African concert to benefit Sudanese

African tunes will benefit the Darfur region of Sudan and begin Bloomington's process of humanizing Sudan's civil unrest at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the First Presbyterian Church. \nThe free musical concert, where donations to raise money for a Sudanese refugee project and continued awareness for Darfur will be accepted, will feature various groups from IU's ethnomusicology and folklore departments. The event will serve as a demonstration of traditional African music and a launching pad for the 2007 arrival of "Bloomington's lost girls from Sudan," said Congregation Beth Shalom member Carolyn Geduld. Currently, four female refugees in a camp in Kenya are set to arrive in Bloomington within the next two years, she said.\n"We wanted to put a human face on the situation," she said. "We thought people in Bloomington could relate to that. So we're going to bring four women in their 20s from the south of Sudan to Bloomington in 2007 to live. Their faces will hopefully remind people of the tragic situation in Darfur and the rest of Sudan."\nBecause the United Nations has failed to intervene in Darfur, bringing refugees from Darfur to Bloomington was impossible, Geduld said. \n"(The Darfuris) are not even officially refugees," Geduld said. "It's tragic."\nThe idea to bring Sudanese women to Bloomington came about because of Rabbi Mira Wasserman's efforts to save Darfur while speaking at her congregation, Geduld said. Save Darfur Bloomington, a local student and community activist group committed to raising awareness about the genocide in Darfur, decided to sponsor the event because it had accomplished its goal of bringing former Marine Brian Steidle to Bloomington, said Save Darfur Bloomington member and IU graduate student Chris Hanks. Steidle spoke in Bloomington last month and showed graphic images of the horrors he witnessed as an African Union Monitor in Darfur. When Hanks contacted IU graduate student Clara Henderson, another member of First Presbyterian Church, the idea for the concert was launched. Henderson is also a member of the IU Marimba Ensemble, one of three groups set to perform.\n"We wanted to do something to raise awareness about the genocide in Darfur and also to raise some money to support efforts to bring peace to the region and relief to the civilians suffering there," she said.\nHenderson then coordinated the addition of the Moroccan Andalusian Classical Orchestra and the Mbira Queens, both Bloomington-based groups, and said performing the concert one weekend before a rally in the nation's capital made sense.\n"At Steidle's lecture, we heard about the forthcoming 'Rally to Stop Genocide,'" she said. "The idea of holding the concert the weekend before the Washington rally seemed like a good one because it would help build momentum for the event."\nHenderson said the groups also liked the idea of humanizing the tragedy by supporting Congregation Beth Shalom's refugee project.\n"It's an opportunity to put a human face on the issues that we have been discussing these past months," she said. Their presence will be a constant reminder of the situation in Darfur and hopefully will prevent us from too easily forgetting the genocide that is taking place."\nAccording to various sources, 200,000 to 400,000 people have died and more than 2 million have been displaced from their homes since fighting erupted in Darfur in 2003. The situation in the region continued to spiral out of control this week amidst rebel attacks against the government in neighboring Chad. Marc Wall, United States ambassador to Chad, said the United States was "deeply concerned" about the refugee situation in Darfur and Chad, according to AFP reports.