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Full-Text Articles in African History
(Special Section) Translating Race: Mission Hymns And The Challenge Of Christian Identity, Philip Burnett
(Special Section) Translating Race: Mission Hymns And The Challenge Of Christian Identity, Philip Burnett
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
“Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race,” “The race that long in darkness pined,” “To heal and save a race undone,” and “Sanctify a ransomed race” are a few examples of many references to “race” that exist in English-language hymnody. Throughout the nineteenth-century, hymns containing lines such as these, were exported from Britain into mission fields where translators had to find new ways to conceptualize notions of race and, in effect, created new group identities. This requires asking critical questions about the implications of what happened when ideas of race, in the Christian sense, interacted with non-religious notions of race in …
Singing And Sensing The Unknown: An Embodied History Of Hindu Practice In Ghana, Shobana Shankar
Singing And Sensing The Unknown: An Embodied History Of Hindu Practice In Ghana, Shobana Shankar
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Hinduism fits well into the “sound-filled” West African religious soundscape, which is a scene of competition and conflict. This article explores the soundscape of devotional singing, mantras, and prayers as a central part of the embodiment and embedment of Hinduism among Africans in Ghana, where the Indian diaspora has been relatively small and the indigenous movement of Hinduism entirely through African initiative. Using ethnographic and written sources to examine the Hindu Monastery of Africa, founded by the Ghanaian monk Swami Ghanananda in 1975, I examine how the oral and aural popular devotions crafted by the swami have shifted attention away …