Last Friday, the Tunisia88 Alumni Choir performed in Studzinski Recital Hall. For its international tour, Tunisia88 brings songs from Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, The Gambia and Myanmar to universities across the northeast. Music has always been a crucial part of Terras’ life.

“Music is the center of my universe.… Every wonderful thing that has come into my life has come through music,” Terras said.

Tunisia88 is part of the reason she composes today. Terras became involved with the 88 international, which runs the group, when they launched music clubs in every public high school in Tunisia.

“[There was] a yearly songwriting contest at every single high school in Tunisia.… [Organizing] concerts built community and started this whole movement in our country,” she said.

During the November of Terras’ junior year, when she first learned that Tunisia88 would travel to the United States, she made sure that Brunswick would be a stop on their tour.

“They had to come to Bowdoin because I believe so much in 88 International and their approach to music and community,” Terras said. “It is kind of the spirit of the 88 International choir tour … to collaborate with choirs and to create room for exchange.”

Tunisia88’s performance at the College, as well as at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Brunswick, was especially meaningful to Terras, who is not able to be on campus for her senior year.

“After … my visa got rejected, the tour took a much more personal dimension.… It became my way of contributing to campus or bringing people together, even from afar,” she said. “Besides it being an opportunity to share the story of 88 International and the amazing work they do.… It’s also my personal love letter to Brunswick and Bowdoin.”

Terras wrote a message to those in attendance at Friday evening’s performance.

“When the embassy agent handed me the visa rejection paper, my mind immediately thought of this concert. Somehow, I knew there was poetry to be found there. If I’m not with you tonight, my music is,” Terras wrote.

Her song, “Ma Nourid,” was written in one of the practice rooms in Gibson Hall. It takes inspiration from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s poem سأصير يو ما ما أريد, which translates to “I will be one day what I desire. She hopes that her song serves as a universal reminder that change is possible and that individuals are the keepers of history.

“My older sister … taught me this sentence around the time of the Tunisian Revolution,” she said. “You’ve lived in this political space where people aren’t allowed to really speak about politics,… and then all of a sudden, all that collapses, and you have new belief systems that are getting built under your eyes, and there’s change that is happening right in front of you,” she said.

According to Terras’s letter to the audience, she has found that music is magic.

“Borders, visa regimes and other absurd systems—they plant seeds of fear.… Music, especially when practiced in community, carries the magic and connection we need to detach meaning from systems of oppression and expand our understanding of what it means to be human right now,” she wrote.

She expresses her gratitude and love for the Bowdoin community and hopes that her music and the choir’s performance deliver this message.

“We are 70 percent water, and water reacts to vibrations—reacts to music. When there is music around us, our whole body is feeling it. It’s not just cerebral, it’s embodied,” she said.

Charlie Meyer ’25, who attended the concert on Friday night, shared his gratitude for Terras’ work organizing this event.

“It’s rare that we even get an opportunity like this in the first place,” he said. “As a sophomore who’s taking their first semester of Arabic, it was just really touching, and it motivated me to continue my Arabic studies.”