What is it about?
Employing the postcolonial optic to analyze the nineteenth century missionary musical texts. Such texts are a reflection of the Victorian mentality patent in the hymns and how they perceived the African continent as a colonized entity.
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Why is it important?
It excites interests in the pervasiveness of colonial mentality. Despite the missionaries' good intentions they could have hardly avoided the context within which their missionary work was undertaken. The Victorian influence pervaded much of their missionary work. It painted African as a a dark continent with Africans as irredeemable and barbaric. While they painted Africa in this manner we are proposing a deconstruction of an African through pious songs that emerge out of their experience of the gospel.
Perspectives
This article has added a fresh look at the hymns that have been sung since the times of the first missionaries. They reflect not only a different time and thinking but also a different theology which needs to be revisited given the fact that the contemporary church has made strides in terms of her theological thinking and practice.
Dr Paul Lekholokoe Leshota
National University of Lesotho
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Postcolonial Reading of Nineteenth-Century Missionaries’ Musical Texts, Black Theology, August 2014, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1179/1476994814z.00000000026.
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