She and her partner run The Boite in North Fitzroy.

Theresa and her ten colleagues belong to a community choir called Thursday’s Children. They rehearse every Thursday night at the All Saints Church in Carlton. They are not children. For East Timor they call themselves Thursday’s Voices because the East Timorese think they are a choir of children otherwise. Their tour of East Timor is to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the popular referendum which voted for independence.

We have our own choir in Dili. Our choir in Dili rehearses on Wednesday nights. But we don’t call ourselves Wednesday’s Voices. In fact we don’t call ourselves anything. We are a no name choir. We don’t give performances. We just sing for ourselves really. There are all sorts of people in our choir. A photo journalist is our choirmaster. The Australian ambassador and his wife are members. There is a nun (who is a sister of a very famous and wonderful singer/songwriter in Australia). There is a lawyer who works for the International Organisation for Migration. There are various people from donor funded projects and NGOs. There are a group of young Timorese men and woman with sublime voices. On a big night there are about eighteen of us. Usually there are around 12. As well as Timorese there are Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, Welsh, French, Phillipino, Irish and maybe some whose nationalities I have not found out. The photo below is not our choir, but it is some singing.

Workshop participants singing

We don’t have a huge repertoire, but it is varied. It ranges from Teddy Bears Picnic, through some spirituals, to Summertime (which is a bit difficult for us really). There are two songs that we do really well. Sister my Sister and Taku Mana (that’s a Maori song). But you’ll never get to hear us. However, Theresa, from Thursday’s Children/Voices has heard us. She is probably one of only ten people who have. The other nine are also members of Thursday’s Children/Voices.
We knew of their visit some time ago and made arrangements for them to join us one Wednesday night. The general idea was that they would sing some songs for us, we would sing for them and then we would teach each other one of our songs. We decided it should be done over pizza and wine. We selected four songs to sing and practiced them over the preceding weeks. On the Big Night we practiced them again before our guests arrived. We had decided to sing Sister my Sister, Taku Mana, Steal Away and You’ll Never Walk Alone (do you remember Gerry and the Pacemakers? – I do).

In true Timor Leste style, they arrived late. The pizza delivery boy was the Australian Ambassador. So the visitors sang a beautiful Tokelauan song for us and I think another song and then we stopped for pizza and wine.

Then it was our turn. But before that our Timorese members wanted to sing a Timorese welcome song. Now you have to know that these Timorese boys are some singers. They sing together in a church choir and have also travelled to Australia to sing. They hire themselves out for functions around Dili. They are seriously serious singers with voices to match. We were all in raptures over their song. It was the first time we had heard them sing alone. I think one of them – Heilio - can sing everything from soprano to bass. So now we really had something to live up to.

We sang a couple of songs – three I think and our visitors were suitable impressed. I thought we sounded good too. Then they taught us an Australian song written by an indigenous man and an African freedom fighters song to which they had added a verse about Timor Leste.

When we sang together it made up a choir of well over twenty people- probably closer to 30. For the visitors, the men said it was the first time they had sung with such a large group of men (there were only two of them and about eight of us). So it sounded pretty good.

I was chatting during the night to the visitors. They were all from Melbourne and most of them lived around Brunswick, Nth Fitzroy and Northcote. So we had lots in common. One of the women was staying on after the tour for a bit of a holiday. She had previously worked in Timor Leste.

The weekend after our sing off was a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the referendum. An Australian received the Timor Leste Medal of Honour for his work in Australia, Indonesia and Timor Leste in supporting the liberation struggle. He is the husband of a woman I work with in Dili. I was invited to a celebration party after the weekend. The party was held at a tennis club (there is one in Dili) and was attended by a few Australians and lots of Timorese. There were some dignitaries there from Australia and East Timor (including our pizza delivery man and his wife).

The medal recipient mentioned the names of a number of people who had been part of the liberation struggle – including some of the Australians. One was a name I recognised well – in fact one of these travelling tales recipients. However, it was someone I have known professionally, but never met. When I looked around the only candidate was sitting next to a woman from the Melbourne choir. So I greeted her and asked if the man next to her was this person. He was and she was his wife. Once again, the seven degrees of separation has been reduced to about point 5.

In fact, there is very little separation in Dili. I was watching football at a bar the other afternoon. I overheard a conversation next to me. A group of Australians were talking about Swan Hill and going to school at Swan Hill. So I interrupted and asked if they were talking about Swan Hill Tech. One of the men had been a student there. I asked when. He left in 1976. I taught there in 1975. I might have taught him. The conversation, naturally enough, moved to football. He used to be an umpire he told me in Swan Hill. So was I. At the same time. Then he mentioned going away to Singapore for his fiftieth birthday last weekend. I asked when his birthday was. Same day as mine.

I’m messing up the sequence. Back to the dulcet tones of Isabelle. Just as I was about to leave after my coffee she announced that she would be doing a telephone interview from Dili with a visiting choir from Melbourne. Well, coincidences are one thing, but there could not be more than one visiting choir from Melbourne at the same time in Dili. Isabelle was interviewing Theresa from the Melbourne choir.

When Isabelle asked about their performances in Dili, our Melbourne visitors said the highlight for them to that point has been the night they sang with a local choir.

So if there is anyone out there looking for a choir from Dili I think we will make our pizza boy our musical agent. I am told they teach pizza making in Swan Hill by the way.