Peace Talks Radio’s Megan Kamerick talks with Christy Conduff, Ken Mayers,
and Holly Kinley of the New Mexico Peace Choir.

Megan Kamerick: Did you have in mind that you wanted a choir focused on peace and conflict resolution?

Christy Conduff: Well, we wanted to sing beautiful music that would touch the heart. It would have something to do with the environment, taking care of the planet, taking care of each other. Then the music just started rolling in, music to fit that. There is so much out there if you really look. It doesn’t have to be on a religious site.

It seems like of late, we’ve taken a little bit more of a political turn, not because we intentionally wanted to do that, but because that’s where the state of everything is right now. The country is in such turmoil and people need hope, s we sing songs of hope and encouragement.

We try to find music that, when you’re singing it, you feel it touches the soul. If it touches our souls, then it can’t help but communicate to the audience that comes to hear it. That’s what we strive for.

It’s a community choir that is pretty much family. We take care of each other as well as singing these songs to as many as 800 or 900 people in a season in concerts. People come up afterwards crying and hugging and saying how touched they were and how they needed the music that we sing.

I never know quite what’s going to touch someone’s soul, I just know that if I really love the piece and it either makes me laugh or cry or think and I know that I can do it for several months (with my attention span) then we sing that music. It always becomes more than I think it ever could, which is really exciting. I love that part of it; people pull from the music what they need.

Megan Kamerick: Ken, you are involved in Veterans for Peace and other efforts. What drew you to this choir?

Ken Mayers: Well, I’ve been singing in one place or another most of my life. I was encouraged to sing, so I sang all through school and college and I’ve sung in various groups and choirs since.

I wasn’t singing in the Unitarian Universalist Choir until Christy became director. The first time I hear the choir sing under her direction I said, “Now that’s a choir I could join!”

As you mentioned, I’m very active in Veterans for Peace and a lot of my life frankly is protesting, here and abroad. The Peace Choir rounded that off. It makes my life whole so that it’s not just protests, but affirmative. The responses we get are so affirmative that it’s just a delight. It’s a wonderful, positive experience.

Megan Kamerick: Holly Kinley, you’re on the board as well. You also sing in the choir. Why does doing this bring you joy?

Holly Kinley: I’m not a long-time choir person, but I am a long-time social justice, freedom person and I love to sing, so this was an opportunity to bring together these two parts of my life.

Another part of my life is that I’m an entrepreneur by experience.

This was starting something new and I love to do that. It feeds my creativity, my need to be creative, both in singing and in how we manage the choir.

There is data that shows that when a choir sings together, their hearts beat as one. They synchronize. Their hearts beat as one. The music becomes exciting and it becomes more meaningful. Further data shows that the people who are listening, which they can be with the music because it is so intense, then their heartbeats join ours. I can’t help but think that hundreds of people in a room if their heartbeats are beating as one that something miraculous is happening.

Megan Kamerick: Why is it important right now in the times we live in to create this kind of experience within the choir and with your audience?

Holly Kinley: I’d like to say that people don’t change how they live or what they do because they read a newspaper article or a magazine article or a book. They change because something changes in their hearts. Music speaks to all of us. It speaks to our whole being. It isn’t an intellectual experience for the listener, it’s an emotional experience and that’s what has to happen for change to happen in the world; both of those issues have to be addressed.

Megan Kamerick: Can you give some examples or your fondest memories of effects you’ve had on audiences?

Ken Mayers: One of them at a recent concert was quite remarkable. We were singing a song [called] Stand Together. We got into the last part of it and there was an explosion of sound [singing] “We’ll stand together.” Someone in the audience stood up and another and then suddenly, the whole audience was standing up. It actually made it a little hard to sing.

Megan Kamerick: Did you get a little verklempt?

Ken Mayers: Absolutely! It was an extraordinary experience.

Holly Kinley: It was fun because the choir could of course see this happening, but Christy could not.

Christy Conduff: It was the last song of the set of the season and I thought [that was why] they were sad. There were tears. They were emotional. I was directing and wondering what was going on with the choir. We finished and they said, “Turn around!” I looked and everyone was standing. We often get standing ovations, but this one started well before the end of the song. It was just remarkable. We know that we are doing the right thing. People are involved. They come up afterwards, complete strangers, just crying and hugging me saying how much they needed what we do. They love the sound, but they love the energy and emotion. It helps. That was a moment.

Megan Kamerick: What is the song?

