Holy Praiseco Negotiating Sacred And Popular Music And Dance In African Pentecostalism

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Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

Holy Praiseco: Negotiating Sacred and

Popular Music and Dance in

African Pentecostalism

Ogbu U. Kalu († 2009)

Henry Winters Luce Professor of World Christianity; McCormick T eological Seminary

Abstract

In post-colonial Africa, Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity has slowly emerged as an inﬂ uential shaper of culture and identity through its use of music, media, and dance. This article gives an overview of the transitions that have occurred in African politics, identity awareness, and culture, especially as it relates to the indigenous village public and it’s interface with the external Western public, and how the emergent cultural public has become the most inﬂ uential player in shaping the African moral universe. Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity has navigated the shift from a missionary-driven avoidance of indigenous music and dance to the incorporation of indigenous elements, leading in turn to the popularization of Pentecostal music and dance that blends indigenous forms and concepts, Christian symbolism, and popular cultural expres- sions. The resulting forms have not only shaped Christianity, but also the surrounding culture and its political environment.

Keywords

African music, indigenization, African Pentecostal media, politics and Pentecostalism, Pentecos- talism, culture

Introduction

T ree intersecting concerns inform this reﬂ ection: First, the contemporary religious landscape in Africa has become increasingly Charismatic. It may reﬂ ect the resilience of the indigenous religious worldview; it may also accen- tuate conﬂ ict and the deﬁ nition of the other. But this tendency is reﬂ ected in all religious forms and may explain the resurgence of religion in the modern public space. Second, the Pentecostal Charismatic movement has grown enor- mously and attracted various types of scholarly interpretation, in particular regarding its import in the public space, political economy, and especially its lack of ethics of pluralism. But the tendency has been to study its growth

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through space instead of through sound. Yet this movement has attained spa- tial importance because of its sounds. Pentecostalism’s Charismatic liturgy — its worship, music and dance — is its most attractive feature. Some have argued that by privileging experience and performance, Charismatic religion engages the whole person instead of emphasizing reason. Pentecostal Charis- matic spirituality has created a new religious culture that all other religious forms have imbibed. But, third, this factor raises the larger question about the impact of liberalized and unregulated media on both religion and the public space in Africa. It does more: it raises still a larger question about how the religious forms negotiate between sacred and popular culture. The Charis- matic religious culture is now quite evident in secular life; religious music is used in celebrating rites of passage and in promoting politics, and has gener- ated an economic boom in the entertainment industry.

Media use in contemporary Africa has attracted much attention because the Charismatic Pentecostal movement has been the most avid consumer. Indeed, it is argued that media use is the most important explanation for the growth of African Christianity because it valorized the missionary strategy, radically reshaped the religious landscape, and enabled Pentecostalism to charismatize the mainline churches. Cephas Omenyo’s study, Pentecost Outside Pentecostal- ism, documents the trend in Ghana.1 A recent documentary by James Ault on African Christianity, shot in Ghana and Zimbabwe, illustrates how the liturgy, doctrine, ethics, and other practices in the mainline churches resonate with Pentecostal spirituality, liturgy, and theology. One explanation for the growth of African Christianity is that the missionary-founded churches are engaged in an encapsulating strategy; that they retain their members by enlarging the Charismatic space for the youth and women. A second explanation is that Africans have always been attracted to the Charismatic and pneumatic ele- ments of the gospel because these resonate with the goals and practices of traditional religion. This buttresses the argument that African Christianity is an extension of African traditional religion. People come to the Charismatic churches to seek answers to questions raised within the interiors of the primal worldviews. The implication is that Pentecostalism is growing because of its cultural policy and attitude toward indigenous worldviews and culture. Pente- costalism has created a new religious culture by interweaving the indigenous and modern cultures. All other religious forms, whether Islam, mainline churches, or the African Instituted Church, imitate the new religious culture.

Cephas Omenyo, Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches in Ghana (Zoetemeer: Uitgeverij Boekencentrum, 2002).

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T erefore, how the Pentecostal movement mediates the indigenous and con- temporary popular cultures deserves attention.

T is reﬂ ection, therefore, responds to two limited discourses: The ﬁrst is the tendency to study Pentecostalism through space, describing its spatial and ver- tical expansion and its numbers. The state of social statistics in Africa vitiates this discourse. Even in the Western world, the fad of numbers does not tally with accuracy. Second, most media studies focus on the glare of television and the technicolor of billboards that decorate urban roads, showing the big man of God staring down on the trafic, promising liberation and prosperity. The impact of media on religion and vice versa is much beyond television. Radio has a more pervasive inﬂ uence and other media forms such as vernacular vid- eos are more crucial. The goal here is more limited to changing the focus by studying the sounds of the born again through music and dance, because the Charismatic liturgy attracts and constitutes its biggest draw on the masses. It constitutes an emergent cultural transformation. Dubbed “praiseco,” Pente- costal music and dance traditions have attempted to supplant the disco music and dance of discotheques. A number of high-proﬁ le secular or juju musicians (who create new rhythms from indigenous musical culture) have become gos- pel singers, evangelists, and pastors. Politicians and the celebrants of rites of passage borrow freely from gospel music and dance. Our goal is to trace how the new musical tradition of gospel music originated and developed; how the Pentecostals who were initially wary of popular cultures negotiated between sacred and popular music and dance.

Ezra Chitendo aptly deﬁ nes gospel music as

an artistic product emerging from cultural workers who are inﬂ uenced by the Chris- tian cumulative tradition. Tese artists utilize various musical styles and instruments to communicate Christian themes. Tese include the mbira beat from a traditional Shona musical instrument, sungura or museve (like an arrow, it pierces the heart) from Zimbabwean popular music, rap and hip hop from African American culture, reggae from the African-Caribbean culture, Congolese soukous and other types.2

Popularity has its price and Pentecostal churches are now competing among themselves in adopting new musical and dance choreographies. The empire of popular culture has struck back and reshaped the character of the movement.

Ezra Chitendo, Singing Culture: A Study of Gospel Music in Zimbabwe (Uppsala, Sweden: The Nordic Africa Institute, Research report no. 121, 2002), 14.

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The 1995 papal exhortation Ecclesia in Africa3 noted the use of media as a resource in evangelization but cautioned that media “constitute a new culture that has its own language and above all its own speciﬁ c values and counter- values” (no. 71). It could pose a challenge to Christian users.

