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about

We found this song on Youtube, which thankfully led us to Heart Sounds International (heart-sounds.org). We wrote an email to the contact there asking their permission to use the song and wondering if they would want to share more resources. They did. Check them out! Trying to learn ethnic, indigenous, or “non-English” songs can be a slippery slope to climb from cultural appropriation towards relationship and solidarity. We try to learn music and share it in a good way.

Like many folk musics, this song is repetitive with a leader giving the “call” to signal the appropriate response. We don’t have access to the traditional Tsonga instruments but many of us have studied West African drumming for years. We developed the rhythms for this particular song from “Djolé” - a feminine celebration mask-dance song and rhythm from the Temine people in Sierre Leone, now popular in Guinea.

We sing it usually in the key of D. These words are in the Shangaan (or Tsonga) language of the Tsonga people in South Africa..

lyrics

Sikulu Shikwembu sanga. (x3) My God is great
Si fanele ku dzunisiwa (x3) Worthy to be praised

Hi milamu sa dzunisiwa (x3) My mouth will praise
Hi mavoko sa dzunisiwa (x3) My hands will praise
Hi milenge sa dzunisiwa (x3) My feet will praise

credits

from Resist and Restore Spring 2013, track released June 7, 2013
Produced and Engineered by Circle of Hope Audio Art.
performances by Croatan Studio and Circle of Hope Audio Art

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Circle of Hope Audio Art Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Circle of Hope Audio Art is a mission team of Circle of Hope church in the Philadelphia and the metro area. We are working out a missional process of recording and distributing worship music as a tool for training and edification. We are celebrating all the creativity around us and are responding to a felt need for new worship material that is creative, theologically sound, and not commercial. ... more

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