The History of North African Worship Music June 20th, 2008
I just want to make the point that for the last over 100 years now, the North African church has been dependent on music from the outside…
When the early missionaries went to North Africa, they took their English hymnbooks with them and translated the hymns into the Indigenous Arabic dialect. For many years these were the only hymns that the North African believers sang. Later, in the sixties, some North African believers went to study at seminaries in the Middle East. When they returned, they brought back with them some of the popular Arabic hymns and incorporated them into the worship in some of the North African home groups. For over forty years the church in North Africa has been singing imported hymns from the Middle East. This music was a significant contribution to worship in North African churches in those days, but as the Church matured it felt the need for songs of their own.
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