The Liberian Women's Chorus for Change Pop-up Concert at Bluebell Triangle Park

The Liberian Women's Chorus for Change is a group of renowned musicians that performs traditional and newly-composed songs to inspire dialogue and action around gender violence. They will perform a pop-up concert at Philadelphia's Bluebell Triangle Park.

This program is part of the Center-funded Chorus for Change project, through which the Philadelphia Folklore Project works closely with local Liberian artists to develop "pop-up" public performances that interpret the Liberian immigrant experience through music and song. Chorus members Fatu Gayflor, Marie Nyenabo, Zaye Tete, and Tokay Tomah are singers, dancers, and songwriters who lost their children to war, and asked soldiers, though music, to lay down their weapons. All are now residents of the Philadelphia area.

Philadelphia is home to some 35,000 Liberians, including many immigrants who have experienced war, loss, and displacement in recent years. These pop-up performances take place in identified areas where Liberians live and gather, including shopping centers, cab stands, and churches. The Chorus for Change gives talented women in this community the agency and wherewithal to openly discuss these histories with their fellow Liberians, as well as related issues of domestic and gender violence, through forms in which they have fluency, bringing tradition to the forefront in an unexpected way. The project is a concentrated effort to forge dialogue between genders and generations about violence in Liberian history, and to encourage others to share their own stories, with the potential to inspire meaningful social change.

The rain date for this event will be June 28.