African Grace in Central Australia: Community choirs, reconciliation and intercultural performance

The ‘African Grace’ concert in May 2011 brought together the Grammy Award winning Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa and a number of community choirs from Central Australia. After a week of encounter and exchange, the combined choirs performed a concert at the Araluen Centre in Alice Springs which presented a powerful statement of intercultural engagement and collaboration. This article explores the historical, cultural, social and musical circumstances in Central Australia that enabled this to occur. It provides a brief outline of the community music and reconciliation movements in Australia and the musical expression of reconciliation. The regional context and a descriptive analysis of African Grace and its contribution to the evolving nature of intercultural choral engagement in Central Australia are its focus. In conclusion, the article considers the potential to shift the conceptualization of intercultural engagement beyond the notion of reconciliation to one of relation.