With heart and voice!
Julie Taylor invited a number of older Burunge people in
Tanzania to join a music workshop, knowing they were probably the last guardians of cultural practices. Seven women appeared, so proud of their mother tongue that they refused to speak Swahili.
They had seldom crossed the threshold of a church before, because the language and music used there was alien to them. Yet after spending a week combining Scripture texts in their own language with their own music styles, two of them gave their lives to the Lord, saying, “We had no idea church could be like this!”
Julie writes, “They brought an instrument that I had never seen before—khuu’usimoo, a friction trough. One person sat at either end, rubbing two large wooden ‘spoons’ on a convex board to produce a series of ‘grunts’. I was so excited I could hardly speak!
Here was a highly revered instrument, traditionally reserved for secret female-only ceremonies, now being used openly to praise God in a musical setting of Psalm 23.
As the women played, sang and danced, the men fell respectfully silent, listening intently to the new words. No one was confused by the Burunge words with Burunge music. God had given them both.”
"A Tanzanian pastor led the daily devotions,” says Liz Thomson. Many people in Eastern Africa worship God with music that they don’t identify with, understand or even enjoy. “This is what we were taught,” they say. In some areas, their own traditional music is almost completely abandoned, so young people no longer sing such songs.
“If I’m honest, I never expected anything like this to happen at the workshop! It was a reminder to me of the power of God’s word and the power of worship, particularly in the mother tongue.”
