The life-changing power of a choir

Song propelled Morris Stuart from his early life shepherding sheep in British Guyana to an unlikely love story in London. In his retirement, he found himself shaping a choir of Central Australian Aboriginal women, who had been breathing life into 138-year-old Lutheran hymns.

Morris Stuart met his Australian wife, Barbara in London in the 1960s.

The pair led a youth group attached to a nearby church, and initially tried to ignore their growing feelings for each other.

Morris was a young, Guyanese activist who was descended from African slaves, and wasn’t ready to face the social reality of marrying across racial lines.

Morris and Barb fell in love and married several years before the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? was released, and featured at several screenings in London, where community members could ask them questions as a real life, interracial couple.

The couple went on to have four children and moved to Australia, where Morris became a pastor with a community church in Melbourne.

In their retirement, Morris and Barbara developed relationships with the Warlpiri community in Central Australia. 

They arrived in Alice Springs in 2005 and Morris started recruiting for a choir.

More Indigenous communities started joining in and Morris formed the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s choir.

They performed hymns brought by German Lutheran missionaries to the region in the late 19th Century, which were translated into Pitjantjatjara and Western Arrernte.

The choir’s biggest achievement is a tour to Germany in 2015 — to perform the hymns that had all but vanished from use in Germany, but have been preserved in the Central Australian desert for 138 years.

Follow the Central Australian Aboriginal Women's Choir on Facebook.

Watch the documentary about the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir tour to Germany, The Song Keepers. 

This episode of Conversations touches on heritage, epic life story, origin stories, church, personal stories, childhood and reflection.