Global Christian Songs

Africa

Barz, Gregory. Performing Religion: Negotiating Past and Present in Kwaya Music of Tanzania (Church and Theology in Context 42). Amsterdam, etc.: Rodopi, 2004. [Google Books]

Castle, Brian C. Hymns: The Making and Shaping of a Theology for the Whole People of God; A Comparison of the Four Last Things in Some English and Zambian Hymns in Intercultural Perspective (Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity 67). Frankfurt/M., etc.: Peter Lang, 1990.

Chitando, Ezra. Singing Culture: A Study of Gospel Music in Zimbabwe (Research Report 121). Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2002. [Diva Portal]

DeValve, John R. Worship Music and Culture: The Case of the Songhai in Niger (Regnum Studies in Mission). Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2020.

Egbulem, Nwaka Chris. “Mission and Inculturation: Africa,” in The Oxford History of Christian Worship, edited by G. Wainwright and K.B. Westerfield Tucker, 678-695. Oxford, etc.: Oxford University Press, 2006. [Google Books]

Jorritsma, Marie. Sonic Spaces of the Karoo: The Sacred Music of a South African Coloured Community (African Soundscapes). Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011. [Temple Univ. Press]

Kawamba, Brighton. The Blantyre Spiritual Awakening and Its Music (Luviri Books 10). Mzuzu (Malawi): Luviri Press / African Books Collective, 2018. [Google Books]

Kenmogne, Michel. “Theologizing in Context: An Example from the Study of a Ghomala’ Christian Hymn” (transl. from French by Brian Schrag), Global Forum on Arts and Christian Faith 6 (2018): A14-A26 [hymn from Cameroon; online version]

Kidula, Jean Ngoya. Music in Kenyan Christianity: Logooli Religious Song (Ethnomusicology multimedia). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013. [Google Books]

King, Roberta R. et alMusic in the Life of the African Church. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008. [Google Books]

Krabill, James R. The Hymnody of the Harrist Church Among the Dida of South-Central Ivory Coast (1913-1949): A Historico-Religious Study (Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity 74). Frankfurt/M., etc.: Peter Lang, 1995.

Krabill, James R. “Culturally Appropriate Worship: Lessons Learned from Mission History in Africa,” Mission Frontiers 36, no. 5 (2014): 13-15. [Online version; adaption of of the author’s article in: R. King et al. (2008), p. 57-79; and J. Krabill, general ed. (2013), ch. 28]

Kügler, Joachim, ed. Beyond Making Money: The Prophetic Songs of Paul Dzampah from Ghana; Edition, Introduction, and Annotations (Bible in Africa Studies 14). Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2014. [Online version]

Morehouse, Katherine H. ” ‘They’re Playing Our Song’: Functions of Western Hymns and Indigenous Songs in the History of the Non-Western Church, with a Case Study of the Maninka People in Kankan, Guinea,” Global Forum on Arts and Christian Faith 5 (2017): A18-A47 [Online version]

Naudé, Piet. The Zionist Christian Church in South Africa: A Case-Study in Oral Theology. Lewiston, NY, etc.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995. [Edwin Mellen Pr.]

Nikkel, Mark R. Dinka Christianity: The Origins and Development of Christianity among the Dinka of Sudan with Special Reference to the Songs of Dinka Christians (Faith in Sudan 11). Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2001. [= PhD dissertation, Univ. of Edinburgh, 1993]

Padwick, T. John. ” ‘The Spirit Alone’: Writing the Oral Theology of a Kenyan Independent Church,” Transformation: An International Journal of Wholistic Mission Studies 35, no. 1 (2018): 15-29. [Online version (subscription wall)]

Wild-Wood, Emma, and Peter Wood. ” ‘One Day we Will Sing in God’s Home’: Hymns and Songs Sung in the Anglican Church in North-East Congo (DRC),” Religion in Africa 34, no. 1-2 (2004): 145-180. [Online version (subscription wall)]

Asia

Lim, Swee Hong. “Giving Voice to Asian Christians: An Appraisal of the Pioneering Work of I -To Loh in the Area of Congregational Song”. Ph.D. dissertation, Drew University. Madison, NJ, 2006. [ProQuest Preview]

Lim, Swee Hong. “Forming Christians through Musicking in China”, Religions 8, no. 4: 50 (2017). [Online]

Poplawska, Marzanna. Performing Faith: Christian Music, Identity and Inculturation in Indonesia. London and New York: Routledge, 2020.

Sarwar, Eric. Psalms, Islam, and Shalom: A Common Heritage of Divine Songs for Muslim-Christian Friendship. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press [Forthcoming in August 2023]

Shaw, R. Daniel. Singing Samo Songs: From Shaman to Pastor: An Ethnohistorical Approach to Socio-religious Expressions among the Samo of Papua New Guinea. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2022. [Read sample (CA Press)]

Sherinian, Zoe C. Tamil Folk Music as Dalit Liberation Theology (Ethnomusicology multimedia). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014. [Google Books]

Whittaker, Sue. Music and Liturgy, Identity and Formation: A Study of Inculturation in Turkey (American Society of Missiology monograph series, 56). Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2021. [Google Books]

North America

Marovich, Robert M. A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (Music in American Life). Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2015. [Google Books] [YouTube video]

Ross, Melanie C. Evangelical Worship: An American Mosaic. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021. [Google Books]

Ruth, Lester, and Lim Swee Hong. A History of Contemporary Praise & Worship: Understanding the Ideas That Reshaped the Protestant Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021. [Google Books]

South America

Baker, Geoffrey. Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008. [Google Books]

Several Continents

Grüter, Verena, and Benedict Schubert. Klangwandel: Über Musik in der Mission. Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck, 2010. [Includes a DVD with audio recordings and video clips]

Ingalls, Monique M., and Amos Yong, eds. The Spirit of Praise: Music and Worship in Global Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. [Google Books]

Krabill, James R., general ed. Worship and Mission for the Church: An Ethnodoxology Handbook. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2013. [Introductory Material]

Lamport, Mark A.; Benjamin Forrest, Vernon M. Whaley. Hymns and Hymnody: Historical and Theological Introductions; vol. 3: From the English West to the Global South. Cambridge: James Clarke, 2020 [Wipf & Stock, 2019]. [Google Books (the part on the Global South is somewhat short)]

Mall, Andrew, Jeffers Engelhardt and Monique M. Ingalls, eds. Studying Congregational Music: Key Issues, Methods, and Theoretical Perspectives (Congregational Music Studies Series). Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2021. [Google Books]

Wainwright, Geoffrey, and Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, eds. The Oxford History of Christian Worship. Oxford, etc.: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Wilkey, Gláucia Vasconcelos, ed. Worship and Culture: Foreign Country or Homeland? Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2014. [Google Books] (Follow-up of the Lutheran World Federations’ 1996 “Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture“)