Christy Conduff: It’s called “Stand Together.” It is a piece by Jim Papoulis and it’s a call to responsibility. If we work together, there is hardly anything that we can’t fix or make better. We just need to work together. We need to listen to one another. We need to find ways to incorporate peace. We need to find ways! If we work together, if we stand together, we can make a difference. Even if it is just standing up, it is doing something and joining our hearts.

Megan Kamerick: How do you find the music?

Christy Conduff: It is a journey. My goodness. Really, excitedly right now, we have three different composers who are courting us to write for us!

Megan Kamerick: Wow, that’s impressive!

Christy Conduff: I know, I know! That’s going to be fun. I look on YouTube. I go through JW Pepper, the Clearinghouse of Music, people send me ideas of things that they think might work. It’s copiously long, the process to find the right songs.

I introduce every song and say why I picked it during the concert. I tell them why I think it’s important and I think people like that. They want to have that connection. It’s not just song after song and you say, “That was a pretty song,” but “Wow! I get that now;” the history of the song or the history of why it was chosen.

Megan Kamerick: I know that the choir went to Europe for the World Peace Choir Festival. You’re part of a global movement. There are peace choirs around the world.

Christy Conduff: There are. Not so many here in the United State though.

Holly Kinley: The most fun on that whole trip was singing in the plazas.

Christy Conduff: It’s true.

Holly Kinley: One of the songs in our repertoire is called “Connected.” The bases start out singing “I am, you are, me.” It’s a chant. Then the tenors join and then the altos and sopranos. We sang that, keeping one eye on Christy, but greeting people on the plazas.

Christy Conduff: Flash mobs!

Holly Kinley: Flash mobs. We would greet people, shake their heads all the while we are singing. It was mind-blowing to them. A big crowd would gather around so that by the time we got to the end of the song, we had an audience.

Megan Kamerick: Why is this such an effective way to connect and reach people and overcome barriers?

Holly Kinley: The music speaks to people’s hearts. They can see that we are completely open. They open up. They get teary. This was in the summer of ’17 and people were nervous about Americans in Europe at that time. They were very happy to see Americans who were talking about peace and singing about peace.

Megan Kamerick: I heard you say in an interview, Christy, that “It’s not just a choir, it’s a movement.”

Christy Conduff: Ken actually found that in a poem.

Ken Mayers: I had said that “An army travels on its stomach, but a movement travels on its songs.”

Christy Conduff: Once we heard that, we realized that that is actually true. It’s not just about singing the songs. It’s not just about having a concert. We are out and about a lot. We take a stand, but in a way that is not an angry stand. It’s just a “We are here, and we want to help” [stand].

None of us are politicians. None of us probably want to be politicians, but what we can do is we can sing. We can sing from our hearts. Somehow that openness and the words that are in the songs and the words that are said before the songs draw people in and they join us in the spirit of what we are doing. I think that’s a whole lot of why we are successful.

There are so many choirs. There are million places people can go. These people come every week and work hard and find that community with us and also because it is so much fun.

The concerts, while a ton of work, the payoff of having people stand in the middle of stand or come up to choir members and just hug them out of the blue and say how much they needed what we had to say. It’s fulfilling, hugely fulfilling.

Megan Kamerick: You always sing a song at your concerts called “We Can be Kind.”

Christy Conduff: We do that!

Megan Kamerick: Why is that your signature piece?

Christy Conduff: Well, it has always been one of my favorite songs in the whole world. It speaks to the choices we all have every day and how we can respond. If this world were a gentler, kinder place because of our responses, then we would be in a totally different world right now.

Nobody really wants to fight. Nobody really wants to go to war. What can we do? We can help each other and be kind. We can be aware of what’s going on with other people and help them.

It’s been a signature piece. We’ll probably always do it.

More songs are coming in, strong pieces, one this season called, “Until All of Us Are Free.” It’s a major piece about everyone needing the same thing; to be free. We just sing. We sing from our hearts.

Holly Kinley: I wanted to share a story about the “We Can be Kind” song. One of our choir members sang that at a rehearsal or concert and it really got to her.

Then she got on a bus and the only other person on the bus was obviously a homeless person looking pretty down and out. She said normally she would have avoided that person and sat in another part of the bus, but because the song was in her head, she smiled at the man, connected with him, sat down fairly near him and felt his appreciation of her friendliness and her kindness. It got passed on; the importance of kindness got passed on and perhaps he passed it on to somebody else later that day.

Megan Kamerick Interviews Sally-Alice Thompson

MK: So your transition to becoming a peace activist came toward the end ofthe Vietnam War?

SA: Yes, finally I woke up to lies that we were being told. Ever since then, I’ve been a peace activist.

