Maybe John Bell is doing well if his singers know Cameroon exists

John Bell of the Iona Community is coming to Indy Tuesday February 16. He'll lead a daylong workshop at CTS on "Singing with the Global Church: The Gift of Music from Other Cultures," and do the music free for chapel at CTS ... all part of a ridiculously over-packed day of global music in Indy.

The Iona Community is a great example of ecumenical cooperation and creativity, drawing thousands of Christians from all denominations to a small island off Scotland's coast, a shared effort to rejuvenate and redefine their faith. John Bell is an important part of the Iona Community story as a driving force behind the Wild Goose Resource Group, which takes its name from one of the ancient Irish symbols for the Holy Spirit. The Group enables and equips congregations and clergy in the shaping and creation of new forms of relevant and participative worship. Bell has sought to integrate musics from around the world in Christian worship.

How's that going? You can find out for yourself on February 16, but maybe this is a hint. This traditional Christmas song from Cameroon was scored and arranged by John Bell:





Well, that's nice in a calypso kind of way. (After the Saturday Night Live parodies of Blue Oyster Cult, it's good to hear a group willing to risk the call of "more cowbell!") But did John Bell need to go all the way West Africa for this nice piece of music? Cameroonian music is cool, very cool, even when it is removed from its original context and suffuses Western forms. Check out the great Manu Dibango:




Maybe some of the coolness of Cameroon got lost in translation, moving from tribal celebrations to Manu Dibango and his slinky crew to the well-meaning middle aged white people with a cowbell.

Or maybe something more troubling is at play here. Go to YouTube to find videos of music from World Vision Music Team in Tiko, Cameroon. (They can't be embedded in this blog, sorry.) It's nice music, but it could have come from any number of churches in the US or anywhere else. Maybe that's the point of World Vision Music. What might be thought of as Cameroon Coolness has been replaced by Global Gospel Niceness.

Fortunately, the music of the Gospel doesn't have to be reduced to a lowest common denominator of niceness. This performance by Odile Gaska is a marvelous expression of "la musique chrétienne camerounaise," inspiring an uplifting of the spirit even if you don't understand the words.




The wholesome middle aged white people would have a different performance if they were singing Cameroonian music by Odile Gaska, in fact they would surely have a different worship experience entirely.

So maybe the Iona Community and John Bell can help us do more than integrating music styles into ecumenical worship. When we draw on new ideas and experiences, we have the chance to create something new and better than any of the particular cultures could offer alone. Consider this bit of prayer by founder of the Iona Community, George MacLeod:

Let us pray for the less worthy members of the Church:
They are already limbs of Your mystical body:. . .
All too tribal, as if Bethlehem were a Scottish village
and Nazareth an English town:
or Capetown were Calvary itself
when you really died for all men everywhere:
At a crossroads whose signpost had to be in Latin and Hebrew and
Greek and Urdu and Russian and Afrikaans.
Yes, Lord, we pray for the less worthy members of the Church. They are of course none other than ourselves.

The point ought not only to be that we in the West are just as unworthy as those in developing countries. It ought to draw our attention to the particularities of those other cultures. Those particular experiences should be a basis for us understanding ourselves better.

It works for Cameroon Gospel music. What's great about this last video isn't just the music and the cultural cross-pollination, although that's great. The first song draws on the particular experience of political corruption in Cameroon (among the greatest in the world, according to Transparency International) to illuminate the Gospel's message.



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So when you hear John Bell at CTS, remember that he isn't just teaching middle aged white people in Indianapolis about the joys of calypso rhythms and cowbells. He is trying to teach us how to learn more about ourselves, to use music from around the world to become better than we are now.

If all that is not enough to justify going to CTS in the snow, take the recommendation of Prof. Carol Johnston: “Bell is a delightful Scot and Presbyterian minister who enchants and will have you chanting and laughing, so come and be refreshed!” Based on this video clip, he seems as much Scottish stand-up comic as minister.