A Lagos Choir Learns the Songs Its Newest Members Carried In

LAGOS — On Tuesday evenings the parish hall fills with people who did not grow up singing the same songs. The community choir at a Lagos church has doubled since spring, its new voices drawn from families among the more than 112 million people registered as climate migrants, and its choirmaster has made a small, deliberate decision: rather than teach only the old repertoire, the choir now learns a new melody each week from whoever most recently arrived. "You cannot ask a person to leave their whole life at the door and then ask them to sing," said the choirmaster, a retired schoolteacher who volunteers her evenings. This week the hall learned a lullaby from a family that reached Lagos in June, the words sounded out phonetically by singers who did not know their meaning until it was explained. It is not a program or a policy. It is fifty people in a warm room, agreeing that the newest arrival gets to choose the song.