Projecting church music and archival masterpeices: A case study of iconic acappella groups of mountain of fire and miracles Ministries

Abstract

Music in Pentecostal and ‘Avant garde’ churches has skyrocketed its dimensions in compositions and performance of masterpieces; these are usually documented as repertoire for the musical groups of the Church. There seems to be high concentration of research on choral works of various popular chorales across denominations but not much on other musical groups in the church, such as a cappella etc. This paper projects Church music from a different perspective outside chorale; it investigates a cappella music groups of Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries. The theoretical concepts for this study are: Transformative musicology and sacred musicology (Adedeji, 2018:5). The former concept explains the innovation and creativity in musicological concept of the a cappella groups while the later concept captures maintaining the sacredness of the musical innovation in the church. Four (4) iconic a cappella groups were selected for the research. Investigations include: interview, access to discographies and structural analysis of masterpieces of each a cappella group. Findings from the investigation elicit certain innovations derived from the performance concepts of the a cappella groups. These include:  reconceptualising Apala music for a cappella performance in the church with vocal percussion; this concept is termed ‘apalappella.’ Vocalisation of orchestra pieces is also deciphered as voices are made to reflect melodic and harmonic movement of significant instrument of the orchestra. Findings further reveals new concept that allows direct participation of audience in choreography with the group, for comic relief. The paper concludes that although much has been done on choral works however, there is at least an iota of knowledge hidden in any area of music with low concentration of research. This paper recommends that composers and researchers should  investigate a cappella groups across other denominations to project their musical works