Watch the Walk

"We need a champion." Well , that could be me. "We need an islander who will champion this project." Well that's not me. As much as I work to become an insider in the culture and a belonger , I'm not someone who's planning on being buried here. Yet. One of those "principles of development" that everyone working on a development project needs to recognize is that the leader/instigator/main inspiration person must be (or become) a long-termer in the community. And anyone who is not planning on being buried there is not the right person.  This week I was able to help facilitate island brothers and sisters in creating their own worship music. We walked away with three songs in the local language put to local music. They're not the best songs ever... but this is a first attempt. And if the only thing we accomplished was to show the delight of local worship music... well it's enough. Because if someone delights in it then they might catch a ...

Day three we knew what we were doing. After the typical African start time "Remember everyone: 2 o'clock sharp!"... meaning 2:30 that we really got going... we sang through the completed song from the day before and then returned to the stop that we hadn't completed then. One person would start singing and another would carry the tune along. Eventually the words and melody came together, but we wanted to be sure that it would be a good song. Music geek time: some of the songs here change meter mid-song. When the islanders did that in the middle of this song (a rendition of Revelation 4:11) it was really messing with my ability to sing the song... So I asked "is this a good song? Will it be difficult to sing? Will lots of other people learn it easily? Can we change it so it's easier?" And to my surprise they said "this is easy! Don't worry! It will be easy to learn, we just have to work through it and be sure of the rhythm." And then the son...

Beach view on a nearby island Well, it's another day and I'm writing another post. Amazing eh? Today we met with the islanders in the afternoon again. Six came-- 2 men and 4 women. We talked about the 8 steps of creating songs: 1) gather a group 2) pray and ask the Father for a new song 3) read a text from the Word 4) create the song 5) revise the song: is it the style you intended? Is it accurate to the Word? 6) polish the song and run it by multiple outside parties 7) praise the Father for the new song 8) share the song with others And then we started! The looks of apprehension on different islander faces was somewhat comical as they had never tried to create their own music before. But they dug in and started. I was blessed to be part of the group as they worked on understanding the text and creating the song. We looked around and said "Well, we've got our group together. Let's pray." So we prayed. "Let's read the text." So we read. We read it...

Part of Clove Island from above We've got an ethnomusicologist here on Clove Island for a week to teach us about ethnomusicology and facilitating the creation of truly local worship music. Some of you who have heard me talk about the importance of heart worship are totally tracking at this point, but for those of you who are a little confused, here's a quick explanation-- Ethnomusicology: the study of music indigenous to individual cultures. Ethnodoxology: applied ethnomusicology-- using what we know of the indigenous music culture to create indigenous worship music. There's this idea that music is a universal language. To borrow a quote from our visiting ethnomusicologist, "music isn't a universal language but it is a universal phenomenon." That is to say that, while two people listening to the same song may get different things out of it based on their cultural background, every culture has some form of indigenous music. Music here is an important thing. All...

Ever deal with writer's bloc k? I have a lot of things I could share about but no fully formed ideas. But since I've neglected this space for over a month now I need to start somewhere. So here's a list of random pieces from life this last month. 1. The holiday season away from home is a whole lot easier the second time around. Than ksgiving hasn't been a big deal to me since I was blessed with 2 Than ksgivings a year during college (the benefits of being an American at a Canadian college). But Christmas last year was pretty rough. This year it was pretty good. I got to celebrate Christmas 4 times! 1) with islanders-- big party at my house. 2) with island brothers and sisters and teammates. 3) with teammates. 4) on a neighboring island with the team there. It was a really great season of remembering our Savior in the midst of a culture that doesn't observe Christmas in the slightest. 2. I have a new kitten. His name is Djimbo-- means "song" in the local la...