Talking with Haroldo: "Our Song Frightens Evil"

German practitioner Haroldo is thirty-nine years old. He comes from Brazil. He is a music teacher specialising in the piano.

If you have seen the performance given by the European Choir ‘Coming for you’ at The Inaugural Chinese New Year Global Gala in New York this year, you probably remember Haroldo’s excellent performance as conductor. In fact, he not only excels at playing the piano and conducting, but he also composes. He wrote the four voice parts of ‘Coming for you’ in a short period of time. Every person who knows Falun Gong practitioners very well would praise their talents, and Haroldo is one of those who is highly appreciated.

Haroldo told me that he started practicing Falun Gong in 1998. In the past, he would do what his friends had asked him to do and not care about whether it was good or bad. After practicing Dafa, he discovered the guiding benchmark of his life, ‘Truth-Compassion-Tolerance’ and understood that he should be responsible for his words and deeds. During his cultivation, he had a very deep understanding of thinking of others first and accepting other people’s opinions; even if you think your idea is better, you still need to accommodate and tolerate others. As a member of the choir, he built up a further understanding of the importance of cooperation with other practitioners and improving Xinxing.

I asked him how he managed to finish the composition of the choral version of ‘Coming for you’, as many people in the audience thought each voice part was so wonderful. He told me that when he received the assignment to compose the three other voice parts for ‘Coming for you’, his time was quite limited. Besides, he had other jobs to do, such as giving piano lessons and helping his wife to look after their children, as they are both very young; one is seven and the other is four. So he could only make the time to do this particular composition. He was very surprised that he could manage to do so many things at the same time; he believed the reason lies behind the fact that he is a Falun Gong practitioner and Falun Gong keeps him calm. Sometimes when he felt tired after doing a lot of work, he did the meditation. After doing the sitting exercise he started composing again and more valuable ideas just poured out of his mind. Thus, he finished the composition of this song very swiftly.

Through our conversation, I came to learn that he was the assistant conductor of his university choir when he was studying piano in Brazil. He had also worked for a choir in the church as conductor for half a year.

When I asked him what he thought of conducting a choir of Dafa practitioners, he said, ‘This choir was formed by eighty practitioners and most of them didn’t have any experience in singing before. But this time they had only spent four days practicing and now reached a level that normally takes a long time for other choirs to achieve. Moreover, the practitioners had many good ideas so everyone helped each other to move on. That such a large group of people could perform at the New York Gala after rehearsing for such a short period of time is unlikely to be achieved by any other non-professional choir.’

When I asked him if he was satisfied with his performance at the Gala, his reply was very positive, ‘To be a good conductor requires skill. Practitioners and I cooperated very well as I used my heart to conduct and they used their hearts to sing, that is why our hearts were in harmony.’

He also told me passionately: ‘Every time I listened to the tape of our performance in the New York Gala, I would want listen for a few more times. Although the practitioners’ singing was not perfect, the whole song was just so harmonious. Professional choirs are good at voice projection and their technique is very skillful. But what they lack is the ability to sing from their hearts. Practitioners use their hearts to communicate with the audience and pass on their message through singing.’

At the end of our conversation, Haroldo introduced a saying widespread in his hometown, ‘Singing frightens Evil’, which means that when people feel upset or are in trouble, they turn to singing because they believe that singing frightens evil. Finally, he said, “I believe our practitioners’ singing has a great effect in frightening the evil. We ask our friends and many more people to please come and listen to our song. The evil will be terrified. What’s more, if everyone comes to oppose this persecution, then the persecution will not last long.’