The signiﬁ cance of the problem can be illustrated from the Republic of Congo, where Pentecostal/Charismatic devotees are called bakristu in the Lin- gala language. One noticeable characteristic of believers who live in this musi- cal culture is the way they are struggling to draw a line between sacred Christian music (mabino ya Nzambe) and the polluting secular music (mabino mabe) that ﬁ lls the air in the urban areas and percolates into the remote villages via radio and electronic technology. The bakristu declare that the Holy Spirit (Molimo Mosantu) inspires a certain type of appropriate music while the evil spirit (molimo mabe) inspires diﬀ erent types of music and dance that seduce and ruin morals. Preachers eloquently entertain and exhort their audiences by choreographing diatribes against the inﬂ uence of popular culture on believers. On the surface, it appears that the Pentecostals are merely reinforcing the old missionary cultural policy that condemned African indigenous cultures as being demonic. I contend that matters are more complex, because music and dance constitute an important dimension in the proliﬁ c mass mediation of religion among the religious groups. The use of mass media has, however, given the Pentecostal movement a higher public visibility, proﬁ le, and inﬂ u- ence than their statistical share of the contemporary religious market would warrant. Some Pentecostal leaders still worry about the receding line and pres- sure against holy music.

Music and Dance in Missionary Rhetoric and Practice

It is germane to explore brieﬂ y the role of music and dance in Christian wor- ship and the inherited missionary traditions behind the Pentecostal attitude. Music has always been central in the human expressions of heartfelt responses to the divine. Singing and liturgical dance serve as modes of praise and wor- ship and as muscular strategies for inculcating the gospel message because they unite the body, soul, and spirit during worship. T ey bring theological reﬂ ec- tions about God and relationships with human beings and the world of nature down from the intellectual level into the aﬀ ective dimensions of the human

http://vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_ exh_14091995_ecclesia-in-africa_en.html.

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person. Art, ritual symbols, and dance elevate and expand spiritual horizons and express what the heart feels. But the missionary culture formalized liturgi- cal acts and reduced the emotive aspects expressed in dance. The restriction on bodily movement may have deeper theological import about the conception of matter and spirit. Sinful ﬂ esh and human emotions are contrasted against the Spirit. But missionaries added a racist, cultural nuance. In the crosscultural encounters, two things happened: On the one hand, the missionaries nursed a suspicion about indigenous religions, especially the pervasive power of indig- enous spirits, the noise of the hypnotic drums, and the potential use of music and dance in achieving ecstasy, trance and prophecy. T ey sought to replace indigenous musical traditions by inculcating Western traditions such as hym- nody, organ, piano, choral music, and brass bands in the project to transplant Christianity.

But a new wind blew from the Vatican II’s cultural policy. In Ecclesia in Africa the pope repeated an earlier call for “a serene and prudent dialogue” with indigenous religion that would avoid negative inﬂ uences and “foster the assimilation of positive values” from indigenous religion whose agents should be “treated with great respect and esteem” (no. 67). The afirmation in Vatican II’s document Ad Gentes exploded a liturgical revival, new musical traditions, and Christian art in the late 1960s.4 The Congolese “Zaire Rite” showcased the vernacularization of the Mass that included the inculturation of indige- nous lyrics, rhythms, percussion, and symbols, sanctioning a deviation from inherited patterns. Moreover, dance was woven into the Christian liturgy as a central feature. The opening procession involves all the ministers together doing a step dance with spears as symbols of the chief, who holds a carved stick with horse hairs. The presider kisses the altar north, east, south, and west. The Gloria is a circle dance around the altar for the incensing. It was in these heady days that the Missa Luba won international acclaim. It was produced without any Western instruments. The Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo have the framework of a kasala of the Ngandanjika (Kasai). The Sanctus is fashioned after the fare- well song of a Kiluba woman. Outside the Congo, the success of the liturgical revolution could be seen in the allegro dance in Ethiopian churches, an ecstatic dance reminiscent of David’s praise-leaps, in the ingoma dance in Malawi drawn from the traditional Ngoni warrior dance, and in the odwira dance in a Kumasi Roman Catholic Mass. Tese point to precursors to the musical evo- lution catalyzed by African Pentecostals.

F. K. Lumbala, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998).

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Admittedly, it could be said that the African Instituted Churches had chal- lenged the missionary traditions and grew in numbers because their African music and dance liberated and created a new phase of African response to the gospel. In the process of decolonization, missionary-founded churches came under increasing pressure to devise encapsulating strategies. Meanwhile, cul- tural nationalists in the new African states patronized creative indigenous music, thereby exacerbating the pressure toward inculturation. The Congolese rhumba and cha-cha-cha and the West African high life were the sounds of cultural nationalism and political independence. Nationalism also fuelled eth- nomusicology signiﬁ ed in the creative achievements of J. H. Nketia of Ghana.

5 In southern Africa, guerilla wars produced “songs of struggle” that resembled the nationalist choral music of the Biafrans during the Nigerian civil war, 1967-1970. A prominent Biafran artist was a former leprosy patient, Ikoli Harcourt-Whyte (1905-1977). The war music tended to use scriptural pas- sages and exhortations in plaintive lamentations, wondering when God would intervene to save his suﬀ ering people. Typical is Harcourt-Whyte’s song in the Igbo language, rue ole mgbe, obim? (“When, oh my heart?”). From here, other songs moved to reassure the audience that God sees the suﬀ ering of the oppressed, hears their cries, feels their pains, and will come soon to save! By the 1970s, popular culture was challenging Christian music to shift from its missionary moorings. Charismatic youths built upon these precedents and gradually nudged the early Charismatic movement toward an increasingly ironic compromise with popular culture. But the youthful Charismatic move- ment of the 1970s struggled to carve a new Christian music, as could be heard in the guitar-led music of the eastern Nigerian group called The Voice of the Cross.

Contrary Winds: The Pressure of Post-Independent Music, Dance and Popular Culture

This Christian sensitivity ensured that Africa’s new Christianity was caught between contrary winds because the “born again” movement grew out of evan- gelical spirituality and “set to work” the translated missionary gospel. T ere- fore, they shared certain missionary cultural attitudes toward indigenous cultures. T ey realized the impact of music and dance as two powerful tools

J. H. Kwabena Nketia, The Music of Africa (New York: Norton, 1974); C. Michael Hawn, Gather Into One: Praying and Singing Globally (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003). T ere are two chapters on African Christian music, pp. 104-88.

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for winning souls and for attracting the masses, especially women and young people. T ey were aware of the psychological eﬀ ect of music and dance in wor- ship, in accessing the supernatural world, and in eﬀ ecting conversion and healing. But they feared the negative dimensions, the idolatry embedded in the sources and goals of indigenous music and dance and in popular culture. This produced a dialectic that sought to distinguish between the sacred and the profane, to protect members from immoral lifestyles and from the message and medium of popular culture. Pentecostals faced a cultural dilemma espe- cially in village contexts, where indigenous music and dance served as cultural anchors, identity markers, and major sources of entertainment. In the nascent nation state, rulers used traditional cultures as markers of identity, Charis- matic politics, mobilization, and consolidation of legitimacy.

Beyond the political use of popular culture, several forces of social change aided the emergence of new musical traditions. In urban environments, socio- economic stress, urban anomie, civil wars, and failed states eroded traditional values and created new secular ethics and the craving for solace and pleasur- able relief in pulsating music and dance. By the 1980s globalization and media technology invaded Africa, bringing more liberal lifestyles from the Western world to the doorsteps of avid consumers. New technology changed the mode of cultural production and mass mediation of Christianity. How did these forces impact the negotiation between sacred music and popular culture? I contend that a study of sounds of music and dance enables the exploration of African Pentecostal attitude toward indigenous cultures and toward popular urban culture, and I will demonstrate how the bakristu negotiated the chal- lenges of a complex and changing cultural ecology.

