Catalyst of song: The African Children's Choir brings its lively and inspirational tour to New Mexico

The African Children’s Choir is celebrating 40 years of bringing joy to audiences throughout the country.

Its current tour has several stops in New Mexico this month, including Rio Rancho on Friday, Jan. 17, and Albuquerque on Sunday, Jan. 19.

Choir manager Tina Sipp has been with the group for 21 years. It has been a labor of love for Sipp to watch the children excel musically, socially and mentally.

“I think it’s a very good show,” Sipp said. “It’s very entertaining. It’s very energetic. They dance the whole time. They just work it out. And this choir is honestly pretty exceptional. They’re one of the best I’ve seen and they’re all good. They just have energy and they just kill it. And this choir is very good on stage.”

This year’s choir is made up of nine girls and eight boys, with ages ranging from 8 to 10. The children are from Uganda and were selected to be part of the choir based on need.

“We go into different communities where we have worked for years,” Sipp said. “We go into neighborhoods where we have contacts and programs, and we will let our contacts there know that we have (an audition).”

For lack of a better word, Sipp uses the word “audition” to describe the search for African children to join the choir and added it is not a talent search.

“We can teach the children anything that they need to know for the program,” she explained. “It’s really quite amazing. They come in and in six months time, they’re not speaking English when we get them and then in six months, they’re speaking English, taking school in English, and memorizing an 80-minute program, singing and dancing. It’s incredible.”

During the audition period, Sipp and her team learn more about different families in the African communities who have brought their children to possibly be part of the choir.

“We are finding out about the different families in the community who have brought their children to this audition, and we’re looking for the families who are so impoverished that they can’t afford even a government school, because you need a uniform and you need to provide your own pencils and paper, and that is beyond the means of the families that we’re working with,” Sipp explained. “That’s the family we’re looking for. Their child might have had one term of school, but then there’s no money for the next term. There’s tens of thousands of children that are left out of education and so our goal is to try to help educate as many as we can, because if there’s one person in a family that’s educated, it helps their family.”

Educating children in the choir creates a ripple effect that has a positive impact on their families, according to Sipp.

“We’ve helped educate over 59,000 children in the last 40 years,” she added. “... I just get excited about telling the story, because I think that there’s so few times in our lives where we get to do something profound, in the truest definition of profound. And when we invest in one of these lives, the trajectory of that life and that family’s life is 180 degrees, it’s profound. This is not just helping children get a little education for this year, this is a profound change, of course, for multiple people.”

Once a child is selected to be part of the choir, the child is educated through college.

“Once they’re in the choir, that’s our promise to them, is that we will educate you all the way through university level or post-secondary, whatever some of them want to go do, (maybe) a skill. Not all of them will go to a university. Many of them do, but they find their niche, and then we’re sponsoring that all the way through their course of study.”

Prior to touring, children come to the choir’s base in Entebbe, Uganda, for training. The children remain at the base for a year to receive schooling that will bring them up to the learning level needed for them to tour. Their schooling continues while they are on tour. When they return from tour, they enter a primary or secondary school and later pursue a skill or career through higher education.

“We have them for just a few short months, but what happens in that few months is vision,” Sipp said. “They’re staying with different host families in different parts of the country. They’re being introduced to horseback riding and fishing, and they go to the art museum and they go to a zoo. They go to all these different places, have all these different experiences. They talk to these different families. They see how they do life. And then our staff, of course, is with them every day, and we’re a faith based organization, and so we are mentoring them and this is the other thing I love talking about, because there’s one thing about educating the mind, it’s a whole other thing to educate the heart, and that’s what we get to do.”

Many of the children return when they are older to be part of the choir staff.

“The children I toured with the very first time back in 2003, now I’m working with them,” Sipp said. “They’re coming out to be chaperones and to be mentors. I’ve seen the whole cycle. I (work with) them as seven-year-olds, and now they’re in their late 20s, and they’re giving back and they become these beautiful young people. We could never thank our host churches and our host families enough, because they allow us to do this. They allow us to provide these opportunities for these children. It changes everything.”