Road Show Mount View Chamber Singers experience new culture on trip to El Salvador

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A restless group of more than 500 students gathered on a blazing hot April day for a concert in the sun-drenched courtyard of Centro Escolar, a public elementary school in the San Ramon section of San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital city. As they poked at each other and tugged at their school uniforms, another group of students – 20 high school teens from the Mount View Chamber Singers in Thorndike – was doing vocal warm-ups in a small classroom.

“Hola! Hola! Hello!” the Salvadoran children called out as they peeked through the louvers in the windows to see the singers from the United States. For most of the Salvadoran children, this was the first time they had encountered a gringo except for on TV.

For the Mount View High School singers, who traveled to San Salvador to share their choral music as a cultural exchange last month, it was also the first time most of them had left their own country and, for some, the first time they had ever been further south than Massachusetts or even on an airplane. After six days of touring the Central American country, giving free concerts at schools and in town squares, most of the Maine kids had stomach ailments. This was their last day in the tiny nation and many of them would have preferred staying in their sleeping bags on a cement floor than going out in the hot sun and singing to a fidgety audience.

“I know you don’t feel like singing, but there’s no point in going out there without a rehearsal,” said David Stevenson, the group’s director and organizer of the tour. He lifted his hands, the room grew silent and then their voices rose in harmony. A group of Salvadoran girls, who had been sweeping the floors earlier to prepare their school for the day, stopped to peek in the room and giggle at their guests.

After the warm-up, the Maine singers, dressed in traditional Salvadoran shirts, filed out into the courtyard, where they were given an official greeting, complete with marching students, the presentation of the Salvadoran flag and much applause. During a performance of the small country’s epic-length national anthem, the native students placed their hands flat or salute-style over their hearts, while the Maine students tried to control their churning stomachs. Girls in bright-colored dresses did a dance about coffee pickers and coffee beans, one of El Salvador’s largest exports.

Then Stevenson led his singers into the center of the court and they performed Western choral music, religious works and two songs in Spanish. After a spiritual called “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho,” a small Salvadoran boy stood, waved his hands in imitation of Stevenson and sang out: “Jer-ee-ko! Jer-ee-ko!” His buddies laughed.

At the end of the concert, school assistants handed out sandwiches and sodas, which most of the Maine kids couldn’t eat because of fragile digestive systems. Stevenson’s wife Sonia, a native Salvadoran and all-around translator-chaperone-host for the trip (the Mount View group stayed at her family’s home in the city) told the students that turning down the sandwiches would be seen as rude. So the kids secretly tucked the wrapped snacks in their bags and under their shirts to give to Sonia’s family back at the house. When it was time to go, the Salvadoran students, many from poor families, surrounded the Mount View singers in clutching clusters. Each of the Maine visitors had small toys to hand out, and the Salvadorans were eager for the gifts, which had been purchased or donated back in Maine.

“I’ve seen a couple of kids walk away with big smiles,” said Jordan Eustis, a junior from Unity. “It feels pretty good.”

Eustis’s response – an appreciation for being the gift-giver rather than receiver – is one Stevenson had hoped would take place in the course of the six-day trip. He wanted his students to share music but also to gain perspective on the traditions and habits of another culture. “We’re very aware that people take care of us and give to us,” said Stevenson. “We want to take care of the people around us, too.” Earlier in the week, the students had offered their music to a community in San Pedro, outside of San Salvador, and were honored by the town’s mayor and feted by the residents. In addition to singing in the town square, the Maine students also donated boxes of school supplies, computer materials, toys, books and other items they shipped with their luggage. Wherever they went, they left not only the memory of music but also practical donations and toys for school children.

At Collegio Bautista, an upscale Protestant school founded in the 1920s by American missionaries in San Salvador, some of the schoolchildren sang along with the Maine singers for the traditional folk tune “Cielito Lindo.” But hearing works in English and interacting with the English-speaking guests was even more valuable, said one of the school’s administrators.

“It’s very important for the children here to hear English,” said Rosalinda Rendon, assistant principal at the school, where more than 500 children heard the concert and others gathered in the doorway to listen and watch. “The dollar is already here and if they don’t know how to speak English, they won’t get jobs.”

The Mount View Chamber Singers give concerts in Maine throughout the school year. Their holiday a cappella concerts in the round are well known for their ethereal beauty and musical excellence. Between the 20 or so seasonal concerts, donations and CDs, which they record in Maine, the group raises more than $10,000 a year. In a variation on the school field trip, Stevenson uses the money to travel with the chorus, making sure that each member goes for free.

