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...
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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.