The Context: A Proﬁ le of the African Cultural Environment

But there are a number of aspects to this. First is the proﬁ le of the African cultural and moral environment that is constituted by three interpenetrating “publics”: the indigenous village public, an emergent cultural public created in the encounter between the indigenous and the Western cultures, and the external Western public that is maintained by multinational corporations, international organizations, and other agents of globalization that operate with a Western mindset. Foreign education and global forces keep the charac- ter of the Western public in Africa’s present as an inﬂ uential space because of the amount of resources that it controls. The most powerful moral universe, however, is the emergent public that is neither primal nor Western, a veritable

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mélange of both. One of the songs by the Afro-jazz artist Fela Ransome Kuti dubbed it shakara culture (lacking stable roots), spawned in the sabon gari (strangers’ quarters) of the urban environment. It has its own value system bred in the anonymity of the town. Studies on African urbanity have described the strangeness, allure, opportunities, challenges, and ephemeral quality of this environment. Under the imprint of Heinemann’s Africa Writers series, novelists such as Wole Sonyika in his The Interpreters , Alex la Guma’s Down Second Avenue, and Cyprian Ekwensi’s Lokotown and Jagua Nana have recre- ated the noise, bustle, smell, slums, and chaos in African cities. As a society is thrust into the enlarged or reorganized macrocosm, new lifestyles and ethical options are spawned.6

From this moral perspective, it is as if the urban is a deviation, lacking authenticity, a veritable wasteland inhabited by “black Englishmen” who are neither English nor authentic Africans. Changing value systems ensured that people did things in the emergent public that they would not dare to do in the indigenous or Western publics. In the latter they would be imprisoned; in the former, the gods who served as the policemen would kill the culprit with a lightning thunderbolt. But the emergent public was regarded as the white man’s world where people did the white man’s work and lived in “half London.” To foray there successfully was an achievement to be celebrated with the ﬂ ute and drum. People learned to loot in the emergent public without due reper- cussions in the primal context as long as they were not caught and brought home and shared the wealth with the kinsfolk. The interplay among the three publics has been used to explain the breakdown of social control models and the moral collapse in contemporary culture. James Ferguson has theorized the cultural dualism in rural connections and urban styles in his book, Expectation of Modernity. He urges that urban scholarship should focus on circular migra- tion rather than rural-urban migration precisely because most African migrants spend the period in the urban environment in planning their re-entry or return to the homesteads. So, he designed the character of urban life as a spectrum from two polarities, the cosmopolitan capability and localist capability. A town dweller who displays a high level of cosmopolitan style and urban com- petence risks a decreasing capability to meet localist expectations. Villagers often label such people as “lost.”7

R. W. Hefner, Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Berke- ley: University of California Press, 1993).

James Ferguson, Expectation of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life in the Zambian Copperﬁ eld (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), chap. 3.

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The pastoral challenges for African Pentecostalism arose from the three con- texts: the resilient African indigenous cultures, urbanity and its shakara (root- less) culture, and imploding global culture. One must not presume a higher degree of urban ethos than actually exists in Africa or ignore the force of cul- tural villagization of the modern public space. Most of the inhabitants of the towns carry medicine made in the villages to empower their successful forays in the towns. As Ellis and ter Haar observed,

Many Africans today who continue to hold beliefs derived from their traditional cos- mologies apply these to everyday life even when they live in cities and work in the civil service or business sector. Religious worldviews do not necessarily diminish with for- mal education.8

The hybrid character of the African urban environment informed its musical and dance traditions and created a challenge for Pentecostal ethics and liturgy.

T us, to understand the pressure of popular culture on Pentecostal music and dance, we take the example of the decennial changes in West Africa. In the 1950s, the high life genre, a musical genre that fuses African rhythms with the Western, was dominant. In its early days, the sound had a few variations gen- erally combined with multiple guitar rhythms with a brass band backing as well as various percussion instruments. The term high life perhaps referred to the lifestyle of European elites in the 1920s. Soon, the guitar-based style incor- porated elements of swing, jazz, Cuban rhythms, and local street tunes. Between the 1960s and 1970s, the varieties of high life proliferated from the simple forms by E.T. Mensah (Ghana) and Victor Olaiya (Nigeria) to the creative use of indigenous music and dance in the hands of Ramblers Interna- tional (Ghana), Rex Lawson (Nigeria), and the Professional Uhuru Dance Band (Ghana). Victor Uwaifo of Nigeria popularized Edo (Bini) indigenous music and vernacular in his brand of high life. But Congolese music held its own in the popular music charts.

The 1970s belonged to new musicians who had absorbed pop musical tradi- tions from the West and mixed them with South African Zulu rhythms. It was called Afro-pop and featured electric guitar interlaced with African chanting amidst a backdrop of percussion instruments and a horn section. I am describ- ing the music of the Osibisa group. African American inﬂ uence became popu- lar with its “soul-to soul” music.

Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar, Worlds of Power: Religious T ought and Political Practice in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 51.

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The genesis of gospel music’s engagement with popular music in most of Africa could be traced to the 1980s in Ghana. Typical was the Genesis Gospel Singers, whose song Momma Mo Akoma Ntutu (Ashanti: “Don’t let your heart be troubled”) won acclaim, perhaps because it comforted people amidst the collapse of the Ghanaian economy and political turmoil. Gradually musical artists shifted from the clubs to the churches. Reggae grew popular as Bob Marley and the Wailers reﬂ ected the resistant spirit that empowered people amidst the crises of the continent. Marley appeared to be wailing against the failed rulers of soft states and their white patrons. The major shift in musical production was also signiﬁ cant in this period as the waxing of vinyl records gave way to cassette tapes and the growth of the cassette market. Emigration broadened the range of musical creativity. As British immigration laws barred Africans, Germany opened. Soon, a genre of immigrant high life emerged, nicknamed “burgher high life,” that used synthesizers and drum machine beats instead of the traditional percussion instruments. It became popular in West Africa.

The 1990s witnessed the emergence of “Raglife” as reggae was transformed into hip-hop. The reigning genre was “hip life,” an amalgamation of high life and hip-hop. The Ghanaian artist Reggie Rockstone was one of the earliest pioneers. This signaled a profound form of African American cultural inﬂ u- ence on African youths. Some started to rap in vernacular languages. T is genre survived into the end of the millennium as hip-hop mixed with gospel music in a transformation that signiﬁ ed that the Pentecostal movement, com- pelled to negotiate with the alluring power of popular culture, changed char- acter in every decade.