Stevenson founded the group in 1990. Since then, it has become a jewel of Mount View’s music program, and singers go through a rigorous and competitive audition to become one of the 20 voices in the group. (Thirty high school girls will try out for one soprano opening next year, Stevenson said, and another 30 hope to be chosen for the alto slot.)

Since the mid-’90s, Stevenson has organized the unconventional performance trips to West Virginia, New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C., Scotland and England.

Although many of the travel concerts are scheduled to the minute (Stevenson’s early background is in physical education, and he’s a stickler for details), the group is also in the habit of giving impromptu concerts. In El Salvador, where they gave five formal concerts, they also sang for their bus driver and for their host family. An empty church they happened upon in their travels inspired a concert. One priest was in the audience.

A graduate of Mount View High School, Stevenson organizes the tours with an unflappable sense of frugality. Students often sleep along the way in the homes of friends and family members (his or his students) and eat bulk food that Stevenson buys in discount stores.

“It’s very important to me that we go for nothing,” said Stevenson, 53, sitting in the open-air center of his in-laws’ home in San Salvador. (This was also his first trip to his wife’s homeland.) “If they spend money, they do it by choice. Some can’t pay for the trip, and I don’t like to call attention to that. You could certainly subsidize those kids, but that gets into personal issues, and I don’t want to get into that. I want them to see the honor in this. If we hadn’t been able to afford to go to El Salvador, we would have rented a bus and gone somewhere else.”

As a result of his high standards and inclusive philosophy, Stevenson has won the ready respect of his students. Gathered in the outdoor living space in the center of Sonia’s family complex, they spoke of Stevo – the nickname for their teacher – as a reliable adult, able leader, parental figure and friend. When he asks for their attention, they give it. He tells them to be ready at 7 a.m. for a concert, and they are lined up ready to get on the bus five minutes early and doing head counts. (They check on each other by vocal placement: The altos count the altos, the basses count the basses.) Once on the air-conditioned bus – out of the 80-to-90 degree temperatures – they snap right into rehearsal mode and rehearsals take place on their way to a gig.

On the one day the students took off from singing to go to the beach, Stevenson went along but spent the time going over music while the kids played in the surf. They made fun of him, but they also liked seeing him out of a school setting.

“He doesn’t wear shorts, but he’s actually a person,” one student said. “He’s not a machine.”

That’s not the only lesson the students learned during their time in Central America. Throughout the trip, they compared what they saw to what they know back home, whether it was the food, wild driving habits, social stratification, lack of hot water on demand, litter on the street or the friendliness of their hosts.

“The people here are more open to strangers,” said Kate Hall, a junior from Monroe. “Maine can be very clannish. Being here makes me feel that it’s very sheltered at home. Maine can also be very far away.”

The sights the students saw – both of poverty and of the rich family connections in Salvadoran families – gave them perspective, they said. And spending more time together as a group bonded them in new ways. When Stevenson initially auditions the singers, he is looking for vocal ability and dynamics, but he also looks for team players who will be on time and who might, under dire circumstances, stand by a friend when her stomach is tossing up unfamiliar cuisine.

In a testament to their teacher’s philosophy, the students on tour acknowledged their own hard work but also expressed gratitude for their foreign hosts, chaperones (two mothers, who are also nurses, went on the trip) and supporters back in Maine.

“We worked for this, and we got here based on our singing,” said Gabrielle Van Horn, a 15-year-old sophomore from Freedom.

“But it’s the generosity of Maine and our community that made it possible for us to come here,” said Joe Malady, who is 18 and will graduate this year. “It has so much to do with the people back home.”

Stevenson teaches more than 120 students in the music program at Mount View and is working on his doctoral degree in music from Boston University. For him, the trip is not just about music and broadening the perspectives of his students. It’s also an investment in the future.

“When we get off the plane, I don’t think the learning is done,” he said. “Learning is reflective. Something will happen to one of these kids when they’re 35 years old and it will come from this trip.”

Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.

Back from El Salvador

The Mount View Chamber Singers will perform and give presentations on their trip to El Salvador May 15-17.

? 4 p.m. May 15 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bangor

? 7 p.m. May 15 at Marsh River Theater in Brooks

? 7 p.m. May 17 at St. Denis Catholic Church in Whitefield