Missionaries from Europe and North America brought to Africa many Western forms of music and worship. In the last several years, especially after Vatican II, Africans have developed more indigenous approaches to music in worship. The fascinating diversity of current musical practices is documented in this survey of independent African churches.
The Influence of Western Music in African Churches
The Christian ancestry of Ethiopia is unique in Africa, but in the last few decades, Christianity has blossomed in many other areas of the continent. Some African countries have a higher percentage of followers than the Western European nations that first evangelized them. Africa is a huge continent, and a survey of its Christian music here cannot even begin to be exhaustive. Through brief and selective views, therefore, the following chapters trace the steady climb that Christianity is making—away from Western trappings and dogma to a faith that expresses African priorities, fully absorbed into African life. The musical consequences of this change are dramatic.
It is comparatively recently (around 150 years ago) that Western missionaries became fired with the task of converting “pagan” Africa to the Christian faith: However anxious a missionary may be to appreciate and to retain indigenous social and moral values, in the case of religion he has to be ruthless … he has to admit and even to emphasise that the religion he teaches is opposed to the existing one and one has to cede to the other. (D. Westermann, Africa and Christianity [Oxford, 1937], 94)
The traditional religions have certainly ceded. In Kenya, estimates are that in 1900, 95.8 percent of the population adhered to traditional religions and only 0.2 percent were Christian. By 1962 the figures were respectively 37 percent and 54 percent: by 1972, 26.2 percent and 66.2 percent. Although these figures refer to one country, they reflect the general trend dramatically.
Western Lifestyle
Along with these changes in religious persuasion have come imported lifestyles which have found their natural habitat in the big cities. With them come all the trappings—good and bad—of Western lifestyle: the cars, the clothes, the fast food, the ghetto-blasters. It is in such surroundings that churches with a European style of worship are to be found in great diversity, with their Western liturgies, languages, and music.
But unlike Europe and North America, the majority of Africans still live in a rural setting, where traditions established over centuries, even millennia, continue to exert a powerful influence. In the cities an adapted Western culture has long been accepted and has replaced many local customs, but it is in village life that the collision of European Christianity and local customs is still an issue.
The place of music in these societies provides one indication of the cultural gulf to be bridged, for it plays a far more active part in the consciousness of Africans, penetrating deeply into traditional upbringing: The African mother sings to her child and introduces him to many aspects of music right from the cradle. She trains the child to become aware of rhythm and movement by rocking him to music, by singing to him in nonsense syllables imitative of drum rhythms. When he is old enough to sing, he sings with his mother and learns to imitate drum rhythms by rote.… Participation in children’s games and stories incorporating songs enables him to learn to sing in the style of his culture, just as he learns to speak its language. His experience, even at this early stage, is not confined to children’s songs, for African mothers often carry children on their backs to public ceremonies, rites and traditional dance arenas … sometimes the mothers even dance with their children on their backs. (J. H. Kwabena Nketia, The Music of Africa [London, 1982], 60)
Early missionaries seem to have been blind to these qualities of life and to the strong religious awareness of African peoples. As the nineteenth-century missionary Robert Moffat wrote: Satan has employed his agency with fatal success, in erasing every vestige of religious impression from the minds of the Bechuanas, Hottentots and Bushmen; leaving them without a single ray to guide them from the dark and dread futurity, or a single link to unite them with the skies. (E. W. Smith, African Ideas of God [London, 1961], 83)
Europeans believed that the minds of Africans were empty of any sense of religion or culture and were waiting to have these instilled into them. Desmond Tutu summarizes the result: These poor native pagans had to be clothed in Western clothes so that they could speak to the white man’s God, the only God, who was obviously unable to recognise them unless they were decently clad. These poor creatures must be made to sing the white man’s hymns hopelessly badly translated, they had to worship in the white man’s unemotional and individualistic way, they had to think and speak of God and all the wonderful Gospel truths in the white man’s well proven terms. (Desmond Tutu, “Whither African Theology?” in Christianity in Independent Africa, ed. by Fashole-Luke, Gray, et al. [London, 1978], 365)
Establishing trade with Africa was high on the European agenda in the nineteenth century and a prime reason for converting the continent to Western ways: In the Buxton expedition of 1841 … the first aim was to discover the possibilities of legitimate trade with Nigeria.… But the spreading of the Gospel was regarded as essential and integral to this. It was widely believed that, in order to have legitimate trade, one must have a people of developed culture, reliable and industrious habits.… Christianity was confidently regarded as the foundation for all of these and all the virtues of social and commercial intercourse.… (A. D. Galloway, “Missionary Impact on Africa,” in Nigeria [Independence Issue of Nigeria Magazine, Lagos, Nigeria, October 1960], 60)
The signs of a change of attitude among the missionary churches are evident in a hymnbook like Africa Praise, published in 1956 for use in English-speaking schools. It contains many of the best-loved Protestant hymns of the past two centuries, but also a large number of African songs to English words in tonic sol-fa (very few Africans have a musical training which allows them to read Western notation). The hymnbook is an indication of a desire to narrow the gap between the African and European cultures, but it was only a first step.
