Halfway through a recent rehearsal, choir director Deb Wald realized her student singers needed to get their groove on. She spotted limp hands and hunched shoulders as singers clapped and swayed to an a cappella refrain.
Then, among the 60-some members of the Martin Luther King Celebration Choir, she noticed ninth-grader Wilima Jebedayo, who clapped and swayed like she meant it in the back row.
Wald called her out front. Wilima, who grew up in Sudan, demurred. The other students chanted her name.
Finally, the girl ran up front and worked up her peers. "You've got it," Wald yelled. "Can you feel the difference?"
The six-year-old choir, a Trollwood Performing Arts School program that supplies music for tonight's annual MLK Celebration at the Fargo Theatre, lures students from the area immigrant community, such as Wilima, who rarely land on, say, Trollwood's main stage musical cast.
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For many, the experience is a prime opportunity to venture into the spotlight from the safety of the back row.
As many as a quarter of this year's choir members, mostly Fargo middle schoolers, didn't grow up in the United States, said choir coordinator Carrie Wintersteen.
Choir directors and music teachers nominate most of the singers, but to bring in minority students, organizers often solicit leads from English Language Learner teachers and counselors.
Wintersteen and Wald said talented non-U.S.-born singers often skip choir and other performing opportunities for a number of reasons. Last year, 16 out of the 20 immigrant choir members relied on volunteers for rides to rehearsal, and more than a few were in charge of baby-sitting younger siblings. Recent arrivals navigating school American-style and brushing up on their English sometimes pass on chances to get involved outside of class.
MLK Choir alumna Atuka Bon started at Fargo's Agassiz Middle School in eighth grade when her family settled here after a stint in New Hampshire. She was one of only a few black students in her class, and, with a childhood spent in Nigeria and at a refugee camp in Benin, her background was radically different from most of her peers'. She kept to herself, rushing home after class.
Then a Liberian-born schoolmate told her about the MLK Choir. "I didn't want to sing at all," recalled Bon, now a freshman at Minnesota State Community and Technical College. "After I did it, I was like, 'Oh, this is kind of fun.' "
Wald recruited her for the Discovery Junior High choir and eventually prodded her to audition for North Dakota's junior high all-state choir. Bon made it. On the bus ride back from the Minot concert, Bon hesitantly opened up about her three years in refugee camp, where she remembers singing a song from the MLK Choir lineup, "We Shall Overcome."
"I just said to myself, 'Oh my goodness,' " Wald said. "And here she is - she just sang in junior high all-state choir."
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Wintersteen says that, like Bon, minority students can be on the shy side at first, but Wald coaxes them out of their shell. The director makes sure they don't cluster with other singers from their home country or region. And everybody gets to audition for solo bits, even if the group has to resort to the insistent chanting that sent Wilima to the front of the choir.
Wilima says she can hardly imagine singing and clapping before 60 of her peers when she arrived in Fargo seven years ago. She struggled with her English and worried about not fitting in. Joining choir in the fourth grade helped her feel more at home in school. And facing the crowd at the Fargo Theatre three years ago was a confidence-booster: "You get really nervous before the show, but once you get into it, it's like, whatever.'"
Readers can reach Forum reporter Mila Koumpilova at (701) 241-5529
