Music in Kenyan Christianity: Logooli Religious Song

by Jean Ngoya Kidula

Overview

This sensitive study is a historical, cultural, and musical exploration of Christian religious music among the Logooli of Western Kenya. It describes how new musical styles developed through contact with popular radio and other media from abroad and became markers of the Logooli identity and culture. Jean Ngoya Kidula narrates this history of a community through music and religious expression in local, national, and global settings. The book is generously enhanced by audiovisual material on the Ethnomusicology Multimedia website.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253006684
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	09/11/2013
Series:	Ethnomusicology Multimedia Series
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jean Ngoya Kidula is Associate Professor of Music and Ethnomusicology at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, University of Georgia. She is author (with R. R. King, T. Oduro, and J. R. Krabill) of Music in the Life of the African Church.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Note on Spelling and Orthography
List of Abbreviations
1. Prelude
2. Assembly: Logooli Historical, Cultural, and Musical Background
3. Encounter: Avalogooli and Euro-American Religion, Culture, and Music
4. Consolidation: Christian Religious Genres in Logooli-Land
5. Accommodation: Logooli Adoption and Use of "Book" Music
6. Syncretism: Logooli Christian Songs of the Spirit
7. Invocation: Logooli Christian Songs in Contemporary Education and Media
8. Epilogue
Appendix I: Archival and Media House Records
Appendix II: Song Text and Hymn Tune Sources
Glossary of Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Wesleyan University - Eric Charry

The author has extraordinary access and insight into how song functions among the Logooli. The book contains an excellent mix of deep personal understanding of the culture and copious documentation.

Universityof Pennsylvania - Carol Muller

The archival and ethnographic research is outstanding, the accounts of mission history, and then the musical explanations of a variety of forms of change that have accompanied mission intervention, the incursion of forms of modernity, and globalization at large are compelling and unparalleled.

Editorial Reviews

Music in Kenyan Christianity is a significant study in performance practice in contemporary East African Christianity. The meticulous and sometimes highly sophisticated musical analyses, transcriptions, and the rich historical and ethnographic perspectives illuminate not only ongoing discourses and contestations of syncretism and related analytical notions, they also represent a plausible model of a balanced approach to ethnomusicology—i.e., musical and ethnographical. . . . I strongly recommend this book to researchers, teachers, and libraries in African Studies, Religious Studies, Ethnomusicology, and globalization studies.

International Journal of African Historical Studies

One of the real bonuses of the present book is that Kidula has provided many sound recordings to accompany the transcriptions on a companion website, and the URLs for each passage are clearly listed in the preface.

Anthropology Review Database

This is an essential text for thinking about world Christianities, because it approaches a particular African Christianity from both insider and outsider perspectives.

Global Forum on Arts and Christian Faith

"The author has extraordinary access and insight into how song functions among the Logooli. The book contains an excellent mix of deep personal understanding of the culture and copious documentation." —Eric Charry, Wesleyan University

Eric Charry

"The archival and ethnographic research is outstanding, the accounts of mission history, and then the musical explanations of a variety of forms of change that have accompanied mission intervention, the incursion of forms of modernity, and globalization at large are compelling and unparalleled." —Carol Muller, University of Pennsylvania

Carol Muller

"Music in Kenyan Christianity: Logooli Religious Song is an important contribution to the study of music in Kenyan Christianity. The book explores contemporary African music through the prism of ethnographies through the people’s engagement of Christianity as a unifying ideology in the context of history, modernity, nationalisms and globalisation." —Journal of Modern African Studies

"One of the real bonuses of the present book is that Kidula has provided many sound recordings to accompany the transcriptions on a companion website, and the URLs for each passage are clearly listed in the preface." —Anthropology Review Database

"This is an essential text for thinking about world Christianities, because it approaches a particular African Christianity from both insider and outsider perspectives." —Global Forum on Arts and Christian Faith

"Music in Kenyan Christianity is a significant study in performance practice in contemporary East African Christianity. The meticulous and sometimes highly sophisticated musical analyses, transcriptions, and the rich historical and ethnographic perspectives illuminate not only ongoing discourses and contestations of syncretism and related analytical notions, they also represent a plausible model of a balanced approach to ethnomusicology—i.e., musical and ethnographical.... I strongly recommend this book to researchers, teachers, and libraries in African Studies, Religious Studies, Ethnomusicology, and globalization studies." —International Journal of African Historical Studies

"The archival and ethnographic research is outstanding, the accounts of mission history, and then the musical explanations of a variety of forms of change that have accompanied mission intervention, the incursion of forms of modernity, and globalization at large are compelling and unparalleled." —Carol Muller, University of Pennsylvania

From the Publisher

Music in Kenyan Christianity: Logooli Religious Song is an important contribution to the study of music in Kenyan Christianity. The book explores contemporary African music through the prism of ethnographies through the people's engagement of Christianity as a unifying ideology in the context of history, modernity, nationalisms and globalisation.

Journal of Modern African Studies

The book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on African religious popular culture, and should convince us that interdisciplinary research on popular expressions of Christianity can bring us novel insights and new arguments to the study of social and cultural dynamics of African Christianity.

Anthrocybib