The Western Legacy
In a few city cathedrals, resources are channeled to the provision of printed books and to musicians who know how to get the best out of them; outside their walls, the music of the many churches founded by the West is in a sorry state. Without the provision of music books with stimulating contents of high quality and without the training to use such material, the Western legacy of Christian music has become a dead weight, even a millstone. Norman Warren described his experience of Christian music in Uganda after a visit in 1985: Generally speaking, we found the life of the church at a low ebb. All too common was the desire to ape the West.… I was disappointed in coming across so little original music in worship. In most instances the music was rather formal and old-fashioned …
He noted the use of Hymns Ancient and Modern (standard version) at Kampala Cathedral, Moody and Sankey in a suburban church in Kusoga, and African Praise at Arua Church in the north. The musical facilities available even in Mukono Cathedral were very slender: The organ is a pedal harmonium that has not worked for months. All the music was unaccompanied and led with great gusto by a small choir. The hymn tunes were, without exception, Victorian … and, quite frankly, I would never want to hear them again. (Music in Worship 33 [September/October 1985]: 6-7)
The Language of the People
The musical legacy of the missionary churches in Africa is not wholly depressing, however. The Roman Catholic church worldwide adopted a dramatic and new attitude to its liturgy in Vatican II (the Second Vatican Council) of 1962. The abandonment of Latin and the adoption of the language of the people was its most radical step.
A Coming-of-Age
Vatican II coincided with the independence of many African countries and a powerful awareness of national identity and heritage. The feelings of Catholic African bishops were summarized in a report in 1974: The “coming-of-age” of the Churches signifies a turning point in the history of the church of Africa. It is the end of the missionary period. This does not mean the end of evangelization. But it means, in the words of Pope Paul VI during his visit to Uganda: “You Africans may become missionaries to yourselves.” In other words, the remaining task of evangelization of Africa is primarily the responsibility of the African church itself. This fact implies a radically changed relationship between the church in Africa and … the other Churches in Europe and North America. (Report on the Experiences of the Church in the Work of Evangelism in Africa; the African Continent’s report for the 1974 Synod of Bishops on The Evangelization of the Modern World, 16)
One important consequence of this new attitude is the reduction of the numbers of missionaries from the traditional societies and churches working in Africa and alongside that, the development of new styles of worship more in harmony with African culture and lifestyle.
Church Music in the Independent Churches of Africa
Another development in the recent history of African Christianity is the pronounced and dramatic growth of indigenous independent churches. The Kimbanguist Church of Zaire is one of the hundreds founded as the result of the inability of the established missionary churches to understand African needs and aspirations in the faith. As a member of the Kimbanguist Church has written: The arrival of the missionaries, accompanied by colonisation, obscured the new knowledge of Christianity. The preaching of Christ was seen as another means of helping colonisation to alienate men completely from their African identity. It was in this situation that Christ turned his face towards his people and chose the prophet Simon Kimbangu as his messenger … (D. Ndofunsu, “The Role of Prayer in the Kimbanguit Church,” in Christianity in Independent Africa, ed. Fashole-Luke, Gray, et al. [London, 1978], 578)
Kimbanguist Music
In common with many indigenous churches in Africa, the Kimbanguists value the Bible and its teachings highly and their practices are founded on biblical principles. They also denounce the traditional animist religions with vigor but remain close to many local customs. Music is an important aid to worship, from the simple unison singing of the thrice-daily services of prayer through to the choral and instrumental sounds of Sunday worship and the colorful festivals of the church year. The beginning of the Kimbanguist musical traditions is indicative of the failure of the established missions in colonial times to understand the needs of the Christian community in Africa: At the start of the prophet’s mission at N’Kamba, the songs utilized to accomplish the work of Christ were those of Protestants. But the Protestants refused to sell their hymnbooks to the followers of the prophet. Saddened, Simon Kimbangu went apart to pray, laying before God this poverty, so deeply felt by his congregation. From that was born the gift of “catching” the songs. (D. Ndofunsu, “The Role of Prayer in the Kimbanguit Church,” 590)
The musical tradition that has developed is perfectly attuned to a society where it is memory rather than the written word that provides cultural identity and continuity: Kimbanguists catch songs in various ways: in dreams, and in visions in which they hear angels singing. As a general rule, once they have been caught, the songs are sent to an office set up by the church, called the Directorate of Kimbanguist Songs, where they are studied and to some extent modified to give them a good meaning. Other songs are deleted if the meaning of the song is not clear. The songs have to be examined to avoid those that may be inspired by the Devil. (D. Ndofunsu, “The Role of Prayer in the Kimbanguit Church,” 590)
The songs have all sorts of functions—some are songs of praise, others are “living lessons, explaining and clarifying biblical teaching, still others are prophetic.” After approval, these songs are learnt by a regional choir of leaders whose members then pass them on to the local choirs. One regional choir, the Kimbanguist Theatre Group, travels around the churches using singing and drama to bring Bible stories and the church’s history to life.