MK: What was it like going to your first protest?

SA: It was a march down Ridgecrest Avenue.

MK: In Albuquerque?

SA: In Albuquerque.

MK: What did it feel like?

SA: It felt strange because it was such a shift in thinking.

MK: Was there a particular event during the Vietnam War that turned you around?

SA: No, it was a gradual evolution, time after time after time seeing that we were being misled about what was happening.
When I went to Nicaragua during the Contra War in the 1980s, I really was awakened to the falsehoods and how we were blinded about what was really going on. I saw what was going on down in Nicaragua and it was not pretty.

I came back home and read the papers and it was the exact opposite of what was really going on. That was the final blow to my accepting what was put out by the government.

MK: You did a lot of traveling in the ‘80s. You went on a peace march to Washington.

SA: I went on a peace march across the country from Los Angeles to New York and then down to Washington.

MK: How long did that take?

SA: Eight and a half months. It was to protest nuclear weapons and to try to get nuclear disarmament.

MK: You also went to the Soviet Union and did a march?

SA: Yes. When we were doing the march across the country, a lot of times truckers would yell at us and say, “Why don’t you do this in Russia?”

There was a young man on the March named Alan Afelt[?] who said, “Yes, why don’t we do this in Russia?” He managed to get Visas for the people who wanted to go and made arrangements to get citizens of the Soviet Union involved.

We had 200 Americans and 200 citizens of the Soviet Union on a march from what was then called Leningrad, (now it’s called Saint Petersburg) to Moscow. We had a Fourth of July celebration in Moscow!

MK: What was it like?

SA: The young people of Russia were so enthusiastic about having Americans that were with them instead of hating them. As a matter of fact, people of all ages welcomed us with open arms. I think that was probably really one of the highlights of my life, meeting those Russian people that were so tired of war and so happy that there were Americans that wanted peace.

MK: How have you tried to do that since then?

SA: One of the people I met on that march was a man from Turkmenistan, one of the Soviet Republic’s at that time. He and I compared notes about our cities, and we decided to become sister cities. We still are a sister city with Ashgabat Turkmenistan.

MK: Have you gone there?

SA: I’ve been there about 29 times. Initially, that was the only way I could find out what was going on over there because telephone service was just awful and there wasn’t any email at that time.

One time I went over there and stayed for four weeks, so I really experienced the life of the people of Turkmenistan. There has been a big evolution in Turkmenistan. They call themselves a democracy, but unfortunately, they not. It’s very definitely a dictatorship.

MK: When we think about other countries like those with dictatorships, the kind of program you were doing where you would go, stay and visit, you actually got to meet the people. The country is not just the government, it’s the people you meet. Why is that so important in peacemaking?

SA: It’s the only thing that’s open to us; people to people kinds of things. Government to government is down the drain, both their government and our government are not interested in the people, but the people can still be interested in the people.

MK: Were you involved with protests around the Iraq War?

SA: Oh yes, absolutely! The Albuquerque Peace and Justice Center was very much opposed to both invasions; Afghanistan and Iraq.

MK: At the beginning of the war, it was very unpopular to oppose it. Did you run into that?

SA: Yes, you always do at the beginning, the middle and the end you run into opposition because people are propagandized and brainwashed.

MK: You’ve continued doing this into your 90s. You are 95 now. You went a few years ago on another walk from Albuquerque to Santa Fe for 13 days to protest money in politics. Why did you want to do that?

SA: Until we get money out of politics, we’re going to continue on the same bad path that we are on. The votes for lawmaking are in favor of militarism and violence because they’re profitable. Our economy is about war-making and destruction and killing rather than constructive things like schools and hospitals.

MK: You were also involved with the Raging Grannies. What is that?

SA: Well, it’s a group of women who put on silly hats and long skirts and sing songs that are against the war, against injustice. We have what we call “gaggles of grannies” all over the country. They started in Canada protesting nuclear weapons. They did it because they kept trying to talk to reporters and the media about the problems but didn’t get any response, so they decided that if that acted a little outrageously that they would get more attention, and they did! It has spread all over the country now.

MK: Why did you want to do that particular protest?

SA: Because I agreed that we have to find new, innovative ways to bring the message to people that the present situation is not acceptable.

MK: It can be a frustrating life trying to be a peacemaker, waiting to see results of what you do.

SA: Sometimes it seems like it will never happen, but we have to remember that it took 100 years for women to get the vote, but it finally happened, so we just have to keep at it and keep and it and hope that eventually we will have results.