Negotiating the sounds of born-again christianity: aesthetic provocations in western Ethiopia

This paper discusses the role of hymns and musical practices in the articulation of Christian subjectivities among Nuer communities in western Ethiopia. It examines how the members of two fundamentalist born-again groups responded to the Pentecostalization of the local Christian soundscape over the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Material religion
Main Author: Gidron, Yotam (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Taylor & Francis 2021
In: Material religion
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Gambela / Nuer / Gemeinschaft der Siebenten-Tags-Adventisten / Church or God / Pentecostal churches / Spiritual music / Aesthetics / Contention
RelBib Classification:KBL Near East and North Africa
KBN Sub-Saharan Africa
KDG Free church
Further subjects:B Nuer
B Pentecostalism
B Messianic Judaism
B Sound
B Seventh-day Adventism
B Ethiopia
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Summary:This paper discusses the role of hymns and musical practices in the articulation of Christian subjectivities among Nuer communities in western Ethiopia. It examines how the members of two fundamentalist born-again groups responded to the Pentecostalization of the local Christian soundscape over the past two decades, focusing on the distinct approaches they adopted for the production and performance of hymns and the authorization of Christian music. Born-again musical practices, it is argued, take shape through a constant process of public argumentation, fuelled by a ceaseless quest for divine authenticity. Believers from different churches are therefore engaged not in destructive conflicts over the domination of public spaces, as some accounts of tensions over religious sound from elsewhere in Africa may suggest, but in constant provocations and debates that are both of a productive nature and inherent to the endless political project of born-again subjectivation.
ISSN:1751-8342
Contains:Enthalten in: Material religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.1959281