St. Thomas sophomore Matthew Farho traveled to San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico for seven days with choir group, Common Ground Voices. The week-long choir tour in early March focused on peace at the Mexican-American border.

Farho is a vocal music education major. He is president of the Summit Singers and a choral assistant for Angela Broeker, the St. Thomas director of choral activities and music professor.

“He is an excellent student and an excellent musician. He is socially conscious and is committed to social justices issues and service,” Broeker said. “He is also committed to making the world a better place by helping people be more aware.”

Though Common Grounds Voices choir group is not affiliated with St. Thomas, Farho heard about the group last November through Dr. Karen Howard, a St. Thomas music education associate professor.

“I checked out the website and then I went through an audition where I sent in a video of me singing and I had to answer five or six questions that helped get behind the intentions of the people who were trying out,” Farho said.

The group was made up of about 30 people total. Half were from the United States and the other half were from Mexico. Farho was the only St. Thomas student on the trip.

“The age range of the group was about 18 to 50. It was a very impressive group of people that have amazing careers in choral music,” Farho said.

The mission for the group is to reach out to the community through the use of music. The group did a lot of singing at the University of San Diego and in Tijuana, Mexico, but also a lot of learning about each other.

“The group started in 2016 in Israel and Palestine. This choir pops up in places where there is conflict on borders,” Fahro said. “They just started this group on the Mexican-American border.”

“We did a lot of stuff that was not related to singing. We did a lot of connecting with each other and establishing practices that we could all take back into our daily lives after,” Farho said.

One of the more memorable experiences on Farho’s trip was when the group sang to each other on different sides of the border.

“Most of the Mexicans were on the Mexican side of the border and most of the Americans were on the American side of the border. We sang a few of the pieces we had been working on throughout the week and it was an intense experience,” Farho said.

Farho had a hard time deciding if the trip made that big of a difference.

“A lot of us were struggling with the idea, did this do anything? Is this creating any good in the world?” Farho said.

Farho realized that having conversations with people back home in our daily lives about this experience will be one of the biggest impacts.

“A good point that one of the Mexican group members said was that it is a very American thing to believe that we need to be doing something all the time and I need to be the one helping,” Farho said.“But sometimes, being the one to listen and to try and understand people on a deeper level, that can make more of a difference than always trying to do something.”

Farho wants people to learn and listen from his story and learn more about the situation happening down at the border.

“Talking about the experience is where most of the impact is being created,” Farho said.

Rae Beaner can be reached at rnbeaner696@stkate.edu.