The voices of hope

For Bruce Walker, one of the world's leading AIDS scientists, the moment when human emotion trumped scientific objectivity came three years ago, during a visit to an AIDS support group at a hospital in Durban, South Africa.

Walker, a Massachusetts General Hospital immunologist and director of the Partners AIDS Research Center, has traveled frequently to South Africa over the past decade, helping train doctors and researchers battling an epidemic that has infected 5.6 million South Africans and is rapidly worsening. After several trips, Walker says, he and colleagues decided to focus on treating AIDS patients as well as studying them.

''We felt in good conscience," he says, ''that we couldn't stay involved without giving something back to them in the form of treatment when they were giving us so much in terms of research."

Yet even Walker, who has ventured unflinchingly into the heart of the global AIDS pandemic, was caught off guard by what he saw at McCord Hospital, which serves a largely Zulu population.

In a roomful of visibly ill patients, most of whom were impoverished, ostracized by their families, and facing death, Walker heard a voice ring out. ''Let's open with a song," someone cried.

And so they did, making a joyful noise. When the first hymn ended, another began. Walker was blown away.

''It was Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. And I was absolutely in the center of it," he recalls during an interview at his MGH office. ''I felt a chill, seeing the reality of the tragedy juxtaposed with this enormously moving music. It changed me."

The music he heard lives on -- spreading across the globe on wings as sturdy and supple as the voices behind it.

This weekend marks the third visit to the Greater Boston area of Durban's Sinikithemba Choir, a 15-person choral group whose members are all HIV-positive. The choir, whose name means ''we bring hope" or ''give us hope" in Zulu, performs Saturday at the Berea Seventh Day Adventist Church in Dorchester as part of a citywide event marking World AIDS Awareness Day. On Sunday, they'll be at Boston's Union United Methodist Church, followed by an afternoon concert at the CambridgeSide Galleria. Monday they'll be at MGH performing in the Wang Lobby. Before returning to Durban, the choir will also touch down in New York, Austin, and Washington, D.C.

A compact disc titled ''Living Hope" has carried their music beyond the churches, high schools, and conferences where they've performed. Proceeds from the disc benefit the Sinikithemba Christian Care Center in Durban. The choir's handmade beadwork jewelry provides another source of income -- and sense of purpose -- for individual members, especially those who require expensive drugs to treat their disease.

The message this weekend is more spiritual and educational than entrepreneurial, however. Hope and harmony are the keynotes of their performances. What Simon captured on his ''Graceland" album, a groundbreaking fusion of American pop and world music, the Sinikithemba Choir channels joyously in hymns like ''This Little Light of Mine" and ''Ujesu Uyi Nqaba Yami (Jesus Is My Castle)."

''People who see the choir -- including scientists -- understand this epidemic in a totally different way," says Walker. And when choir members speak about living with AIDS, the social stigma and the toll taken on their families, they make what he calls ''phenomenal emotional connections" with audiences.

One such audience was a group of prep schoolers at Milton Academy, which Walker's son attends. Following the choir's visit to campus last year, students sold more than $6,000 worth of its CDs. Two weeks later, the money raised bought drugs for AIDS patients in Durban. Lives were literally saved as a result, notes Walker, a lesson those students are unlikely to soon forget.

Beyond the emotions stirred by their music, though, choir members also testify to the human costs -- and challenges -- of living with AIDS. For many, it means coping with the loss of siblings, spouses, and children. Walker brought the choir to Boston for a second time in 2003, when they performed at a national conference on retroviruses and infectious diseases. (Elton John couldn't make it.)

While in Boston, a choir member was told her young daughter was gravely ill back in Durban and would not survive long without medication. Tears streaming down her face, she told conference attendees about having lost her 7-year-old son to AIDS the year before and how difficult it was to face another loss. Immediately, steps were taken to provide for the daughter's care, according to Walker. Today the girl is ''alive and well and taking medication," he says.

Choir director Phumulani Kunene and other singers have their own stories to tell, and many are equally powerful. Kunene was diagnosed with HIV in January 2000. In profiles that are part of a traveling Harvard Medical School exhibit, Kunene tells of having gotten the diagnosis from a doctor and then being casually asked if he'd like a cup of coffee.

''There was not counseling at all . . . nothing like that," reflects Kunene, who grew up singing with church groups. In contrast to that dispiriting moment, he says, by forming the choir and publicly acknowledging they have HIV, ''we represent millions of people who are infected around the world. Our aim is to put a face on this epidemic . . . a face that is having hope, a face that is alive."

Sisters Wicky and Phakamile Shabane speak about stigmatization and ostracism, the pain of telling even their parents that they'd been infected. Each sister had been HIV-positive for more than two years before discovering, to their amazement, that the other was positive, too. Last April five choir members accompanied them to their parents' farm to break the news. Their parents were ''deeply upset," the sisters say. Yet after the choir accompanied them in dance and song, they were able to show their parents a more hopeful portrait of living with the virus.

When they finished, says Wicky, their father ''stood up and said 'Amen.' . . . I think he was really proud."

According to Dr. Henry Sunpath, who practices in Durban and who will accompany the Sinikithemba Choir on tour this fall, the group has already inspired medical specialists to make South Africa a destination rotation.

Committing to do something about the AIDS pandemic ''serves no purpose unless it translates into action on the ground," says Sunpath. ''And the choir has a lot to do with that."

Joseph P. Kahn can be reached by e-mail at jkahn@globe.com.