Urim songwriting workshop: Discovering local resources, and identifying community goals

One of the first steps in a village workshop is to get people thinking and talking about their own musical resources. A lot of Christians in Papua New Guinea assume that the guitar is God's Own Instrument, and therefore new Christian songs must be guitar-based (when I explain that when I was a child the guitar wasn't even used in the American church I grew up in, they look at me as if they're waiting for the punchline). I don't mind new songs using guitar accompaniment, but my real interest is seeing people freed to creatively explore worship in their own indigenous styles. In order to get that kind of thinking going, I lead a session where people list all of the instruments and musical styles from their area that they can think of.

Always before I've just done this as an open discussion time, or sometimes having people write down lists in their own notebooks. But I've always felt that something is missing in these sessions; they're just not quite as lively as I'd hoped. This time, I tried out a different, more participatory approach. First, I asked people to name all the instruments--traditional and introduced--in the Urim area. As they called out a name, I handed an index card and Sharpie to one of the participants who said he could draw them. Eventually we had six instruments, each one drawn on a card.

Jeffrey at work drawing the instruments

From there, I asked someone to arrange these cards on the floor of the classroom, with a bit of yarn coming down from each card. Then I asked everyone to list what kinds of music are accompanied by each instrument. This was unexpectedly difficult at first, since they didn't immediately think of what categories of songs they have. But then someone figured out that they divide song genres not by the topic of the song (wedding songs, hunting songs, war songs, etc.), but according to the beat that is played with the song. So there are three general categories of song, each category including a range of topics, and each category distinguished by its beat.

As they thought of the different categories--and other sound-groupings, such as the garamut signaling system--I asked people to write one song category per index card, and then go to the instruments and place the cards in the appropriate line.

By the end of the exercise, we had a kind of map of Urim musicking, with at least some basic features. And what I liked about that session was that it was done entirely by people in the course, rather than me standing at the blackboard writing things down.

Right after that, one of the participants stood up and said, "Thank you for getting us thinking about these things. We don't think often enough about our own music traditions, and now I feel like it would be really good to try using our own styles and instruments for new Christian songs."

I'm thrilled by a comment like that, but so far we've only talked about musical instruments and styles. What about the lyrical content? New songwriters want some kind of guidance for writing the words. I've often recommended specific Bible verses, personal testimonies, or locally meaningful metaphors as a way of helping people get into the groove of songwriting. This time, I structured a number of teaching sessions around six "Signs of the Kingdom of God," adapted from the excellent new book, Creating Local Arts Together: A Manual to Help Communities Reach Their Kingdom Goals (ethnodoxologyhandbook.com; I highly recommend this 2-volume book/DVD set for your church, school, or personal library). The six categories outlined in the Manual are:

1. Identity and sustainability
2. Shalom
3. Justice
4. Scripture
5. Church life
6. Personal spiritual life

Within each of these broad categories, any community that wants to live in a kingdom-focused way can identify specific goals they'd like to move toward. For songwriters, these goals give direction for the new songs' content. If a problem in a community is that Christians are not following the biblical mandate to care for widows and orphans, then the songwriter ponders: What can I say in a song that will address this and show our community a better way? If people are not investing time in studying God's Word and deepening their understanding of their faith, how might a song encourage them to engage in this discipline? What is the better future that this community wants to see?

I presented these six categories by explaining each one, reading relevant Bible verses, and giving people time to discuss, either in small groups or all together as the full class. There was a lot of discussion, all in the Urim language, and I could sense that people were already thinking very seriously about what they would address in their new songs. 

As the workshop progressed, it became evident to me that people were especially interested in "Identity," which came out in the way they used their local musical traditions as part of so many new songs; "Shalom," with a number of songs based on some of the Bible verses we'd read--for example, John 14:27 ("Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid."); and "Scripture" and "Personal spiritual life," evidenced in the large number of songs based on Bible verses.

All of this teaching took us to the end of Day 2 (Friday), and I looked forward to seeing what the participants might come up with over the weekend.