The Newcastle Peoples Chorus (NPC) celebrated their thirtieth anniversary this year with a gathering of like-minded choirs for an afternoon workshop followed by dinner and a concert at the Sydney Junction Hotel, Beaumont Street, across the road from the Hamilton Railway Station.
STUC sang a bracket of their own:
Makhosikazi
Let There Be Peace
Railway Refreshment Rooms
You Gotta Go Down And Join The Union
A combined choir of all choirs present sang:
What’s That I Hear
Power in a Union
Stand Together
Four Strong Women
Way Old Friends Do
Solidarity Forever
There was a breakfast at 10am the next morning for those still in Newcastle, at the Honeysuckle Pub on the harbour.
After a recording session on Sunday morning the 20th of May, and some solid revision, we adjourned to the Old Canberra Inn for an afternoon concert and first formal airing of our repertoire. We sang two brackets to a gathering of the Canberra Friends of Dili and other friends:
Words: Billy Bragg
Melody: George Frederick Root, 1861
Arranged: Christine Evans
There Is Power In A Union, is an American Civil War tune with a new set of words – these by Billy Bragg. Today everywhere you look anti-worker governments are attacking the principle of collective bargaining. Bragg’s song may have been a response to Thatcherism in Britain, but the song worked equally well when we sang it on the picket lines for the Maritime Union Workers during the lock-out of 1998.
Lyrics:
There is power in a factory, power in the land.
Power in the hand of the worker;
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don’t stand.
There is power in a union!
Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers’ blood.
Mistakes of the bosses we must pay for!
From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud,
War has always been the bosses way sir.
[chorus]
The union forever, defending our rights!
Down with the blackleg!
The workers unite!
With our brothers and our sisters in many far-off lands
There is power in a union!
Now I long for the morning that they realise
Brutality and unjust laws will not defeat us.
But who’ll defend the workers who cannot organise
When the bosses send their lackeys out to cheat us?
Money speaks for money, the Devil for his own.
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?
What a comfort to the widow!
A light to the child!
There is power in a union!
Words by João Cabral De Mello Neto
Music by Chico Buarque, 1967
Arranged by Ricardo Andino, 1988
When a military coup in 1964 plunged Brazil into a long period of repression the already grim life of peasant workers worsened considerably. The army ruled in the best interests of a tiny class of landowners whose ears were deaf to the popular outcry for justice. Soldiers and police made sure that land reform activists lived short and painful lives.
This piece was composed by exiled dissidents for an international theatre festival held in France in the mid-sixties. João Cabral De Mello Neto and Chico Buarque express the sarcastic views of a wealthy Brazilian land owner on the subject of agrarian reform.
Lyrics
Esta cova em que estás
Em palmos medida
É a conta menor
Que tiraste em vida
É de bom tamanho
Nem largo nem fundo
É a parte que te cabe
Deste latifúndio
Não é cova grande
É cova medida
É a terra que querias
Ver dividida
É uma cova grande
P’ra teu pouco defunto
Mas estarás mais ancho
Que estavas no mundo
É uma cova grande
P’ra teu defunto parco
Porém mais que no mundo
Te sentirás largo
É uma cova grande
P’ra tua carne pouca
Mas a terra dada
Não se abre a boca
Translation
This grave that you’re in,
Measured in hand-spans,
Is the paltry amount
You got out of life.
It’s of good size,
Not too long or deep.
It’s your share
Of this large estate.
It’s not a big grave,
It’s a measured grave.
It’s the land that you wanted
To see divided up.
It’s a big grave
For your little corpse,
But you’ll have more scope here
Than you ever did in life.
It’s a big grave
For your meagre corpse.
You’ll feel you can walk tall,
More than you ever could in life.
It’s a big grave
For your little flesh,
And the land’s been granted now
So don’t open your mouth.
Words & Melody: Maurie Mulheron
Arrangement: Tom Bridges
Four women, of the Seeds of Hope Ploughshares group, provided the inspiration for this song when, angered by their government selling Hawk jet fighters to Indonesia for use against East Timor, they infiltrated a British Aerospace factory and used hammers to destroy the aircraft. This was in 1996.
They left a video they had made in the cockpit of the plane they destroyed. The video included some excerpts from a John Pilger documentary which showed eyewitnesses giving testimonies of Hawks attacking East Timorese villages. The video also included the four women talking about why they were taking action and why they thought the Hawk sales were immoral and illegal.
After leaving the video in the cockpit they then telephoned the police to surrender. In court they faced a possible ten year sentence if convicted but they argued that they had committed the crime in order to prevent a greater one being committed – that of genocide. Although this defence is almost never successful, after the jury had seen the video, and heard the evidence from Jose Ramos Horta, John Pilger and the women themselves, they acquitted the four strong women.
Lyrics:
It took a hammer, an act of love
To turn that jet Hawk into a dove.
It took some courage, it took some strength
To stop that fighter from dealing death.
Into the hangar, into the plane
Now use your hammer to stop the pain.
There’s steady breathing as your work starts
Four strong women, four beating hearts.
You sang of justice, you rang the bell
You drove your hammer through Timor’s hell.