Anatomy of Pentecostal Responses to Popular Music and Dance

T ere are two nuanced interpretations here: The ﬁrst is that the ambivalent attitude of Pentecostals to popular music and dance partially arose from its complex cultural discourse; second, as that cultural discourse evolved, it created the pathway for negotiating with an equally evolving popular culture. To start with the Pentecostal attitude toward indigenous worldviews: Pente- costals show a sensitive appreciation of the language of power in the indige- nous worldview. This subtlety has ignited a debate about Pentecostal cultural discourse. Pentecostalism has been characterized in conﬂ icting ways: Some argue that it is world-rejecting and anti-modern; that it urges born-again Christians to break completely with their past and their families and become

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individualistic; and that it demonizes indigenous cultures and worldviews, and therefore constitutes a regression in the development of an indigenous African Christianity. Critical cultural revivalists engaged in state mobilization insist upon this image. Brigit Meyer’s studies, based on the evangelical Presby- terians of the Volta region of Ghana (scions of the Bremen Mission), have been inﬂ uential in domesticating the argument that Pentecostal experience is reinforced with a new life compass that is personal, cultural, social and eco- nomic; that the movement mounts moral boundaries that redeﬁ ne the person and the relationship with the social structures; that it is a religious tradition that essays to erase the cultural traditions by challenging accepted notions of community, kinship, and tradition. Pentecostal cultural ideology challenges the rites of passage and the rites of the agricultural cycle that are embedded in the indigenous worldviews.

David Maxwell’s study of the Shona (Zimbabwe) adds that Pentecostalism embodies symbols of resistance to established religions and the wider social system and has its roots in counterculture and anti-establishment ideology. He agrees with Meyer that the movement urges members to eﬀ ect a rupture or make a complete break with the physical and spiritual past. This ideology turns the past into a morally suspect category. T us, life problems are projected onto hostile forces from one’s past that aggressively visit the contemporary genera- tion with aﬄ ictions.

A solution is achieved by driving out the past from the present. Usually, witchcraft (an often loosely-used term) serves as an illustra- tion of Pentecostal attitudes toward indigenous cultures and worldviews. The Pentecostal response, variously named as deliverance, witchcraft cleansing, witchcraft eradication, land cleansing, and exorcism, is promoted under the glare of television because healing is the strongest concern in Africa. From here, an instrumentalist discourse images the movement as being youthful in character and thus appealing to the urban, mobile, professional class that avidly consumes the resources of modernity and externality; and as being materialistic, providing hope in the face of economic collapse, and serving as the vanguard of the globalization process.

A diﬀ erent interpretation of the cultural discourse argues that Pentecostal- ism has grown because of its cultural ﬁ t into indigenous worldviews and its response to the questions that are raised from within the worldviews. It asserts

Birgit Meyer, “‘Make a complete break with past’: Memory and Post-colonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourses,” Journal of Religion in Africa 28, no. 3 (1998): 316-49; David Maxwell, “Witches, Prophets And Avenging Spirits,” Journal of Religion in Africa, 25, no. 3 (1995): 309-39.

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that the indigenous worldview still dominates contemporary African experi- ence and shapes the character of African Pentecostalism. It interprets African Pentecostal spirituality and shows how Africans appropriated the gospel mes- sage, how they responded to the presence of the kingdom in their midst, and how its power transformed their worldviews. Exercising a measure of agency, African Christians absorbed new resources generated internally and externally in reshaping their histories. The face of Christianity acquired a diﬀ erent char- acter in the encounter because it was now expressed in the idiom of the Afri- can world. Pentecostalism took the indigenous worldview seriously and accepted its impact on the experiences of individuals and communities in the villages and towns. It applied biblical resources, however, especially the empha- sis on the work of the Holy Spirit in response to indigenous and contemporary cultures.

The Pentecostals reinterpret indigenous worldviews in three ways: by deploying the covenant idea derived from the Old Testament, by mining the indigenous worldview for swaths of resonance with the Bible, and by reinforc- ing the conception of evil and the demonic in the indigenous belief that the human life journey is precarious. The covenant idea works in two directions: by afirming God’s immanence, interest in, and lordship over the oikumene and human aﬀ airs, it encourages human creative response to society. By afirm- ing the purity of the creator, Pentecostal cosmology images existence as a spir- itual encounter or a warfare between the forces of evil and God. The supernatural world intervenes in the human world and protects the hapless human being through the Holy Spirit, the power and the blood of Jesus. T ese concerns constitute the content of sacred musical lyrics, choreography, and dance because the Pentecostals perceive urban contexts as a melting pot of indigenous religious powers that have converged into a powerful site. I want to suggest that Pentecostalism has always been caught in a dilemma: it wants to use every means of communication to evangelize and was lured to reinterpret indigenous worldviews and to use its music and dance as means of evangelization. It thereby ran the risk of being used by the power of popular culture. T us, the study of dance and music enables us to explore how African Pentecostals negotiate the intersections of religion, media, and culture, and how they reconstruct both African and Christian cosmologies. The major con- tested sites are ﬁrst the source of music and dance, because religious expression draws its modes from the culture. T erefore, Pentecostalism reappropriates indigenous and secular music for Godly use through the ancient process dubbed as “spoiling the Egyptians” — translating foreign concepts into new Christian idioms. Second, since Pentecostals appreciate the power of music

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and dance and the proliﬁ c creativity in Christian liturgy, they endeavor to structure its usage so as to achieve to the greatest possible degree the functions of reinforcing boundaries of exclusion and inclusion, constructing identity, building community, converting souls to Christ, and achieving contact with the supernatural. T ird, they reinvent popular music by blending various tra- ditions. The end product of the three models of adaptation, structuring, and reinvention was the ironic growth of an emergent gospel music industry. The emergent tradition brought popular musical and dance tradition into the sanctuary and reshaped Pentecostal liturgy and vocabulary. In so doing, the alliance with popular culture divided the movement as early adopters were alleged to be carnal Christians (Lingala: bakristu ya nsuni), the victims of the power of popular culture. T eir churches are nicknamed les eglises chaudes, “hot churches.” Attitudes toward music, dance and fashion reﬂ ect the diﬀ erences in ethics and spirituality and the measure of divisions and rivalry within the Pentecostal movement. T ey reveal the need for typology, peri- odization, and biography in studying the movement. But the emergent genre that was always ﬂ uid and creative captured the profane space, as we shall dem- onstrate later.

In all these, the role of music and dance for diasporic African Christianity has received little attention. Galia Sabar’s research on some Ethiopian immi- grants in Israel identiﬁ ed a quadruple marginalization: black, undocumented, Christian, and a socially peripheral community. Even Arab Christians dis- criminate against African Christians. The dream of the Holy Land jars promi- nently against the reality. Galia Shabar and Shlomat Kanari paint a very touching picture of African communities in Israel in which music becomes a key force of survival. Some of the leading musicians could use this as a means of rising from their marginalized existence and acquiring the capacity to travel to other parts of the world.10 Music becomes solace, a survival tool in the lim- inal existence, and the means for climbing the socioeconomic ladder. Chris- tian songs provide opportunities for the artists.11

Galia Sabar and Shlomat Kanari, “I’m Singing My Way Up: The Signiﬁ cance of Music among African Christian Immigrants in Israel,” Studies in World Christianity 12, no. 2 (2006): 101-25; V. Lantenari, “From Africa into Italy: The Exorcist-T erapeutic Cult of Emmanuel Milingo,” in New Trends and Developments in African Religions , ed. Peter B. Clarke, Contribu- tions in Afro-American and African Studies (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 1998), 263-84.

