'A sanctuary': How a Halifax choir brings immigrants together to learn English

The rain is pattering on the sidewalk as a rendition of The Tragically Hip's Ahead by a Century echoes inside St. Andrew's United Church in downtown Halifax.

It's Tuesday night and about three dozen people are singing in the Halifax Newcomer Choir — designed to help new immigrants to Canada learn English and build community — ahead of a concert on Thursday.

Choir members hail from around the world — Chile, Brazil, Japan, China, South Korea, Kenya — and range in age from about eight years old to around 60.

Rachel Manko Lutz, a choir director and founder of the group, writes the set list on a whiteboard at the front of a room in the church's basement, guiding the group through the songs they'll be singing to a crowd in two nights.

Choirs have long been a popular mode of celebrating music and building community, and members of Halifax's Newcomer Choir have found a unique bonding place in the city.

"We really emphasize the principles of kindness, radical hospitality and making a really concerted effort to actively build community," Manko Lutz said in an interview ahead of Tuesday's rehearsal

Manko Lutz, a longtime choir singer, founded the choir in November 2021. She had been teaching English to immigrants for years and had heard from newcomers that there were few opportunities to practise English outside of class. She had written a research paper on the use of choral singing as an English-teaching tool, and wanted to put the theory into action.

After she created the Halifax choir, she incorporated the group into a non-profit she started called the Newcomer Choir Association-Canada, which oversees two other similar immigrant-composed singing groups, in St. John's, N.L., and London, Ont.

On Tuesday night, Sylvia Ng'eno, a choir member and Swahili speaker from Kenya, stood in the middle of the group, gently swaying side to side beside Manko Lutz while they sang an a cappella version of Song for All of Us by the folk band MaMuse.

Ng'eno came to Canada as an international student to study caregiving and learned about the choir through a friend of a friend. The bonds she's made with the other singers are a "spark" in her life, she said.

"I've made lovely, lovely friends," Ng'eno said after Tuesday's rehearsal. The singing group, she said, "has touched so many nations and transformed so many lives because it creates that connection."

Manko Lutz says the choir is an effective tool in teaching English because choir members are at ease. She said some singers have told her the choir is "the best classroom in Canada" because of its comforting environment.

Marcio Silva, a 58-year-old Portuguese speaker and civil engineer from Brazil, says he thrived in the Halifax choir after he joined in 2022. He now lives in Moncton, N.B., and said in a recent phone interview that Manko Lutz's singing group was a "sanctuary" for him. The choir, he added, was "exactly what he was looking for" to improve his English.

"I had some trouble pronouncing some words, and when I could find the words in a song, this was amazing because the rhythm and melody makes sense and you can pronounce that word much easier," he said.

Silva's favourite song from the choir is Donna Rhodenizer's Call of the Ocean, which helped him learn about the seas, with words like "barnacle" and "crumbling sand." Manko Lutz says she chooses many songs by Canadian artists, including The Hip, Gordon Lightfoot and Joni Mitchell, so that singers learn about Canada.

"The music is so full of dynamic vocabulary, so things that you wouldn't otherwise learn in a traditional English class come out in this setting very naturally," Manko Lutz said.

Jaime Espinoza, a 49-year-old regular choir attendee and computer engineer from Chile, played the drum on Tuesday to accompany his baritone voice. He said the group has offered him and his wife opportunities to meet people and share the struggles of building a new life in Canada.

"You don't have a network, you don't have your family, you don't understand the system. Here (the choir singers) understand you and help you," he said.

Recently, the debate on immigration in Canada has become increasingly tense, with governments across the country calling for fewer newcomers because of shortages in housing and difficulty in accessing health care. Groups like the Halifax Newcomer Choir are increasingly important because they permit immigrants to be seen in a positive light, Manko Lutz said.

As well, she said, immigrants need more support to integrate into society — beyond settling in a home and finding work.

Martha Radice, an anthropologist at Dalhousie University, agrees. She said the choir is a form of "cheer-mongering" for bringing about happiness and connection instead of division.

"(These groups) are really valuable parts of the social fabric for any place and we would all do well to nurture them," she said.