Psalms That Sing, the Kom pilot
Sixty-three Psalms translated with Kom poets and musicians, composed into songs, recorded and printed.
Poets, pastors, translators and oral-literature specialists worked through the Psalter together, and it turned out several of them were musicians. Pastor Nkain Evarate brought a different instrument to every session. Sixty-three Psalms were translated, songs were composed from them and the readings were recorded, all while the North West was under armed conflict.
Where it stands
The pilot has closed. Sixty-three Psalms were translated, songs were composed from them, and the readings were recorded as audio. The Kom community took to the songs and the performances, learning to bring their problems to the Lord at a time when they were living through an armed conflict.
What Psalms That Sing is
Psalms That Sing sets out to put all 150 Psalms into the languages and the poetry of the world, and to set them to music. The translating is done by poets, songwriters and verbal artists from the community itself rather than for it, on the grounds that most language groups already hold rich traditions of oral verbal art that the biblical poetry can be carried in.
The method runs to ten steps and is deliberately multi-modal: the team internalises a Psalm, translates it, then performs it, and the finished Psalm is published in audio, video and print rather than on the page alone. Alongside the translations the programme is writing a translation guide for each of the 150 Psalms.
A pre-pilot ran through 2022 in four languages to test the method. Phase one followed across 2023 and 2024 in six languages, Kom among them, aiming at sixty Psalms in six weeks of workshops. Phase two, running through 2025 and 2026, moves from workshops into ordinary week-by-week project work with the whole Psalter as its target.
Kom on the Psalms That Sing site (opens in a new tab)How it worked
The Kom New Testament already existed and the Old Testament project had been running for three years. One of the things the Psalms project taught the team was how to translate biblical poetry.
Kom was one of the languages selected for the Psalms That Sing pilot, which began in 2022. The group was made up of poets, pastors, translators and oral literature specialists. It was not until the work started that the team discovered how much musical talent was among them. One pastor, Nkain Evarate, loves composing and singing so much that he brought a new instrument to every meeting, making sure the singing improved each time.
What came back
After four workshops and thirty Psalms, encouraging responses arrived from Kom people around the world. Pastor Francis Mungwia, one of the translators, wrote a widely circulated devotional after the third workshop in Mbouda. He wrote it in English, because he pastors a multi-ethnic church, but it was clear he understood the Psalm better for having translated it into Kom first.
