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Celebrating Together - 18 songs of worship

CD review

CELEBRATING TOGETHER: 18 songs of worship
South Asian Concern
CD available by mail order, suggested donation £5 per CD + p&p. Cheques to SAC, PO Box 43, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5WL, UK.

Popular music culture has recently begun to embrace Asian influences, with the band 'Cornershop' enjoying number one chart success in 1998, and musician Talvin Singh being awarded the coveted Mercury Music Prize in 1999.

'Celebrating Together' is a timely addition to the spectrum of Christian worship CDs currently available, bringing Asian music to the forefront in a new way. This collection of some new and some familiar worship songs, according to the cover notes, aims to 'bring together Eastern and Western music, reflecting the worship of the Asian community. It seeks to build bridges and overcome barriers of culture and language.' Perhaps it seems a major task for a worship CD to seek to unify diverse musical cultures; maybe some would be unsure whether such a project would be to their taste.

Rest assured, then, that this recording is a very polished, atmospheric and worshipful collection of dual-language songs. The instrumentation on each piece is well-chosen so that accompanying Asian instruments such as the sitar, harmonium and traditional drums can be subtly introduced, adding a balanced and ambient dimension, without sounding strange to those of us unused to hearing them.

Multi-language

The collection features titles in Urdu, Tamil, Hindi, Gujerati and English, but each piece has sections where words are sung in English as well as in an Asian tongue. The singers, both men and women, are accomplished and contribute to the professional-sounding production. The choice of pieces includes 'More love, more power' and 'Faithful One' which receive a mellow makeover, and 'Jesus Christ is Lord' which is given a modern, more rocky edge.

With so many inspiring songs now filtering into widespread Christian use, perhaps the album could have been more diverse than to include three Graham Kendrick pieces in its selection. Kendrick's 'We believe' is often not easy for a congregation to sing, but the lyrics lend themselves to unison singing. However, because of the unison presentation here, the song seems to end up sounding disjointed and rather less flowing than the rest of the polished performances. Several songs feature spoken interludes in an Asian language, but since the CD is a charity production, it lacks the kind of lyric and credits booklet which might have usefully translated this narration. Overall, this is an impressive and unusual collection, and all the more valuable for reminding Christians that our God rules the whole world, and our beliefs are not merely the domain of the West.

Julie Skelton,
Guildford