Ethnomusicology Day Two

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 in French. We read it in an island dialect similar to the language spoken here. We discussed any word or conjugation changes to make. Then we looked at the list of song styles on the blackboard and chose a style to start with.

One of the ladies took the Book and started reading to herself. Then she sung under her breath. The others encouraged her and asked her to repeat it. She was shy but continued with it. Then she got stuck. One of the men suggested a change and she wasn't stuck anymore. Within 20 minutes we had the melody together and were singing it multiple times. "Do we just sing it straight through or should we repeat some? Can we add to it?" We consulted with the ethnomusicologist and continued. Each phrase was completed, then the end of a phrase was repeated at the beginning of the next. Pretty soon we were singing it multiple times through.

Then we added the drums! One lady got so excited that she forgot to pay attention to the singer and stay on beat. She was thoroughly chastised but seemed to hardly care! Then they said "bring Rafaela to listen!" They were so excited about the song that they just had to share it.

So we sang and played the song for several people and then it was time to start over. Pray, read, create, etc. What a blessing to be creating songs in the local language AND style!