Women's Vocal Orchestra of Sumatra

At the school, she played in the orchestra and learned many of the skills which enabled her to arrange the pieces of music for 4-part women's chorus.

[3] While Chambers acted as arranger and conductor, Margaret Dryburgh, a missionary POW, would write down the piano and orchestral scores from memory.

She studied piano as a small child and received a Bachelor of Arts at Newcastle College, then a part of Durham University.

[7] Dryburgh and Chambers did not attempt to imitate instruments but instead used humming for sounds and consonants to obtain a sense of rhythm.

Many of the women pulled together rations to provide this sense of normalcy in attending a concert around Christmas time.

Norah Chambers later lamented “Our vocal orchestra was silenced forever when more than half had died and the others were too weak to continue…it was wonderful while it lasted.”[20] The exact date when the group ceased to be is not known.

[23] The Women's Vocal Orchestra of Sumatra has inspired two major motion pictures: Paradise Road (1997 film) and Song of Survival (1985).

Additionally, presenting the effects gender played in the prison camps seemed difficult in a politically correct mindset.

[24] However, other historians argue that in the films focusing on the Women's Vocal Orchestra problems arise because of theme.

Historian Hank Nelson asserts that filming the death by machine gun fire which immediately followed some of the women's capture, would be impossible to set the tone the filmmakers desired.