DownloadMarch 30, 2009 issue
Praising God in their mother tongue
First known Siamou Christian songs are composed
By Lynda Hollinger-Janzen Mennonite Mission NetworkPage:
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ORODARA, Burkina Faso — Eight workshop participants eyed each other self-consciously and shifted uneasily on metal chairs in the recording studio.
Siaka Jabati, left, and Brahima Jabati compose the first Siamou Christian music during a workshop in Burkina Faso. — Photo by Kember Lillo/MMN/MMN
Souleymane Traoré had carefully chosen each person for the two-day pioneering attempt to create Christian music in the Siamou language.
The participants had little in common except the language and an interest in music.
Three griots — traditional musician-storytellers — joined a Protestant pastor’s wife, a Catholic elder and three Mennonites to compose and record songs for the Siamou church.
“When the music is in your mother tongue and in your mother music, people can sing with greater joy and understanding,” Traoré said. “It makes you do more than just sing. It makes you dance.”
Traoré, a linguist who has worked with Mennonite Bible translators for a decade, said singing adds meaning to words.
“On the wedding day and during initiation days, all advice preparing the young men and women for marriage and right living is sung,” Traoré said.
Lillian Haas Nicolson, a Canadian Mennonite linguist, has served in Burkina Faso since 1999 with Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission, Mennonite Mission Network and Mennonite Church Canada Witness and their predecessor agencies.
She was skeptical of what could happen in two days with the limited resources available.
“Only the stories of the creation were translated and in book form,” Nicolson said. “Only Solo [Souleymane Traoré] was literate in Siamou. And the griots weren’t even Christian.”
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