Bargam Worship Songs

One of the wonderful people we've had the opportunity to meet in our time here is a man named Lazarus. Lazarus was one if the translators who worked on the Bargam New Testament while the SIL missionary lived here, and he is still a strong man of God in this area. One of Lazarus' passions is singing worship songs in his own native language, which is something that I whole heartedly encourage. One day, I asked him if we could listen to and record one of the songs they've written in Bargam. He excitedly agreed, and told me we could come over to his house later to hear one. Later became tomorrow and tomorrow became next week, but eventually we found ourselves at Lazarus' house with recorder in hand. He proudly decades they had picked out just a few songs to sing for us. Only 17 for us to record. Then he picked up his bush knife and began to tune his bamboo pipes. (This means cutting each pipe to a specific length so that it makes the correct note when he thwacks it with a flip flop.) Eventually a large group of assembled to play, including two guitars, the aforementioned bamboo tubes, local drums, a tambourine and a triangle. All in all, it was a pretty impressive set up. Lazarus called for silence. I turned on my microphone. And they began. I thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to listen to men and women of God lifting up their voices in worship in their own heart language. It was truly a thing of beauty. Ideally, once I get to my computer, I will be able to edit my recordings a little bit and compile them into a format they can easily play and share in their village using radios and phones. They have these songs in their language, but we don't hear them in their Church. Only in their homes. My hope is that if they can more easily listen to and learn the songs for themselves, they might be more willing to incorporate them into their worship services. I don't know if it will with out not, but wouldn't it be cool?

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