As the daughter of an American surgeon with a mission to bring medical care to Congo, Joy and her three siblings grew up as members of a close, caring community. Without electricity, nighttime was filled with storytelling and singing while the heartbeat of the drums from other villages sending messages to one another murmured outside. Joy remembers that each morning the local woodcutter would call out to her in song and she would race to the door to sing back in his Congolese dialect. Music has been part of her soul ever since.

Although there are over 250 languages in Congo, it was there that Joy discovered that music is the one language that transcends. Joy was a teenager when they returned to the States. Here Joy explored sacred and folk music until one of her professors recognized her outstanding vocal gifts and urged her to explore opera. It wasn’t just the power of the music that touched her so deeply, it was the fullness of the experience; the high drama, the timeless characters, the rich costumes and lavish sets. Singing opera transported her to the nights of singing and storytelling of Congo.

The last two decades have seen violence and war devastate Congo, and the cycle of violence shows no sign of abating. Operanauts was founded with the mission to harness the incredible healing, transformational power of opera to help relieve the trauma and symptoms of post traumatic stress that many young people are experiencing in Kinshasa, Congo. Through productions and music festivals organised in Kinshasa, Operanauts’ programs are immersive of the Congolese culture by adapting popular operas and commissioning new works. Operanauts shares the rich creative experience that opera provides, while hiring and training talented local musicians, artisans and crew to help future proof the arts in Congo.