Galia Sabar, “African Christianity in the Jewish State: Adaptation, Accommodation and Legitimization of Migrant Workers’ Churches, 1990-2003,” Journal of Religion in Africa 34, no. 4 (2004): 407-37; idem, “The African Christian Diaspora in the Holy Land,” in Religion in the

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The Economics of Gospel Music

Some would argue that the rise of gospel music and dance is a pyrrhic victory; that Pentecostal use of music and dance blurred lines between entertainment and worship. On the one hand, it reveals how mass adaptation of pop culture could serve as a resource by valorizing the pace and breadth of religious com- munication, dealing with the problem of the relevance of the church in a changing culture, confronting the generational gap, and serving as an inculca- tion tool. On the other hand, mass adaptation could challenge the message and representation of the gospel, reshape the character of the movement, and create the specter of the tail wagging the dog if popular culture drives the life of the church. For instance, if hip-hop music could attract young people to church, does that sanctify it from its secular origin as a music designed to make the hip to hop? In recent times, churches have celebrated “U2charist,” that is, celebrating the Eucharist with the music and lyrics of the rock band U2. Does this secularize the gospel? Even more insidious, technology has exposed the hidden dangers in musical lyrics and rhythms. It has revealed the masking of lyrics underneath hypnotic rhythms. By back-fast- tracking, the real lyrics could be heard. Satanists are alleged to indulge in this fad. The growth of the gospel music industry has raised the question about money and mass mediation of religion. Meanwhile, image problems arise when “psalm- ists” become pop stars. Media pander to materialism and ﬁ nancial gain and focus on the individual’s desires and quest for prosperity. Does this culture contest the holiness ethics prescribed for Levites or the frugal injunctions against materialism when Jesus sent the disciples on mission?

The rebuttal is that entertainment appears crucial for the survival of any form of religion in the contemporary marketplace of culture; it is an incultur- ating pathway for touching a youthful audience already wired in the electronic culture and bored with the equally-packaged institutional religion. Religion and popular culture are meshed to attract the youths. Quentin J. Schultze in Televangelism and American Culture: The Business of Popular Religion builds on two dimensions: the connection between business, commerce, and televange- lism, and the utilization of popular cultural techniques in mass mediating religion. T erefore, religion and popular culture have a reciprocal inﬂ uence on each other in creating a Christianity in which it is dificult to distinguish pop- ular entertainment from religion.

Context of Migration, ed. A. Adogame and C. Weisskoppel (Bayreuth, Germany: Bayreuth Afri- can Studies 75, 2005):155-90.

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

The cultural production analysis is further pursued by Michael Warren in Seeing through the Media: A Religious View of Communications and Cultural Analysis12 without focusing on any particular religious group. But Jeremy Car- rette and Richard King in Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion

13 provide the ﬂ ip side of the coin by arguing that the secular corporate interests have taken over spirituality to subvert individuals and seduce them into con- sumerism; that advertisements utilize its cultural cachet and brand products by associating them with personal fulﬁ llment, inner peace, happiness, and suc- cess in relationships. Management eficiency is packaged as a religious path to enlightenment. The authors conclude that the market has taken over the responsibility of religion, and neoliberalism attempts to revalue all values and deﬁ ne the goal of life itself. The convert and consumer are one.

A historical perspective is essential for two reasons: cultural analysis should include historical analysis that places media in their cultural contexts.14 Indeed, there should be a three-level analysis of (a) the history of the medium or tech- nology involved, and the institutions that support it; (b) the immediate and intermediate points of production process; and (c) the point of consumption of particular media/cultural products.15 From this perspective, the technology changed enormously as recording studios proliferated. Electronic production was less cost intensive than record-waxing studios. The market was unregu- lated and entrepreneurs could produce musical cassettes and videos on a cash- and-carry basis, feeding the market without much investment. The shape of the consumers changed in critical mass and nature. The major changes included the use of media developed after the 1980s, and since then the creativity in gospel music has escalated. T ree important changes occurred in the 1980s. First is the emergence of highly educated young adults who established their

Michael Warren, Seeing T rough the Media: A Religious View of Communications and Cul- tural Analysis (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International,1997), 63.

Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion (Lon- don: Routledge, 2004).

Stewart Hoover, Mass Media Religion: The Social Sources of the Electronic Church (London: SAGE Publications, 1988), 14.

Warren, Seeing T rough the Media , 106. Quentin J. Schultze, Televangelism and American Culture (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991); Carrette and King, eds., Selling Spirituality; Maria F. Fred- erick, Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith, George Gund Foundation Book in African American Studies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003). Martyn Percy, “The Church in the Market Place: Advertising and Religion in a Secular Age,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 15, no. 1 (2000): 97-119 shows that much of what televangelists do in the USA and Africa (such as faith healing, miracles, and appeals for money) is banned by the watch- dog Code of Advertising Standards and Practice in Britain, where it is regarded as exploitation of human inadequacy and degradation of the people to whom it appeals.

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

ministries, many of whom had contacts with Western, especially American televangelists who introduced media use in religious communication. Second, the democratization process dubbed as “the second liberation of Africa” included the liberalization of the state’s stranglehold on the media sector, the dismantling of state monopolies, and the commercialization of air time and ownership. T ird, the media landscape opened to a cacophony of sounds. One index is the number of radio stations in West Africa: this increased from forty in 1993 to 426 in 2001; there were sixty community radio stations in South Africa, 117 private FM stations in Uganda by 2002, more than 100 in Mali, and Niger constructed 200 new local rural FM solar stations. A wisecrack quipped that Africans had more radio stations than portable water.16 Besides talk, radio promoted music and dance.

Contentious Lyrics and Contested Sites: Questionable Sources, Holy Shuﬄ e and Beat with Message

In the 1970s, when the youthful Charismatic movement exploded all over Africa, the temper of the movement was prominently puritan, drawing clear boundaries between the born-again experience and the dire alternative of going to hell. Rijk van Dijk has described the disconcerting habits of the young preachers, aliliki in Blantyre, Malawi. In Kenya, they dubbed them- selves as Guerrillas for Christ and notably oﬀ ered harrowing diatribes against indigenous religious practices and symbols. In Nigeria, one of their songs acknowledged that there is power all over the world but that God’s power is the strongest; or, as another song put the matter, “Jesus power — super power.” It then names the powers of the native doctor, the Ogboni secret cult, and other sources of power. At the mention of each nodal point of power, the sing- ers would bend down and gesture that this is a low-level and useless type of power. At the mention of the power of Jesus, they all would raise their hands with a shout of victory!17

R. I. J. Hackett, “Devil Bustin’ Satellites: How Media Liberalization in Africa Generates Religious Indigenous Intolerance and Conﬂ ict,” in R. I. J. Hackett and James Smith, eds., The Religious Dimensions of Conﬂ ict and Peace in Neoliberal Africa (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming).

