‘This is where she comes alive’: for ageing migrants, community choirs are more than music

By Simone Marino, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Education; Adjunct Research Fellow, Social Ageing (SAGE) Futures Lab, Edith Cowan University

Every Friday morning in a community hall near Fremantle, something quietly extraordinary happens.

Chairs are arranged in a rough semicircle. Someone has brought a tray of biscotti from a recipe carried, unchanged, from Vasto, in the Abruzzo region of Italy. An organetto, a small button accordion common in southern Italian folk music, opens with a tarantella, a fast and joyful southern Italian dance tune. Before the first verse has ended, a dozen voices have joined. Some are strong. Some waver. All are unmistakably present.

Later, with the strumming of a guitar, the group…

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