The song “Mwe Wata” says, “God, you are the creator of everything.” This Anglican worship choir from Mfuwe, Zambia presented today’s song in Kunda language to promote the use of Kunda language for Christian worship services among Kunda people. There are only about 60,000 Kunda speaking people and less than 3,000 of those are Christian. These musicians from St. Thomas New Anglican Church rehearsed and presented this song to be part of a collection of Kunda worship songs assembled by Ken and Sue Sawka and their Partners in Bible Translation teams. The collection of new songs is meant to give many worship options to Kunda congregations. The honor of being included in these recordings is an incentive to these music teams to create more new Kunda worship songs. Mary Lu and I also led song composing workshops to help develop skills for creating scripture songs in Kunda language.
We pared down our recording gear to reduce weight for the flight to Mfuwe and we were pleased that the Shure SM57s and SM58s worked well (58s here because of wind noise). The group performances took on a live feel because of the built-in audience of other music teams, therefore we couldn’t place mics up close (because of the movement) or double up the lines of singers for a more compact choir. Surprisingly, the pavilion was a fairly good acoustic environment for this type of recording – except for dogs, trucks, refrigeration hum and wind – otherwise it was quite nice.
Mary Lu and I were so impressed with the choral traditions in these southern portions of Africa – excellent ensemble singing, great harmonies, and among the Anglican churches – strong formal vocal training. Great people, a warm welcome, great music, great new songs and great memories – who could ask for anything more?
Enjoy!