Rijk van Dijk, “Young Born Again Preachers in Post-independence Malawi,” in New Dimensions in African Christianity, ed. Paul Giﬀ ord (Nairobi: All Africa Conference of Churches, Challenge Series, 1992), 55-79; Richard Showalter, The Spiritual Awakenings in Kenya, 1970-1980: Sketches of Some Radical Believers (T ika, Kenya: RBM, 1983); Klaus Hock, “Jesus

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

A particular source of power caused much concern, namely, water. T ere is a strong belief that spirits inhabit rivers, streams, lakes, and other bodies of water and that these spirits serve as daughters of the female earth deity that controls fertility and morality. Water spirits are connected with sexuality, beauty, art, music, and dance. T ey are patron saints to artists and fashion designers and musicians.18 T ey inspire and teach the votaries songs through dreams or ritual. A Nigerian pop artist, Victor Uwaifo, wrote a song, “Guitar Boy.” He beckons the protagonist, Guitar Boy, and admonishes him thus: “whenever you see Mami Wata, never, never you run away.” He claims that Mami Wata, the goddess of the sea, inspired his music. Other musicians and painters make the same claim that the spirit world is the source of artistic gifts. Pentecostals, therefore, become suspicious of the source and goals of popular culture — its art, fashion, music, and dance. Dancers are depicted as possessed and unstable people. The peripatetic lifestyle, constant travels by music troupes, use of alcohol and drugs, and sexual mores indicate an instability consonant with possession by water spirits. The negative, gendered dimension was directed against women artists because no self-respecting, married woman would go to clubhouses or sing and travel with men. The emergence of respected female artists took much longer to consolidate in the African artistic scene. This image makes popular, secular music suspect for the born again. It is presumed that those who patronize secular music live wasteful lives. A song says that the long ties and cosmetics worn by city dwellers are embellishments that mask their wayward living.

Katrien Pype pursues another dimension of the questionable sources. Cap- tivating dance movements of secular popular artists in the Republic of Congo are described as “mystique” because they contain idioms understandable only by those whose eyes can pierce into the supernatural world. For instance, a popular song, fungola marmite (Lingala: “Open the pot”) actually refers to cannibalism in witchcraft rituals. Pype illustrates this contentious, question- able source as follows:

An example is the worldly dance nkila mogrosso (the big tail), produced by the orches- tra of Papa Wemba, which seems to force everybody to dance it — its captivation of the onlookers worries newborn Christians. This name of the dance refers to a man’s genitals and its movements express an orgasm: dancers are engaged in sensuous hip circling, bring their hands to their breasts/chest and distort the face in sexual delight.

Power — Super Power: On the Interaction between Christian Fundamentalism and New Reli- gious Movements in Africa,” Mission Studies12, no. 1 (1995): 56-70.

Deidre Badejo, Oshun: The Elegant Deity of Wealth, Power and Femininity (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1993).

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

The dance is widely popular among the young, but is despised by Pentecostals and elders.19

Christians interpreted the conﬂ ict between them and secular culture as a ﬁ ght between God and the devil. Beyond the lyric, the choreography of the dance became a source of contention.

Equally dangerous is the connection between the music inspired by cultural nationalism and indigenous cults. It must be realized that not all forms of art in Africa had religious meaning. Aesthetics drove some forms of artistic expres- sions; other musical and dance traditions interpreted the socio-political for- tunes of African states. Songs of protest and songs that mirrored the confusion in the people’s minds attracted patronage. In a popular song, “Which Way Nigeria?”, the artist Sony Okosun shared the heart-rending dilemma of a col- lapsing, soft state under a military dictatorship. But many songs and dances were linked to indigenous religious roots. Ezra Chitendo’s research on Zim- babwe mentions two:

the institution of the shavi (alien spirit) whereby the spirit of a cultural outsider pos- sessed a Shona medium, was an avenue for bringing in new musical practices and dance styles. . . . Ceremonies held in honor of such spirits were characterized by perfor- mances of music and dance from the spirit’s own cultural traditions.20

Instruments such as drums and mbira were associated with musical instru- ments and rhythms used to honor ancestors. A second illustration is the famous chmurenga music in Zimbabwe. This refers to a great Shona warrior and legendary hero, Sororenzou Murenga, whose prowess gave birth to a musi- cal tradition among nationalists. The lyric inculcates values of struggle and liberation. Aspects of this music and dance were used during the nightly pun- gwe ceremonies. Pungwe started as a witchcraft detection ritual. During the war of liberation, it was used to detect saboteurs and deployed against Chris- tianity. Pentecostals were initially suspicious of both because of their tainted origins. The irony is how gradually both chimurenga and pungwe were adapted into Charismatic night vigil dances and technique.

Armed with these negative images, African youthful Pentecostals of the 1970s distanced their liturgy from traditional and secular music and dance. T ey were not enamored of the hymnody and choirs among the missionary- established churches. Instead, they wrote choruses and scoured the Bible for

Katrien Pype, “Dancing for God or the Devil: Pentecostal Discourse on Popular Dance in Kinshasha,” Journal of Religion in Africa 36, no. 3-4 (2006): 296-318; see 309.

Chitendo, Singing Culture , 25, 39.

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passages that could be easily turned into choruses. T ey adopted the guitar accompaniment from early Western revival campaigns and soon added the keyboard. Some of the new music appealed because of the vernacular. Most were in English. The dance was nicknamed holy shuﬄ e . Sometimes they took the military imagery seriously enough to shuﬄ e faster like recruits in a mili- tary parade. The brethren admonished new converts against the “spirit of jazz” and the hidden spiritual powers in reggae. The growing numbers in the Char- ismatic movement ensured that key artists and bands caught the commercial eyes of the few recording companies and could wax records that sold enough to make some soloists and bands popular among the brethren. The level of the technology and the holiness ethic kept the musical tradition modest. Indeed, the artists emerged from the ranks of choirs of the mainline churches but the name of a band would indicate its core message, for instance, The Voice of the Cross. In West Africa, many were students from high schools. In Zimbabwe, one of the early leaders of “beat with a message” was Joseph Manyeruke, who came from Salvation Army roots, had little education, and served as a gardener and housekeeper for white settlers. His early productions, Chirenna Patembere (“A disabled person at the temple,” 1984) and Zakewo (“Zaccheus,” 1986) were typical of the music of this period. Chitendo stresses the blending and sharing of many musical traditions, including Zulu gospel and African Amer- ican traditions in southern and central Africa, where labor migrants spread both Pentecostalism and inherited musical traditions into various parts of the neighboring countries. Quite notable is the role of hand-clapping in this early period. Many styles of vigorous hand-clapping that derived from indigenous musical tradition supplied the background rhythm, sometimes without any instruments.