You won your freedom but you won more
You stopped a death plane from making war.
Four strong women with hammers high
Beating ploughshares for a peaceful sky,
They know the struggle, they know the cause:
Whoever profits keeps making wars.
Words: James Oppenheim, 1912
Melody: Mimi Fariña 1976
Arranged: Tom Bridges 1994
Throughout the history of the textile industry women have been employed for very low wages. In 1912 during a massive strike in Lawrence Massachusetts a woman mill-worker carried a placard which read We Want Bread! And Roses Too!! The strike not only won important concessions from the wool companies, it also inspired James Oppenheim to write the poem Bread And Roses. Various tunes have been used over the years to sing the work, we use one by Mimi Fariña, as arranged by Tom Bridges.
Lyrics
As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts grey
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses.
For the people here are singing ‘Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!’
As we come marching, marching we battle too for men
For they are in the struggle and together we shall win!
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew
Yes, it is bread that we fight for, but we fight for roses too!
As we come marching, marching we’re standing proud and tall!
The rising of the women means the rising of us all.
No more the drudge and idler – ten that toil where one reposes
But a sharing of life’s glories! ‘Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!
Words: Francisco Borja da Costa (1946-1975)
Music: Traditional Maubere / Abilio de Araujo
Additional bass and soprano harmonies: Jean-Anne Jones
An hour over the ocean from Darwin lies the betrayed nation of East Timor. Although drawn unwillingly into World War II the people of East Timor assisted the uninvited Australian troops against the Japanese assault and paid a hideous price. Their reward was thirty more years of foreign rule by the fascist government of Portugal, a few days of independence, and another generation of genocide under blood-soaked General Soeharto. In 1975 the Australian government had the power, merely by protesting, to prevent the Indonesian invasion and the subsequent loss of 200,000 East Timorese lives, but instead it chose silence – the chill silence of mass graves.
We want very much to dedicate our East Timorese songs to the memory of our friend and comrade Michele Turner, whose voice was never silent, but courageous and passionate during the many years she made a determined outcry for East Timor’s freedom.
This song (and Foho Ramelau) come from the independence struggle of East Timor. The lyrics of both were written by Francisco Borja da Costa, a leader of the Fretilin forces resisting Portugal’s colonisation of East Timor who was killed in 1975 on the day his independent country fell to a new enemy, Indonesia.
Consistent with Timorese decorum, Kolelemai is an obliquely framed but nevertheless firm condemnation of the impoverishment brought by foreign rule. It has a traditional Timorese folk tune in two parts, with additional bass and soprano harmonies by the Solidarity Choir’s Jean-Anne Jones.
Translation:
Why does your corn not grow?
Why doesn’t your rice sprout?
Who causes your empty stomachs?
Who causes your never ending sweat?
[chorus] Who is responsible? Who is to blame?
Some say it’s because you’re lazy and stupid.
Some say it’s because you’re lazy and poor.
What is the cause of it? Who is responsible?
Lyrics:
Sá sá ha’ a nalo ó batar la fulin, kôlele mai.
Sá sá ha’ a nalo ó hare la burit, kôlele mai.
Se se ha’ a nalo ó kabun la bosu, kôlele mai.
Se se ha’ a nalo ó kosar la maran, kôlele mai.
[chorus]
Kolê lele mai rade kokodelê, kôlele mai.
Kolê lele mai rade kokodelê,
Kôle hele laloi kôlele mai.
Balu dehan ó baruk, balu katak ó beik, kôlele mai.
Balu raak ó baruk, balu katak ó tiak, kôlele mai.
Sá sá sá maka halo, se se se los se, kôlele mai.
Sá sá sá maka halo, se se se los se, kôlele mai.
Words: Francisco Borja da Costa (1946-1975)
Music: Traditional Maubere / Abilio de Araujo
Additional harmonies: Jean-Anne Jones
An hour over the ocean from Darwin lies the betrayed nation of East Timor. Although drawn unwillingly into World War II the people of East Timor assisted the uninvited Australian troops against the Japanese assault and paid a hideous price. Their reward was thirty more years of foreign rule by the fascist government of Portugal, a few days of independence, and another generation of genocide under blood-soaked General Soeharto. In 1975 the Australian government had the power, merely by protesting, to prevent the Indonesian invasion and the subsequent loss of 200,000 East Timorese lives, but instead it chose silence – the chill silence of mass graves.
We want very much to dedicate our East Timorese songs to the memory of our friend and comrade Michele Turner, whose voice was never silent, but courageous and passionate during the many years she made a determined outcry for East Timor’s freedom.
This song (and Kolelemai) come from the independence struggle of East Timor. The lyrics of both were written by Francisco Borja da Costa, a leader of the Fretilin forces resisting Portugal’s colonisation of East Timor who was killed in 1975 on the day his independent country fell to a new enemy, Indonesia.
Foho Ramelau is an invocation of East Timor’s highest mountain, Mt Ramelau, which shelters and symbolises the people’s resistance to foreign occupation. It has a traditional Timorese folk tune in two parts, with additional bass and soprano harmonies by the Solidarity Choir’s Jean-Anne Jones.
