Introduction

Because we see a paucity of resources for authentic African Christian music designed for multiethnic community churches in the United States, we have created this Open Worship Resource (with a Creative Commons license, similar to an Open Educational Resource) based on the expertise of scholarly musicians (doctoral students) at the University of Georgia, to promote inclusive and accessible worship within our community and beyond. The Open Worship Resource includes contributions from Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa and was celebrated through a series of three Learning Community Workshops for the Athens (Georgia) community in the Fall of 2024. Videos from these workshops are available on YouTube and embedded in this volume.

With this project, we hope to more fully embrace two of the Calvin Institute’s 10 Core Convictions about worship:

• an open and discerning approach to culture
• warm, Christ-centered hospitality for all people

Project activities supported by the Calvin Institute included:

• Create an Open Worship Resource of 50 African Christian Choruses from the oral traditions of Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa based on contributions from contractors (doctoral students in music at the University of Georgia). The Open Worship Resource will be published using the Pressbooks platform (commonly used for Open Educational Resources) with a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Int’l 4.0 License. Pressbooks hosts Creative Commons ebooks for free after publication.
• Host three Learning Community Workshops for our church and surrounding Athens, Georgia community, which includes the University of Georgia’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music (less than three miles away).

To conceive of this project, we considered the similarities of the generalized worship practice of congregational singing of African Christian Choruses, as explained by our proposed contractors to other movements within sacred music. Of the worship practices that have been recorded in Standard Music Notation, we considered the publication model of the Taize community and the music of Jacques Berthier. There are striking similarities between Taize and generalized practice of African Christian Choruses: a relatively simple refrain recited by the congregation which is elaborated by an unrestricted variety of vocalists and instrumentalists. We have created a proof of concept attached to this application. With the Open Worship Resource and Learning Community Workshops we hope to create a new and widely extensible tool that can serve Core Convictions about worship of the Calvin Institute.

Recently, we have considered how our worship, especially our music, incorporates the transcultural (some elements of worship are beyond culture), contextual (worship reflects the culture in which it is offered), cross-cultural (worship breaks barriers of culture through worship), and counter-cultural (worship resists the idolatries of its cultural context. As we seek to strike a balance between these aspects of our worship culture, we have found the relevant scriptures the Calvin Institute has provided to be meaningful in this pursuit:

African Christian Choruses (many of which were influenced by European Hymnody), similar to Spirituals, reflect a transcultural blend of European and African elements. This is in contrast to Austro-German and English Hymnody, which is known throughout the world because of missionization, but did not arise from or with transcultural or cross-cultural aims. For this reason, we hope that developing a transcultural Open Worship Resource, will help us and other seekers to be (at least slightly) counter-cultural in their worship.

A central feature of worship is that it breaks down barriers to welcome all worshipers, including persons with disabilities, those from other cultures, both seekers and lifelong Christians, and others.

We also recognize the need to “extend hospitality to strangers. (Romans 12:13)” and know that part of the challenge of engaging with authentic African Christian musical practices is the lack of resources itself. The hymnal representation of African music do not represent practices and repertoire, so we falsely believe we are being inclusive of other cultures, and we do not know the oral traditions of these other cultures. That is why we will create a novel format for African Christian choruses (based on Taize publications) that is inclusive of life-long members’ musicianship and reflective of authentic and current practices.

Key to our project’s success was faculty and graduate students of the University of Georgia’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music with years of experience with African Christian Music. The graduate students will serve as contractors on the project, transcribing and arranging the primary musical sources from the oral traditions of Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa that form the basis of the Open Worship Resource:

• Jean Kidula, PhD, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Georgia
• Quintina Carter-Enyi, MA, born and raised in Nigeria, currently a doctoral student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Georgia
• Nderitu Kiragu, MA, born and raised in Kenya, currently a doctoral student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Georgia
• Winnie Mburu, MEd, born and raised in Kenya, currently a doctoral student in Music Education at the University of Georgia
• Nkululeko Zungu, MM, born and raised in South Africa, currently a doctoral student in Music Composition at the University of Georgia

References

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Agawu, Kofi. The African Imagination in Music. Oxford University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190263201.001.0001

Agu, Daniel C. C. “Youth Songs: A Type of Igbo Choral Music in Igbo Christian Worship.” African Music 7, no. 2 (1992): 13-22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30249803

Carter-Enyi, Aaron. “Hooked on Sol-Fa: The Do-Re-Mi Heuristic for Yorùbá Speech Tones.” Africa 88, no. 2 (2018): 267-90. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972017000912

Collinet, Georges. “Hip Deep Ghana 2: 21st Century Accra from Gospel to Hiplife.” Afropop Worldwide, PRX. Last modified 2015. Accessed August 29, 2018. http://afropop.org/audio-programs/hip-deep-ghana-2-21st-century-accra-from-gospel-to-hiplife

Emerson, Michael. “A New Day for Multiracial Congregations.” Yale University Reflections, The Future of Race (2013). https://reflections.yale.edu/article/future-race/new-day-multiracial-congregations

Idowu, E. Bolaji. Olodumare: God in Yorùbá Belief. London: Longman, 1966.

Kidula, Jean Ngoya. Music in Kenyan Christianity: Logooli Religious Song. Indiana University Press, 2013.

Lassiter, Luke Eric. “” From Here on, I Will Be Praying to You”: Indian Churches, Kiowa Hymns, and Native American Christianity in Southwestern Oklahoma.” Ethnomusicology 45, no. 2 (2001): 338-52. https://doi.org/10.2307/852678

Marshall, Kimberly, “Háálá Ayóó Diyin” and Other Paradoxes of Navajo-Language Christian Music.” Society for Ethnomusicology, New Orleans, 2012.

Marti, Gerardo. Worship across the Racial Divide: Religious Music and the Multiracial Congregation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392975.001.0001

Ogunbekun, Wale. “A. T. Ola Olude.” Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Last modified 2018. Accessed September 15, 2024. https://hymnary.org/person/Olude_ATO

Olwage, Grant. “Discipline and Choralism: The Birth of Musical Colonialism.” In Music, Power, and Politics, edited by A. J. Randall, 25-46. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Phillips, Thomas Ekundayo. Yorùbá Music (African): Fusion of Speech and Music. Roodepoort: African Music Society, 1952.

Shaw, Rosalind and Charles Stewart. Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Shetler, Jan Bender. “Christianity and Social Change in Africa. Essays in Honor of J. D. Y. Peel (Review).” African Studies Review 50, no. 1 (2007): 205-07. https://doi.org/10.1353/arw.2005.0133

Snyder, Sara, “The Politics of the Sounding Voice: Hymn Singing in Cherokee Language Revitalization.” Society for Ethnomusicology, 2016.

Thiong’o, Ngugi Wa. Decolonising the Mind. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1981.

Copyright Statement

This Open Worship Resource is published with the following Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. This prevents anyone but the individual copyright holders (the contractors contributing to this project) from making derivative works, especially for commercial purposes. Contractors (transcriber/arrangers) will retain copyright to their works and take all responsibility for securing the Permission to Publish to CPCA from a composer of any of the selections and also providing Permission to Publish for their transcription and arrangement (their version) of the piece. Our preference is that contractors submit arrangements of African Christian choruses that, after thorough due diligence, the contractor Many of these pieces are over 75 years old and were never written down in Standard Music Notation and have found there is no known composer. Permission to Publish granted to Covenant Presbyterian Church of Athens (CPCA) is not exclusive and does not preclude the arrangers from publishing their copyrighted work in other venues provided that it does not revoke Permission to Publish in this Open Worship Resource.