We were dancing, three rows of women lined up facing another singer, bowed from the waist and whooshing left, then right, arms swinging in rhythm. After the singer called out each verse we stood upright to answer with the refrain, and then it was back to bending over. I felt the unity, the power of our matched movements and voices singing to the Lord to “open the door, let your children in—we’re suffering in this world.”

It was Sunday afternoon in our thatched apatâme (large gazebo), the Nyarafolo Group’s weekly meeting. Every other week, the focus is song-making—either reviewing their catalogue of Nyarafolo songs or learning new ones.

At first we sang a cappela, then with balaphones. But when the “pire” (just say pray, flapping the r) were pulled out and the drumming began, things really picked up. This is traditional Nyarafolo accompaniment, and Nyarafolo pulse beats with it. New songs that go with these paired drums are literally irresistible.

Sometimes, whooshing with my sisters, feeling my feet swipe the floor just like the woman in front of me, I think how foreign this is to my American self, the one I try to put back on when I worship with my sisters in the U.S. There I try to remember not to clap twice on the first two beats of the 1-2-3-4 (instead, on the 2 and the 4 beat). I try not to sway too much if the setting isn’t right. And I do know how to worship that way; after all, I was raised by the generation that had turned their backs on dance as worldly. And that was the very generation that, as missionaries before me in this country, had had to reanalyze their position, and had demonstrated true discernment when they realized that for Senufo-language family believers, dance is an integral part of music. Even worship music.

So it was that an ethnomusicology graduate student at Fuller Seminary, Roberta King, came out to study the burgeoning indigenous Christian music of the Senari-speaking Senufo back in the ‘80’s. In the region next door to that group, the birthing Nyarafolo church had no music of its own, and Glenn and I were opposed to trying to import Western music, with vernacular words inserted. Our forerunners had discovered that it didn’t work with these kinds of languages (Nyarafolo is part of the Senufo family, which includes at least 18 languages). Roberta, working with WorldVenture in Kenya at the time, encouraged us to wait until someone began making songs; then she would come help us do a Scripture-song workshop.

We did. And in 1987 Moise (the same one who is now my co-translator for the Old Testament) called together a few other Nyarafolos to make a song. Now there are hundreds of believers’ songs, all truly Nyarafolo, and the non-believers love them too. They say that the Jesus-people have brought back their music, which was beginning to fade out.

And when you sing in Nyarafolo, you have to move. At first it was up to each individual to move as they wished, and that’s still how it is during congregational singing in church. We sit on benches, hip to hip, and stand to sing so that we can turn sideways and clap freely, in rhythm together, feeling the song as well as singing the words.

Now, when the Nyarafolo Outreach Group worships together, they also work on experimenting with new choreographies, moves that match the mood and message of a song. One song, “Let’s throw our knees to Jesus” (that’s the idiom for “kneel down”), has everyone kneeling during the refrain. And when another song says that we’re all going to take off into the air to meet our returning Lord, arms are flung high.

And then there was the Sunday a couple of weeks ago when Moise began singing a song from the Abraham series, one where Abraham is calling to Sarah to get up and leave with him, to go out of their country and follow God’s lead to the country he would show them.

The women formed a large circle, facing each other, and during each refrain one of them would dance to the center, turn, dance backwards to fall into a sister’s arms who in turn would catch that woman and bend with her, then throw her upright to dance home. And the next woman in the circle would cross, and then fall . . .

It’s a game. And they were laughing as they sang, not all of them confident in the steps or about falling backwards. I was reminded of the “trust” role-play game we’ve done with youth, the one where you blindfold someone and get them to trust a partner to guide them through obstacles. And I thought, yes, that’s what the song is all about. Trust – trust in Abraham, by Sarah, that he had really heard the Lord’s voice; trust that God would keep his promise. And they went out, not knowing where they were going . . .

Here is what Roberta says in her recent book:
. . . “music in Africa is inseparably woven together with dance, drama, and spectacle in ways that heighten and foster the teaching of significant thoughts and values on multiple levels. Behind the sound, dance and drama of each music event lie deeper cultural realities” (Music in the Life of the African Church, p. 137).

Elsewhere, she calls this music event among believers "theologizing". And I agree. There is a sense in which the entire community is involved in living out the song’s message together, figuring out how to understand its emotion and key ideas, in step with the beat.

And this process has blessed me, stripped off layers of cotton batting to let my soul hear the Word and participate in community in a precious way.

If you’re still reading, maybe you won’t mind my posting yet another poem, one that I wrote after celebrating the making of worship songs in a Nyarafolo workshop by dancing to the balaphones with my friend Bintou:

The Dance
© 2000, Linnea Boese

pum da pum da
bum da pum
dancing with Bintou
balaphones booming
dark arms beating out
rhythms and tones
Bintou’s feet move
shuff-ta-shuff-ta
shoulders turn
to face the fire
then swerve to bow
to the velvet night
my foreign feet follow her
beat for beat
and flip into high gear
suddenly whirring
I’m dancing in heaven
my soul flies high
joy in the making
of worship and praise
our song rising hotly
our lips mouthing truth
“These are the sweet words
Jesus taught us” –
thirsting for righteousness
panting for peace
clapping for Jesus
and all of his wisdom
loving my neighbor
we whirl and stomp
and the balaphones bellow
a clarion counterpoint
Bintou is dancing
and so am I
these Baptist feet
have learned to worship
this American heart
is joined in oneness
with this sweet sister
the dust is rising
billowing upwards
and so is praise