Holy Praiseco: Cultural Appropriation and Reinvention of Pentecostal Gospel Music

The periodization diﬀ ers slightly among African countries but generally, a major shift occurred in the Charismatic movement from the 1980s that changed the musical tradition. The career of Benson Idahosa can serve as an example of the increased exposure to the American gospel scene and media technology. When Benson Idahosa linked with Bakker’s Praise The Lord min- istry and televangelist project, he opened the door for the proponents of the faith/claim theology and changed the character of Pentecostalism dramatically in seven ways:

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

1. the rise of the megachurch with thousands of members and branches; 2. the rich Big Man of God;

3. mega projects: elaborate church center, bible school, businesses, elaborate

stadia outreaches;

4. increased access to electronic media: radio, television, video, and audio cas-

settes; print media: glamorous house magazines, handbills, posters, bill-

boards, books; clothes: t-shirts, caps, haute couture fashion; and music by

a choir made up of a “thousand voices”;

5. radical shift in ecclesiology from congregational polity to episcopacy with

centralized, bureaucratized administration;

6. emphasis on ﬁ vefold ministry — prophets and apostles controlled evange-

lists, teachers, and deacons (lower cadres of church workers). The wife of

“the man of God” organized sodalities for women;

7. titles became important as many acquired doctorates either honoris causa or

by outright purchase. Idahosa became a “reverend, doctor, professor, and

archbishop”!

The shift in ecclesiology, the importance of titles, and the size of projects were connected with attention to the high proﬁ le and visibility of a ministry. T is high visibility, iconic image tangoed with intense spirituality to draw public, national, and international attention. T ese were essential for getting the political ears of the government to listen to pastors who control a large con- stituency of voters. Enlarged scale and increased advertisement yielded more devotees and income. Admittedly, media and mega-infrastructure were cost- intensive projects. Marleene de Witte studied Altar Media, built by the Gha- naian pastor Mensah Otabil, and concluded that “through mass mediation of religion, a new religious format emerges, which although originating from the Pentecostal-Charismatic churches, spreads far beyond and is widely appropri- ated as a style of worship and of being religious.”21

The religious trend reﬂ ects the shifts in popular culture in the social, politi- cal, and economic spheres. Both the secular and religious entrepreneurs use the same communications strategies and interact closely.

I contend that the combination of all these dimensions changed the inter- face of Pentecostalism and media and produced a creative reinvention of pop- ular culture in Pentecostal musical and dance traditions. The numerical growth

Marleen De Witte, “Altar Media’s Living Word: Televised Charismatic Christianity in Ghana,” Journal of Religion in Africa 33, no. 2 (2003): 172-202; idem, “The Holy Spirit on Air in Ghana,” Media and Development 52, no. 2 (2005): 22-26.

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

of the movement, the tendency to splinter like the amoeba proteus, the alluring but stressful exposure to media popularity — all these bred rivalry and cata- lyzed creative experimentation with diﬀ erent genres of music-dance. Pentecos- tals deployed a number of strategies: appropriation and reinvention, “spoiling the Egyptians” by excavating indigenous religious and social idioms for symbols and rhythms, blending musical traditions, broadening the space for female artists, and the use of music-dance for evangelization. Pentecostals used music-dance to respond to issues connected with rites of passage and the celebration of the agricultural cycle — matters that are important in everyday African life. As Katrien Pype put it, “the dance performances in these Pente- costal-Charismatic churches are not only some of the main technologies for creating a religious self, but they also reveal the most important themes of Kinshasha’s Christian culture.”22 By the 1990s, reggae, cha-cha-cha, and jazz became acceptable. Soon, musicians dug deep into indigenous music and appropriated both the lyric and the rhythm. Praise names used for the deities, kings, titled men, and indigenous spirits were exploited to praise God. God became the paramount chief, king of smaller kings, the one to whom people could run for refuge, the voice that ended all pleas and gave justice, the river that broke the bridge, the ﬂ are of lightning that reveals the path on a darkling plain. A popular tune “Darling Jesus” portrayed Christ as a lover, friend, and husband. He was showered with signiﬁ cant images in a song that sounds like a romantic song. Ghanaian cultural scholarship has paid attention to the idi- omatic vernacular in Christian praise songs by Efua Kuma as Ntsikana’s legacy among the Xhosa in South Africa. His songs are preserved in the Methodist hymn book. The dance styles from many ethnic groups were appropriated. In Ghana, worshippers wave the handkerchief and gyrate to the tune of Ga kpalugo, the ﬁ shermen’s dance. The Christianization of the indigenous forms increased their popularity.

As the popularity of gospel music rose, many secular musicians started tracing their roots back to the church. In Nigeria, exponents of the juju music and other forms of popular music such as Kris Okotie, Sonny Okosun, and Ebenezer Obey converted to Pentecostalism in the early 1990s and set up ministries that brought this form of popular culture into the mainstream of Christian music. The born-again Christian no longer needed to patronize the discotheque and club house or even dance to indigenous music because Chris- tian worship and praise songs were using the same rhythm and words. Many have commented on the lively, cathartic liturgy of Pentecostal churches. Don

Pype, “Dancing for God or the Devil,” 302.

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

Miller observed that “like upstart religious groups, they have discarded many of the attributes of establishment religion. Appropriating contemporary cul- tural forms, these churches are creating a new genre of worship music.”23

The Pentecostal psyche did not quite abandon the dichotomy between sacred and profane music but broke loose from the avoidance technique. Instead, they reconstructed indigenous music for Christian use within a decade. Music and dance styles from African indigenous cultures completely transformed the liturgy and mood of African churches. Oﬀ ering times were declared to be blessing times when people dance out of the pews to the altar and celebrate God’s goodness in the past, present, and future.

The impact of the new Pentecostal music swept into the village publics and reshaped the celebration of rites of passage. Soon, politicians adopted gospel songs in their campaigns either by borrowing the lyric and changing the words or by posing as honest born-again Christians. For instance, in Nigerian patois or pidgin English, where the Pentecostals declare that “Jesus, you don win; kpata kpata you go win again” (“Jesus, you have won again, and whatever befalls, you will win again”), the politicians would replace “Jesus” with the name of the politician or symbol of the political party declaring that no matter what happens (kpata kpata) they will win. Marleen de Witte captures the sig- niﬁ cant shift, namely, that Pentecostals created a popular culture that others imitated:

In this new public sphere religion intertwines with both national politics and com- merce and entertainment. Charismatic Pentecostalism is part and parcel of the busi- ness and entertainment culture of the commercial media, just as entertainment, business, and marketing are integral to charismatic churches. Its impact, then, lies not only in its institutional forms and rapidly growing number of followers, but also in more ﬂ uid forms of consumer culture and entertainment business. T rough the media, it has widely diﬀ used inﬂ uence on general popular tastes and styles, that may not be religious per se, but are clearly shaped by charismatic-Pentecostal discourse and practice.24

Other major changes included technological development, production, distri- bution, and gender ideology.

