Very pleased to have been worshipping at St Stephen’s Church of Uganda Church, Kisugu, since I came out of lockdown in November. St Stephen’s is walking distance from where I am living, has services in English and Luganda, follows much the same liturgy that I’m used to, with a strong focus on Biblical teaching. Fantastic! Before I joined the choir I much appreciated their ministry from the congregation, sitting two thirds of the way back it is very much a unified sound rather than individual voices, a massive aid to worship which is fantastic.
And now I’m a member! As you can see we wear smart gowns which are buttoned at the top – well, most of us do:
Here I am with fellow chorister Daniel, actually, looking at the picture I’m being more discrete than I was thinking, wearing a white shirt helps to hide the fact that I’m allowing some ventilation in, bit essential in tropical weather I think!
We’re very pleased to have a superb organist and choir master, also called Daniel:
We spend a fair bit of time in rehearsals learning the notes for hymns using tonic sol-fa. Daniel puts a considerable amount of time into transcribing hymns and the anthems we do into tonic sol-fa, the blue folders you see in the pictures above are collections of these transcriptions from ‘Hymns for Today’s Church’. The time spent learning notes for hymns in tonic sol-fa which is really good for me as it gives a chance to build up some fluency with it rather than just knowing ‘Doh – re – mi’ courtesy of the song “Doh a deer” from the film, “The Sound of Music.” Surprised to discover that there are two ways to deal with accidentals (sharps and flats if in the key of C). One is by extra notes, so for example the semi-tone between Doh and Re is either Di (ie. Doh sharpened) or Ra (Re flattened). The other is by temporarily changing which note is Doh. So, for example, the hymn ‘My song is love unknown’ is in the key of E flat, but for the line, “O who am I, That for my sake’ A flat becomes Doh and then changes back again straight after. A bit of a surprise the first time I came across this, still finding it difficult to get there fluently but I’m working on it! I would say also that Daniel is both a highly proficient keyboardist and has been using tonic sol-fa all his life, so is constantly shifting key to accommodate the singers – great to be able to do this but does take a bit of getting used to again!
I’ve been singing bass or tenor depending on who is there when the rehearsal starts, also I played a bit when Daniel was away a few weeks ago which was nice. Also I have led the choir a few times in Daniel’s absence, on one occasion getting them singing one of my favourite songs, Amy Grant’s, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet” – see for example this YouTube video. Great to hear members singing it for several rehearsals afterwards. Alongside the music I’ve really appreciated getting know some of the other members. And Michael (remember this blog post?) kindly comes to pick me up after the Thursday evening rehearsals, whilst normally I’m happy walking to and fro I make it a rule not to walk on the street after dark.
Still very early days, really valuing the opportunity to contribute to the life of the church in this manner. If you’re in Kampala on Sunday do please come and see us, we sing at the 9am service, you’ll be sure of a great welcome! May well be coming back to the choir in this blog in due course, meanwhile, thank you for reading, I’ll be back again soon!
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