Hudson Square

The Resistance Revival Chorus is a collective of 60 women who sing protest songs in an effort to uplift women and strengthen the women’s movement. It’s the creation of some very talented and strong-minded women who also happened to have a hand in organizing the Women’s March on Washington. Paola Mendoza, Sarah Sophie Flicker, and Ginny Suss are activists and artists who, along with fellow co-founders Nelini Stamp, Shruti Ganguly, Alyssa Klein, and Jenna Lauter, founded the chorus on the belief that art and activism can intersect to make the movement stronger.

When a protest turned into marching and singing, it prompted Flicker to have a conversation with Stamp about the importance of music in any movement. Her past work with a political theatre group called The Citizens Band also sparked some of the inspiration for the Chorus. She explains that most of her work has focused on fusing art, culture and politics “with the understanding that oftentimes, art has the power to shape hearts and minds in the way policy doesn’t.”

Suss’s career in the music industry and Mendoza’s role as Artistic Director for the March also made them ideal contributors to the birth of the chorus. Suss specifically reached out to artists within her network with low expectations, but the response was actually quite overwhelming.

The Resistance Revival Chorus made their debut in Times Square, dressed in white, singing “Rich Man’s House” in the summer of 2017. Mendoza, Suss, and Flicker are members of the Chorus, as well as professional artists Meah Pace and Abena Koomson-Davis, their musical director. The women rehearse on a monthly basis, but they don’t necessarily always perform together. Because they believe in paying their singers, they can have as few as 15 or as many as 35 women singing at once.

“Our main mission is that joy is an act of resistance, so we make our shows as joyful as possible. To invigorate us, to inspire us, to make sure we’re not being disempowered,” describes Mendoza.

Learn more here.