Silent Night as you've never heard it - "Wor Oling Tik" in Acholi, sung here by the youngest members of the ASERELA Chorus. ASERELA stands for Action for Self Reliance, an organization established 15 years ago to help Maine's Sudanese community.
Many of them fled to the U.S. to escape the civil war that raged in southern Sudan until 2005 -- and Portland contains one of the largest concentrations of Acholis in the US.
"I am from Sudan and I came here because of the war in my country," says Anna Oryem. When Oryem arrived in Maine nearly 10 years she brought with her the memory of the songs she had sung as a child in southern Sudan. Among other things, this project is a way of keeping her culture alive, she says, by teaching the Acholi language to Sudanese children who were either born over here, or came here at a very young age.
Like many Acholi, Anna is devoutly Christian, and the songs reflect that faith. Here she is singing "Rwot Rubanya," an Acholi version of Psalm 23, the Lord is My Shepherd, accompanied only by chimes and a drum.
The chimes you can hear in that piece may sound like the ones Anna grew up listening to in Sudan, but they were, in fact, salvaged from a derelict church here in downtown Portland. "We got these chimes from the Chestnut Street Church on Chestnut Street over by city hall, which is now Grace Restaurant -- we salvaged them before they would have gotten tossed," says recording engineer Marc Bartholomew, holding up a long metal tube which he had fetched from the recesses of Acadia Studios, where the CD was mixed and partly recorded.
Marc Bartholomew: "There's two and a half octaves of these very heavy chrome chimes -- the tallest being about six-and-a-half feet."
Tom Porter: "That's the one you're holding?"
MB: "Yes, This is the tallest one I think, it's got "G" stamped on it, and basically, we hang these by their cord and (hits the chime.)
Another interesting musical feature of the CD is the use of a particular utterance, or ululation, called a "kajila" - which is often used as an improvised expression of joy.
Anna Oyrem has taught the technique to a number of young women students at Portland High School. "We use that when there is marriage stuff going on, when it's time putting on ring, or when their husband is kissing, or something like that, so people make it for joy."
Proceeds from the CD -- which also features African drumming from the popular local rhythmic ensemble, "Inanna, Sisters in Rhythm," -- are going to help build an elementary school in the region of southern Sudan which still bears the scars of the civil war.
"Our region where we're building the school is a village area where there is no school and during the war most of the infrastructure in the area was destroyed," says Anna's brother Robert Oryem, who's president of ASERELA. "So people are living right now in those areas is without schools, without anything, and there's a lot of children there, so what ASERELA is trying to do is build a school for these children."
Meanwhile here in Maine, the project enabled school children from Portland's Sudanese community to experience the thrill of laying down tracks in a recording studio. While some of the recording was done in a church downtown, explains recording engineer Marc Bartholomew, some singing was also done in the studio.
MB: "We had as many of the ASERELA chorus as could get in here and we had a full-on recording studio experience, listening back to the tracks in headphones and listening to themselves sing through microphones."
TP: "Was that the first time a lot of them had done it, particularly the younger ones?"
MB: "I'm sure. They were amazed by the whole process. A lot of them were quite shy but in the end we got some great performances."
"It was really an amazing project," Bartholomew says. "I mean the whole impetus for it was that these people from a different culture come here, they still bring with them pieces of their culture and things that they do and traditions and singing traditions. It really means to me what it means to come to a new country is to bring your talents with you as well as integrate it."
The CD release party, featuring singing, drumming and dancing will be held on Saturday at 5 p.m., at Space Gallery in Portland. More information can be found at aserelamaine.org