It Takes a Village

THE CHORUS LINE: (clockwise from top left) Yelena Forrester, Sibelan Forrester, Mary Kalyna, Anne Ehrhart, Kimberly Fedchak, Laura Howson and Leela Ehrhart of Svitanya.

The seven women in this Swarthmore choir unite for a common, but unique, purpose.

by Mary Armstrong

Two Russian-language teachers, a community activist, a biochemist, a banker and two high school kids walk into a concert hall it sure sounds like the start of a joke. What would these women—who range in age from 50-ish down to their teens—have in common?

The sounds of Eastern Europe have seduced each of the seven women in Svitanya, the Balkan a capella choir based in Swarthmore.

There is a complexity of harmony in this type of music that sometimes borders on dissonance. Some rhythms are so compelling you wonder why you don't know how to do that circle dance. Sibelan Forrester, a professor of Russian at Swarthmore by day and dramatic interpreter of Eastern European songs by night, explains why a chorister might prefer this style of music to the smoother, more polished Western styles.

"The Eastern European music we sing is unusual in that all the parts are good. Even if you are stuck on the F [maintaining more or less the same note throughout an entire song], as I often am, even that has interest, the pleasure of hearing the intervals with the other parts. But usually all the parts are melodically interesting." Forrester says Svitanya is unusual because all members of the group can sing all the parts, and no one is relegated to the Slavic equivalent of the doowah chorus.

Try the MP3 samples on svitanya.org to hear the effect: Pure, unaccompanied voices rising and resounding as one. It's angelic. A look at the translations of the lyrics reveals the earthy qualities and supernatural undertones often associated with folk music—songs of leaving home forever, work, courting and rebellion. In "Sabrali Sa Se Sabrali," three maids take a little nap in the field; one awakes robbed of her necklace, the next her belt and the final one is missing her dress. The angels have muddy wings, perhaps?

"Some are working songs, strong rhythms to be heard through loudness—pulling together in rhythm is more fun and efficient," says Forrester of Svitanya's repertoire. These work songs favor the full-voiced, open quality beloved of singers from the Balkan region, a collection of Eastern European countries along the Russian border. Svitanya also sings some Yiddish and Ukrainian songs, which, thanks to their sweeter, more cosmopolitan tones, have a much more Western sound.

It was Forrester's penchant for sharing music that inadvertently helped to launch Svitanya. Kimberly Fedchak, now also a Russian prof at Swarthmore, did her undergrad at Oberlin and took a Russian survey course taught by Forrester. "I told [Forrester] how much I was enjoying the course. She invited me back to her office to learn a song," recalls Fedchak.

A friend's enthusiasm for a recording by the Yale Slavic Choir helped persuade Fedchak to form a similar ensemble at Oberlin. When Bryn Mawr became her home for graduate work, she launched Svitanya's predecessor, Slaveja, the Bryn Mawr/ Haverford Slavic Choir. Enter Laura Howson, a former Haverford student and now a biochemist working on vaccines at Merck. She recalls she had never heard this type of music before "that fateful day" she saw an audition ad for Slaveja her freshman year.

An interest in learning Russian led her to try out. She found the lush chordal advancement of the melody on many songs similar to the barbershop quartets in which she had previously performed. Howson witnessed with delight as Slaveja morphed into Svitanya, from gown to town. By the time she joined Slaveja, the ratio of community to student participants was fairly high already. She appreciates the commitment to excellence and performance that this smaller, more stable ensemble provides.

Anne Ehrhart recalls being "stunned" by a Slaveja performance and asking timidly to be kept in mind if they ever took on community singers. A professional banker and lifetime folk dancer, she was the first nonstudent on board. Daughter Leela, who is also an avid fan of classic rock, grew up with folk music and dance. She learned all the parts by listening to her mom rehearse, and soon enough Leela, at age 11, was also part of the choir. Along with Sibelan Forrester and her daughter Yelena, the Ehrharts make up the two mother-daughter pairs in Svitanya. Which is appropriate, since this music has survived as long as it has because of its place as a family tradition.

Each member of Svitanya is expected to report to the weekly 2.5-hour rehearsals with parts learned, ready to refine the blend and connect emotionally to the meaning of the words. Given that most of the languages are foreign to most members, this takes a bit of time and concentration.

"Ukranian is my first language," says Mary Kalyna, a community activist and the newest member of Svitanya. "My parents came over after WWII. Music is a huge part of life [in the Ukranian-American community]. It was expected that you'd sing in the church choir and the youth choir. The difference for me is that now [I] do Macedonian, Yiddish, Russian."

"Because we are not a group from Eastern Europe, we use a different type of tone production," she says of Svitanya's singing styles. "But we have studied bilyj holos [white voice]. That is the raw, open throat tone production." That breathing technique, common in Eastern European music, encourages a booming, unphrased sound.

The ensemble has also worked with Mariana Sadowska, a researcher and performer who leads workshops on the songs and techniques she's encountered in visits to Ukrainian villages. "Because of the isolation of the past, songs might exist in only one place," explains Kalyna. She and her sisters in Svitanya are helping preserve songs and sounds that the era of battery-powered boomboxes and bootlegged pop tapes is threatening in even the remotest villages of Ukraine.

Svitanya performs Sat., Dec. 11, 7:30 p.m., $10, with Women's Sekere Ensemble, Calvary Center for Culture and Community, 48th St. and Baltimore Ave., 215-729-1028.