Translation:
Hey, Mount Ramelau! What is higher than your peak? What is greater than your majesty?
Why, Timor, is your head forever bowed? Why, Timor, are your children enslaved? Why, Timor, do your children doze like chickens? Why, Timor, do your children doze like slaves?
Open your eyes, a new sun is over your village. Open your eyes, a new sun is over your land.
Awake! The foot of the mountain is wide. Awake! A new sun has risen. Awake! Take the reigns of your own horse, Awake! Take command of your own land!
Lyrics:
Eh! Foho Ramelau, Foho Ramelau eh!
Sábé ás liu ó tutun, sábé bein liu ó lolon eh!
Tan sá timur ulun sudur uai-uain?
Tan sá timur oan ata uai-uain?
Tan sá timur oan hakruk bei-beik?
Tan sá timur oan atan bei-beik?
Loke matan loro foun to’ o iha ó knuak
Loke matan loro foun iha ita rain.
Hader rai-hun mutin ona lá!
Hader loro foun sa’ e ona lá!
Hader kaer rasik kuda talin eh!
Hader ukun rasik ita rain eh!
Australian Union and Solidarity Choir Tour, Timor Leste 2018
Choir at rehearsal, Feb 2018
TIMOR BOUND!
Singers from across Australia, collectively known as the Australian Union and Solidarity Choir are travelling to Timor Leste in August and September 2018 to participate in the Popular Consultation Day commemoration in Dili. We aim to fortify friendships with Timorese towns and villages and share the joy of song.
On the ground in Dili, we will be performing with local choirs, artists and dance troupes to forge cultural bonds and friendships. We will be sharing songs which inspire community links and salute the Tetum songs of the Timorese people. We’ll connect with Dili and Timorese choirs, learning new songs to bring back, participate in workshops and deepen our artistic friendship with one of our closest neighbours.
Over the last 2 decades, a number of choristers in the current group have combined to participate in the Festival Internacional de Coros tour to Cuba (twice), pan-New Zealand union concerts and Europe.
Many choristers have already experienced wonderfully moving Timorese cultural events. They have learnt about the struggle of Timor through the inclusion of Timor Leste independence songs into their repertoires. Groups from all over Australia such as the Canberra Union Voices, Illawarra Union Singers, Newcastle People’s Chorus, Melbourne’s Victorian Trade Union Choir, Brisbane Combined Unions Choir, Grass Roots of Tasmania and Western Australian Working Voices have all participated with active support for Timor Leste’s independence.
Solidarity Choir has had long-term inspirational involvement with the Timorese in Sydney. They invited Solidarity Choir to sing at Sydney Town Hall Square with Jose Ramos Horta on the occasion of his early public speech in the 1990s.
In 2005 Midnight Oil with Peter Garrett assembled a combined Timorese community choir and singers from Solidarity Choir to record a melancholy song: Ko Le Le Mai.
The choir supported book launches and rallies in song during the decade leading up to the Referendum and continues to sing for aid groups today, in events such as the annual Palms charity at Catholic University in Strathfield.
Further support has been given through song at vigils, marches and outside the UN office whilst our government weighed up its decision to send assistance to Timor post-election. Solidarity members shared the many high spots of singing in solidarity and the sorrow of ongoing tragedy for Timorese friends.
The choir is presently communicating with groups established by Australian communities to develop sister city relationships which give aid and professional exchange with Timor towns and people, in consultation with Abel Guterres, H.E. the Ambassador of Timor-Leste in Australia and his staff. These groups include Friends of Dili, Friends of Maliana, Friends of Remeixo and Friends of Hato Builico
Projects of the Australian Union and Solidarity Choir:
⦁ a songbook to distribute to Timorese students and friends, with lyrics from songs of social justice and reconciliation in English, Tetum, Darug and Pacific languages. Similar songbooks have previously proved a hit on choir tours to non-English speaking countries.
⦁ engaging expert Tetum translators in Australia and Dili to ensure the poetry of the song lyrics are captured in this songbook. It is hoped that these sensitive translations will enhance our cultural connections and strengthen relations with our Timorese neighbours.
Our visit has the twin aims of boosting tourism into Timor whilst building bridges into Australia for Timorese culture and we are hopeful that our friends from progressive politics and other social justice advocates may consider assisting the project with material practicalities or with referrals for contact persons.
Please contact Fran McIlroy 0466 287 230 or Mark Westcott 0400285974 or visit australianunionchoir.wordpress.com
The details of our events in Timor will continue to evolve even as they occur. This schedule covers only events for the choir as a whole. Individual choristers will have their own plans for before and after this schedule.
Schedule
Friday and Saturday 24-25 August
Fran and Mark arrive in Dili and make initial contacts
10am APHEDA office with Elizabeth Araujo
Working Women’s Centre office
more
Sunday 26 August
While most choristers arrive a small group of us are available to meet:
Working Women’s Centre
Local choirs
Monday 27 August
10am first briefing meeting and practice at Knua Buka Hatene (To Be Confirmed)
Australian Union Choir 