Traditional music to enhance audio Scriptures in Ghana

ACCRA, Ghana — Support from the Opportunity 21 (O-21) program is playing a key role in allowing the Bible Society of Ghana to produce audio Scriptures enhanced with local background music.

O-21 funding of US$25,000 is enabling the Bible Society to develop Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH) Scripture recordings which feature traditional Ghanaian music, thus making them more appealing to listeners. A working group made up of musicians, Bible scholars and ethnomusicologists will produce appropriate music tracks and test their effectiveness.

Progress

Progress is already being made in the case of Ga, which is spoken by 400,000 people in south-east Ghana and is the major language in Accra (Ga is one of several related languages spoken by about two million people). Cassettes of the New Testament in Ga were launched in June 2000 (see Latest News #108), but these did not use traditional Ghanaian music. Tests of a range of music among a target audience of Ga speakers indicated that melodic instruments such as the flute are not familiar to these people and that light percussion instruments, vocals and hand-clapping are much more favourably received.

Impact

In response to these findings, an audio Gospel of Matthew mixed with traditional Ga music was distributed to 70 churches in 20 rural communities in March 2002. These cassettes will be used in church-based listening groups and their impact assessed using focus-group research techniques.

The O-21 team involved in distributing the cassettes found much evidence of a decline in the use of Ga as the sole language of Christian worship, with most churches also seeking audio Scriptures in Twi, the language of the Akuapem and Asante people, and in Ewe. It is hoped that the new cassettes will address this issue and that they will act as a model for the development of music to accompany recordings of the rest of the New Testament in Ga. Data has now been collected for evaluation, and consideration is being given as to whether this model may boost the effectiveness of FCBH recordings in other African countries and cultures.

Story-telling

Another of the Bible Society’s O-21 projects, the use of traditional African story-telling techniques to present the Scriptures, is also targeting the Ga people. The Society has produced a cassette of parts of the Gospel of Luke told in traditional style, and is distributing it for testing to around 100 churches. If it is possible to recruit appropriately qualified scriptwriters, the Society will go on to produce other parts of the New Testament in traditional story-telling style. (WR 375/22 - 3.03)