Aladura Churches
The Kimbanguist Church is only one of the hundreds of indigenous Christian organizations thriving in Africa today. Because there are no Europeans involved and little sign of Western culture, they can make an impact in areas hardly touched by the older missionary churches. The Aladura Churches, for instance, which are very popular among the Yoruba and Ibo people in southern Nigeria, have also become established in the Muslim north of that country. In political terms, these churches have generally been treated in a friendly manner by emerging nationalist governments, in contrast to the previously open suspicion toward colonial churches.
Among people of all walks of Nigerian life, the Aladura Churches are supported enthusiastically. Where the Kimbanguists are reminiscent of seventeenth-century Puritans in their restrictions on smoking, drinking, and dancing, the Aladura celebrate their faith with hand-clapping, dancing, and traditional instruments. They have incorporated other elements of traditional worship, too—instantaneous healing of the sick, raising of the dead, prophecy, and exorcism. As one Aladura Christian puts it, it is in their liturgy that “the unfulfilled emotional needs in the Western-oriented churches have found ample fulfillment” (A. Omoyajowo, “The Aldura Church in Nigeria Since Independence,” in Christianity in Independent Africa, ed. by Fashole-Luke, Gray, et al. [London, 1978], 110).
An indication of the popularity of the Aladura Churches in city and country is provided by their choirs’ and solo singers’ great following; an American-style network of gospel music is developing fast. The guitarist Patty Obassey is one of the best known, scoring an enormous success with Nne Galu in 1984. Among the many choirs who have produced a number of albums are Imole Ayo and the Christian Singers, the Choir of the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim, and Erasmus Jenewari and his Gospel Bells.
The balance of European and African influences on the practice of Christianity is still on the move in favor of the African, but this does not mean a wholesale eradication of Western culture. The style of vestments worn by Aladura priests is only one element borrowed from the Protestant and Catholic Churches. On the other hand, the independent churches have taught the older mission churches valuable lessons in liturgy and Christian music.
Ecstatic Music
There are a growing number of indigenous churches where the style of worship is difficult to distinguish from the traditional animist religions. The African Apostolic Church, founded in 1932 by John Maranke, is an example. It is based in Eastern Zimbabwe but its influence has spread far and wide. Where the Kimbanguist Church approves and disseminates its songs in a highly organized manner, spontaneity and improvisation are the most striking elements of Apostolic worship.
The main meeting of the African Apostolic Church is held on Saturday—the Sabbath—and may last several hours. Worship begins with an invocation—kerek! kerek!—which is the name given to the ecstatic state the group will later experience. Then hymns are sung, which are formal not in the sense of being read out of a book, but by being commonplace among many churches in Africa:
Mwari Komborera Africa, Alleluia Chisua yemina matu yedu Mwari
Baba Jesu utukomborera Jesu, turi branda bako
Refrain: O mueya, boanna mueya utukomborera
In translation, this means:
God save Africa, Alleluia, Hear our prayers God, Father, Jesus, bless us
Jesus, we are your servants
Refrain: O come Holy Spirit, bless us
The words are in Chishona, a language reserved for religious ceremonies. The invocation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (the last is emphasized) is a sign to the people of a spiritual presence among them which is to become almost tangible.
The men are seated on the open ground separately from the women and all are addressed by preachers (there may be three or more) and the chief evangelist. Between them, they will have agreed beforehand on the biblical topics most appropriate for the day.
After the opening hymns the preaching begins, but members are free to interrupt with songs of their own choosing at any point. They are particularly likely to jump in and lead off with a song whenever the preacher hands it over to a reader. As in the Kimbanguist Church, instruments and dancing are not allowed, but their place is taken by the use of ngoma—vocal sounds which imitate drumming—and swaying while standing or sitting.
The call-and-response form so commonplace in African music demonstrates the relationship between a song leader and the rest of the congregation, who respond with their refrain even before the leader’s improvised verses have ended.
These songs exert a powerful emotional influence on the meeting and may very well develop into the repetitive chanting of a short refrain, such as “God in Heaven” (Mambo wa ku denga): During chanting, the rhythmic shape of the song is transformed as worshippers put increasing emphasis on strongly accented beats.… While the rhythm is accentuated, the harmonies of the chorus tighten. The loose collection of voices (of the call-and-response) becomes a tight, single unit. The overall effect is hypnotic. The rhythmic and harmonic ramifications push the singers into a state of maximum spiritual involvement. As the change proceeds, individuals moan, yodel, and insert ngoma … and glossolalic utterances (the gift of tongues). The entire congregation sways to the rhythm … (B. Jules Rosette, “Ecstatic Singing: Music and Social Integration in an African Church” in I. E. Jackson, ed., More than Drumming [London, 1985], 134)
It is sometimes difficult for the preacher to regain control of the service unless the chanting dies out naturally. If it does not, then he may attempt to break the spell by shouting a greeting. These songs are nevertheless regarded by the preachers as a valuable reinforcement of their message and the value of the meeting depends on the degree to which the members have experienced “possession” by the Holy Spirit.
The congregation’s sense of participation is absolute, even extending to the improvisation of songs expressing discontent—perhaps expressing disagreement with one of the church leaders or with the way in which a decision has been made. Even if problems are aired through song during the service, the sense of peace of unity after a long kerek is very evident.