African Psalms

[W.C. Dean]

https://soundcloud.com/nico-van-den-berge

African Psalm singing (in English). Presumably these are Afrikaan people.

 

[BRK]

These are beautiful! Thanks for sharing. Do you happen to know what translation they are using?

 

[W.C. Dean]

I do not, apologies Joshua. I will listen to some more this week and see if I recognize it.

 

[BRK]

I do not, apologies Joshua. I will listen to some more this week and see if I recognize it.

No need to apologize, I appreciate your sharing this.

 

[iainduguid]

https://soundcloud.com/nico-van-den-berge

African Psalm singing (in English). Presumably these are Afrikaan people.

Since they seem to be based in Kampala, Uganda, they are unlikely to be Afrikaaners (who would generally sing in Afrikaans anyway). I think their renderings are loosely based on a variety of English translations; Psalm 8 seems closer to the NIV, while Psalm 3 has an affinity to the ESV. But their renderings are fairly paraphrased, as is often the case when singing the psalms.

 

[W.C. Dean]

Since they seem to be based in Kampala, Uganda, they are unlikely to be Afrikaaners (who would generally sing in Afrikaans anyway). I think their renderings are loosely based on a variety of English translations; Psalm 8 seems closer to the NIV, while Psalm 3 has an affinity to the ESV. But their renderings are fairly paraphrased, as is often the case when singing the psalms.

I assumed they were Afrikaaners because the title of the album looked Dutch. Thank you for the information.

 

[Von]

Dutch project by a dutch missionary, Nico van den Berge. ( reformedstudentorganisation.wordpress.com )

 

[alexandermsmith]

But their renderings are fairly paraphrased, as is often the case when singing the psalms.

Only if one is not doing it right. One should be using a faithfully translated Psalter.

 

[iainduguid]

To be sure, we should work to see that our psalter is as accurate as possible. However, I don't know if any psalters that are simply musical settings of the KJV text. Certainly, the 1645 Scottish Psalter was not. The reason is simple: they had other goals in mind in addition to translational accuracy, such as singability and memorizability which led them to choose to adopt a simple metrical pattern. That doesn't mean they didn't care about accuracy: the 1645 Psalter corrected the earlier William Kethe version of Psalm 100 in three places to match it more closely with the Hebrew (unfortunately the Trinity Hymnal has the older version!). But accuracy alone was not the only goal.

In this case, my point was simply that it seems they have chosen to use a variety of modern English translations and not to stick to them completely rigidly. I understand that you would have preferred them to use a more rigorous approach, and I can see the merits of that argument.