Description
As global juggernauts continue to sweep across many world’s faith communities, tensions between foreign and established norms in worship music and the music’s consequent struggle for cultural identity seem inevitable phenomena. Kenya’s Urban Pentecostal (KUP) music is caught up in this inevitable wave. Worship music experiences in the urban Pentecostal are now characterized by expressions, largely, of white south and black gospel music. Musical expressions of artists such Don Moen and Kirk Franklin are widely embraced thus constituting the current expressive emotional breathtaking emotional intensity of the worship music experiences of the KUP. In what seems to be a struggle for a cultural identity, effort to introduce Kenya’s musical elements in the KUP worship experience seem not to yield tangible results. The overriding question therefore begs, should the KUP worship music remain global south or is there a need to embrace the processes of inculturation as means of inculcating desirable Kenya’s musical elements into the KUP worship experiences? Could this approach help KUP musical expressions acquire a cultural identity that could be defined as Kenyan? It is in the light of these overriding questions that this study will seek to address the following specific objectives: (i) Describe the character, categories and substance of the current KUP’s musical expressions that are experienced as products of globalisation (ii) Discuss ways in which the theory of nutrosophy could be employed to mitigate the tension between the established and foreign norms in the KUP’s worship music (iii) Demonstrate through performances of authors’ musical compositions ways in which processes of inculturation could be useful in realizing KUP’s music experiences that exhibit a Kenyan cultural character (iv) Enlighten the participants on the importance of employing worship music that resonates well with Church attendees’ own cultural experiences.
| Keywords | Globalisation, Inculturation, Church music, Cultural identity, Urban Pentecostal, Nutrosophy |
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