What Key Is That In?

The best part of Africa is the people in the churches. These are the best people that you will every meet. Friendly, loving, joyful, and their worship has such a posture of devotion, you can’t help but be in awe of the authenticity of it. However, the flow of worship can be extremely awkward. Here in the United States (and all other countries I’ve been too) in a worship service, the songs are chosen beforehand and the keys they will be sung in, in order that band and leader can work simultaneously together. However, this is not true for most churches in Uganda. When they actually have a keyboard (and often they don’t), the worship leader begins singing a song and while the congregation joins in, the piano player keeps hitting different keys on the keyboard in order to identify the key (C, Em, G, Bb etc) that the song leader has randomly started singing in. And this goes on song after song. No plan, no flow, just constant distraction during the first minute, while you wait for the keyboard to finally find the right key! I feel bad for the musicians who must operate in this environment. The church could sing the same song four weeks in a row, but each time it could be in a different key, depending on who the leader was or whether they had a cold or not that week! But, ultimately, they always do join in and impressively, the congregation seems to not even notice the off-key plunking that happens at the beginning of every song.