Donald E. Miller, Re-inventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 1.

De Witte, “Holy Spirit on Air in Ghana,” 26.

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

Charismatic Cassettes

Technological developments created new models of production, distribution, and consumption of music. A lucrative industry was conjured into existence. Africans have manifested greater cultural agency with audio- and videocas- settes and music than with television. Technological development replaced waxed records for audiocassettes. This changed the music market. Videocas- settes added a new feature that enabled consumers to access gospel music more widely. In African countries, audio materials, whether sermon tapes or music, are easily dubbed or pirated and widely used in homes, schools, motor parks, ofices, taxis, and buses. The retreat of the state from control over media and the accessibility of cheap media technologies gave rise to a new image econ- omy.25 It should be added that Muslims abandoned old taboos against elec- tronic media to imitate Christians. Charles Hirschkind has examined the use of cassettes in public piety in Egypt, where Muslims developed a genre known as Cassette-Dahwa built around sermon tapes to be used in fulﬁ lling the duty to actively encourage fellow Muslims in the pursuance of greater piety, and to evangelize.26 The chants could now be heard in all manner of places.

All over the continent, radio is the fastest means of disseminating informa- tion. From the interwar years it has served as a prized possession in many homes, a veritable symbol of modernity. Many agro-industrial development projects include the distribution of radio to rural farmers, and the prolifera- tion of NGOs in the 1990s further broadened the use of radio in the hinterlands. Missionary-founded churches tend to depend on government patronage to access the radio network, but while small Pentecostals aggres- sively buy time to air prerecorded programs, the bigger ones set up their pri- vate radio stations. Beyond music, the political overtone is clear in the call-in and response programs that excite public interest and open the space to ask penetrating questions about faith and politics. In South Africa, however, broadcasting is still controlled by the state, and there is an ongoing struggle to change from the apartheid tradition and from new forces of secularism to an inclusive mediation of diverse religious faiths.27

Jordan D. Smith, “The Arrow of God: Pentecostalism, Inequality, and the Supernatural in South-eastern Nigeria,” Africa 71, no. 4 (2001): 587-613; Akoko Mbe, “New Pentecostalism in the Wake of the Economic Crisis in Cameroon,” Nordic Journal of African Studies 11, no. 3 (2002): 359-76.

Charles Hirschkind, “Cassettes Ethics: Public Piety and Popular Media in Egypt,” Religion, Media and the Public Sphere, ed. Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), chap. 1.

R. I. J. Hackett, “Mediating Religion in South Africa: Balancing Air-time and Rights Claim,” in Religion, Media and the Public Sphere, ed. Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors (Bloom-

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

African Pentecostals use media as complements to their ministries, as exten- sions of their public presence and as a signiﬁ er of the relative importance of a ministry. Street preachers in Nairobi, Harare, and Blantyre as well as bus preachers in Nigeria are examples of the expanding strategies for personal wit- ness and the soul-winning focus of mission. T ere is a twist: the bus preacher sells natural, nonchemical, herbal products, food, and hygienic materials to sustain himself in a tent-making ministry. Orality and proclamation buttressed by an emphasis on vigorous homiletics are very important in Pentecostal mis- siology. He also sells Pentecostal music tapes. The “taxi talk” and music are key strategies for evangelization. But motor park Christianity is worthy of schol- arly research precisely because it reveals the tensile strength of the gospel as travelers avidly purchase religious materials. Could it be that the uncertainties of road transportation heighten anxieties and the resort to Charismatic spiri- tual solace? Ironically, the distributors of Pentecostal cassettes in the motor parks are not believers, although they can sing all the songs with full-throated ease. The new Christianity provides the vendors with jobs! It enables the move- ment to penetrate social consciousness and to contribute to the economy and to popular cultural production.

The content of the Pentecostal music-dance tradition requires attention. Its purpose was to convey an urgent message of salvation with catchy tunes and enriched African rhythm. Popular songs range through a wide gamut of salva- tion messages: fertility, healing, praise and thanksgiving, meaning of suﬀ ering, deliverance from suﬀ ering and poverty, death and judgment, repentance and the imminent return of Christ, the joys of eternal life and the ephemeral nature of worldly materials.

Conclusion

To summarize: The public presence of religion in the information age compels the examination of the heightened relevance of the media in contemporary missiology and the co-opting of popular culture in religious representation. This trend has been heightened by the salience of Pentecostalism and its use of media in contemporary African religious space. In many places media access has become easy because of an unregulated environment, the retreat of the state, economic liberation, and the democratization process. Pentecostals have grabbed a wide swath of the new space because of a muscular evangelistic goal.

ington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), ch. 8; Robert B. Horwitz, Communication and Democratic Reform in South Africa (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

O. U. Kalu / Pneuma 32 (2010) 16-40

The political space has broadened and many new voices and players struggle to be heard and seen. Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors argue that the media provide a political dimension for new religions; that by deliberately and skill- fully adopting various media technologies, new religions create an alternative politics of belonging, legitimization, a means of public articulation, and an establishment of authenticity. T ey employ diﬀ erent styles grounded in public culture to present themselves as alternatives to both the secular establishment and the mainline churches that are ambivalent about spending large budgets on advertisement. Pentecostals form new religious-based identities, claiming their own public sphere. T ey use cassettes and videos as instruments of Chris- tian education.28 People learn the language, ethics, and community style of the new religion. Media attract and encapsulate the new converts. Other religious groups such as the Muslims have adopted the same strategies. Media intensify the politics of diﬀ erence, enhance the spread of radical social and religious movements, engage in transnational networking, and fuel religious activism. Ironically, while participating in the global cultural process, media enables protagonists to challenge those processes through a process of selection, estab- lishment of parameters of relevance, and the creative forging of new products. Religious expression cannot be heuristic but must perforce engage popular culture. Pentecostals have been immensely creative in popular cultural pro- duction. T ey have demonstrated that a sanitized approach could be defeatist. By privileging evangelism (even if it causes reafiliation), Pentecostals have been creative in their response to popular culture: use of print, electronic, audio, visual and oral media. Scholars have still to investigate the colorful linguistic and symbolic productions of the movement, especially in their use of diatribe. But there must be attention to the fact that media technology can be both a resource and a challenge. T is reﬂ ection has focused on music and dance as pathways for exploring Pentecostal cultural discourse and negotiation of the rocks and sharks in popular culture. On the whole, African Pentecostal- ism has changed tremendously as it constantly retools itself to meet the great- est challenge of the contemporary period, namely, how to use media as an instrument for engaging the structures of society in a holistic mission.

Meyer and Moors, eds., Religion, Media and Public Sphere.

Holy Praiseco Negotiating Sacred And Popular Music And Dance In African Pentecostalism

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Why not allow women to become bishops?

Haber oku tuzla evden eve nakliyat