Siyahamba – Sao Paulo Installment 2
(Here’s a list of all 4 installments of this article: Siyahamba -1st Installment, Siyahamba – Sao Paulo – Installment 2, Siyahamba – Cape Town-Installment 3, and Siyahamba – Norm Bleichman / A Most Inspirational Man – Installment 4)
Letter To Norm Bleichman, Executive Producer written from Sao Paulo, Brazil
April 26, 2009
Hey Norm,
Well that was one of the most beautiful and touching days of my life. What special people the church people are! Well, God certainly pulled out all the stops on these folks. Just beautiful. I curse the language barrier, but somehow we all cut through it.
(Watch the video we made… Siyahamba Project on YouTube)
Flavio Colombini, our Brazilian videographer, has been a total pro throughout the entire experience – always on time, always helpful and always concerned about the project and my welfare. He found me this terrific girl – Daniella Volker – who has followed me around, driven me to and fro and been my personal guide for the weekend. She was my translator today at the session and just did a great job. I was able to keep ’em laughing even through an interpreter. A good team.
We finished the church service and took about 20 minutes to set up and then got right to it. Daniella’s mom made a large banner that stretched across the front of the church behind the podium which said, “Nos Cantamos Na Luz Do Senhor”. (We are singing in the light of God.) Our lyrics for the day. Note the change.
The translation done in Boston did not scan well because “Deus” (instead of Senhor) is pronounced as a 1 syllable word in Portuguese, not two. And we need a 2 syllable word here to fit the melody. Several people and I met last night and discussed it. I made sure that Senhor was not any less reverent a term for God than Deus. They’re interchangeable, and the line sings infinitely better. They were all so helpful.
The church was packed and the constantly powerful emotion of the day was how touched and proud they all were to be a part of this. One little man in the back of the church, after I had played them the track with the rest of the churches singing on it, raised his hand with tears in his eyes. “You mean we were picked to sing last before the finale?” he asked through Daniella, my interpreter. I explained that this was, in fact, so. The entire room of people buzzed with excitement and pride. “Why?” they asked. Once again I explained how we were going to many places around the world and doing this to show the unity of the church and also that the hymn worked very well with a bossa nova feel and besides, I just love Brazilian music.
Once again they buzzed all in Portuguese, beamed with pride and some openly had tears in their eyes. They were all so excited once they heard about how they fit into the project. We had all ages, Sunday School children, teens and adults 20-90. They are a truly joyful people and that spirit filled the church all afternoon.
They are not all the best singers in the world. They have a few monotones and some of the kids never really found the key. They speak and sing with a kind of dark, rich nasal quality. But the spirit was there, the Portuguese language is one of the most musical languages in the world and the recording went beautifully. It was a bit noisy outside the church, so we had to shut the windows on the street side and it got very hot as the afternoon went on. As we did take after take, everybody was sweatin’ and workin’ and just givin’ their Brazillian all. Just beautiful people.
It’s definitely the “real sound” that we talked about, of real people singing in church, of congregations and not necessarily polished church choirs. It’ll be fine. It’s church. Sometimes one of the little kids comes through with unabashed gusto, loud and all off key and it’s actually sweet, it’s real — like I said, it’s church.
Afterward, they served a great lunch out on the patio and everyone stayed till 4:00. A happy family. For the last 45 minutes they asked me if I would talk to a few of the church music committee about New Music In The Church. I said I would and then the entire church went in and sat with me and asked question after question. They were all so interested in progressing and growing.
I made sure they understood that I did not work at the world headquarters, that I was just a free lance working for the church – that I was just a normal guy. It was a fascinating discussion that I’ll tell you more about when I see you.
So another good day on the Siyahamba Project. 5 cities down/1 to go. So glad you’re coming to Cape Town. Flavio is going to back up all his video, give me the video master and I’ll upload it onto the ftp site before I get on the plane to South Africa.
Got all the release forms all signed. The only thing we didn’t do was read and film the release statement. Seemed a bit bogus to read it in English to a non-English speaking audience. We’re covered with the forms.
So all is well. It’ll be nice to have a couple of days off here and spend some real time with these great people. Then on to Cape Town…
See you there, my friend.
Pete
**If you’d like to watch the production of the Siyahamba Project on YouTube, please click on the link.
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Regarding the choice of wordings, Deus vs. Senhor: you may be interested to know that the Zulu word “Nkosi” actually means “Lord” — “Nkulunkulu” (biggest of the big) is the word for God.