“Baja Komba?” ([What or who is] the way to God[?])
“Yesua!” (Jesus!)
Some events are characterized by words and phrases that seem to keep reappearing. At what a local man has unofficially tagged the sikolo na be na Baka (the school of Baka song), the exchange above is used to get people’s attention or call them to order. (We assume this is only in churchy contexts.) That God is great and that Jesus died to pay for our sins are ideas that we hear spoken often.
How deep their understanding goes beyond that we don’t know, but we keep hearing things that tell us that they need and want the Scripture translated into Baka. Missionaries have been evangelizing them for decades, and many scholars and humanitarian organizations have thrown money at them, but there is still no Baka New Testament. As a result, the biblical concepts for the songs are taken from “rough and ready” translations.
Unlike the workshops we held in Peru, where we met with pastors and musicians exclusively at a conference center, here we are in a village, and the invitees included wives, nursing babies, and toddlers. The good news is that they have taken to the music composition assignments with enthusiasm, and the new compositions have caught on quickly and been sung enthusiastically by the group.
The disappointing news is that the compositions overwhelmingly fit into what some call pan-African music; it’s almost as if there’s only a handful of melodies and they just work the words into that. And the lyrics seem to range between the equivalents of
God is so good
He’s so good to me
and
If you want joy, you must sing for it
If you want joy, you must shout for it
If you want joy, you must jump for it.
This is not necessarily bad; after all, we Westerners have more than one song with the same melody as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and thousands in the form of twelve-bar blues. But we hope that before the week is out we will help someone broaden his musical horizons and inspire songs with more lyrical depth.
And we have gotten some songs out of the workshop that at least stretch the limits of the musical box, and a couple of today’s songs taken from 1 Timothy 3:1–7, about choosing leaders on the basis of character, really seemed to have real meat to them. As we hear more about the social situation that we will never see, we will pray that God will use these songs to convince Baka believers that discipleship goes along with a changed lifestyle.
We are learning to adjust to the relaxed attitude toward time here. That things get done at all is cause for celebration—we just don’t expect it to happen when we plan it to. (No, planning to do it at 11 and telling people we want it done at 9 doesn’t work.) And we’re doing well physically—the bug bites are manageable, and so far we’ve gotten no dread diseases or snakebites. Thank you for praying!
Vernacular Discipleship through Music 