Gospel of John Chanted in Wolof

From SPARK

Brief Summary

Chanting Scripture in a Koranic style encouraged people to listen to and accept the Bible.

Introduction

This project was conceived and planned by Richard Shawyer, who is working to establish a church among the Wolof people of Senegal, West Africa. For about five years the Wolof Media Commission (an inter-mission and church cooperation) had been recording the Scriptures in Wolof..

The most useful formats in the context were conversion of the text to direct dialogue multi-voice dramatic reading, and chanting Koranic style, but these did not have researched support. When the commission was informed of a proposed major revision of the Wolof New Testament, it decided to first record a chanting of Yowanna (the "Gospel of John") in the Koranic style using a local believer and studio. This was an inexpensive test to observe responses in a local setting and allowed recordings of other styles.

When the Gospel of John was recorded in a speaking style familiar to the Wolof people in Senegal, the result was encouraging. During most gatherings there are many distractions such as noisy children and animals. There was much more attentiveness and better recall when a recording using their familiar style was used rather than a style not of their culture. Read further about techniques such as adding echo for authenticity.

Key Factors

• A local believer, fluent in Wolof and an accomplished chanter, was chosen for the project. His skill and previous success chanting Scripture gave credibility to the recording.
• The recording increased the attentiveness of local listeners and increased their ability to recall Scripture portions they had heard.
• The recording was inexpensive to produce locally.
• John is the gospel preferred by Wolof Sufis.

What Was Done

The Chanter

A local believer gifted in Koranic chanting and the composing of worship songs was chosen to make the recording. This man had been an Islamic teacher, trained for 16 years to teach Islam, and was also fluent reader of both Wolof and his mother tongue. He also was gifted in creating songs of worship in the style of his people group. The team in this area want to encourage indigenous forms of worship. At a recent Christmas celebration he had successfully chanted a portion of the New Testament which was well received.

The Recording

The recording was done at a local studio using a computer-based audio workstation running FastEdit. The local believer chanted the text into the microphone with little prior preparation. He read from the published New Testament in Wolof without a lot of in-studio rehearsal, but he was able to match the music of the chanting to the natural flow of the spoken text.

CoolEdit was used for most of the post-processing. Post-editing chanted music is difficult. It is not easy for the chanter to match his voice quality, pitch, and melodic flow when doing cut and paste corrections. Large sections were often recorded non-stop to preserve the chanted flow. Mistakes were then identified and short sections re-recorded while the melody and rhythm were still fresh in the chanter's mind.

Sound effects

The normal environment for Koranic chanting is in a mosque where reverberation and echo are exaggerated. The studio recording was digitally post-processed with echo to add familiarity and authenticity for the target audience. This helped “smooth out” some of the cut-and-paste editing. The first attempts at adding echo sounded realistic using the high-quality studio playback equipment. However, playback on the typical cassette player used by the target audience was less than ideal. The echo interfered with the clarity and understanding of the Scriptures. So the tapes being distributed have a softer echo.

The publication format

The resulting 156-minute tape was packaged into a set of three 60-minute cassettes. Using two 90-minute cassettes was considered, but it was not possible to find three good breaking points for changing between the 45-minute tape sides. Using 60-minute tapes increased the number of tape transitions to five. However, these five transitions do not require a tape change in the middle of a story. There is an added benefit to this packaging length. The 26-minute sections fit well into 30-minute radio time slots!

Results

There has been very positive reception by the Wolof people of these Scripture recordings. Since their availability, Richard has been surprised at the good reactions of Sufis, Sufi background believers, and seekers. Once, in a village where he teaches on a regular basis, while waiting for the group to gather, he played the recordings to five to ten Sufi male heads of families. Half of the group are at the point of deciding whether or not to follow Christ. Normally their lessons are held outside under a shade tree. The men sit on mats. The people in the group continually interact with whatever is happening around them as well as listen to the teaching. As a result there are many interruptions.

Before beginning the Bible study, about two chapters of John were played on a poor quality tape recorder that distorted the sound quite a bit. When the tape began, the men became silent and told the children to be quiet. They listened to it once very attentively without discussion except for answering a few questions. During the Bible study (the topic of which was completely unrelated to the tape) there were the usual interruptions.

The following week, as is the custom, the teacher asked for a summary of the previous week's study. The only things that the listeners could recall without prompting were several of the stories from the first two chapters of John from the tape chanted in a Koranic style! Subsequently, every time the tape is played, the people immediately paid attention.

The future

It would be good to test the use of cassettes more extensively in other geographical areas, since Wolof is a widespread language with three million mother tongue speakers and another four to five million who speak Wolof as a language of wider communication in the region. The chanter who was available has a strong accent from his mother tongue, although his Wolof is very clear. Since the test tape has been well received, there are plans to find a native Wolof speaker who has a similar form of chanting and make new recordings of John and perhaps other Scripture portions.

Helpful Information from the Author

By: :Sue Hall, Darrel McKaig, Richard Shawyer

Date entered: January 2005

Date range of story: 1999

Location: Senegal