You Are Welcome Here: Music in Missions - Kenya

Walking through the main breezeway of Moody Library in the summer of 2012, I recall hearing the distinct sound of men’s voices and djembes amid the hustle and bustle of Freshman Orientation. The Baylor University Men’s Choir booth was set up just beside the entrance to the main staircase, as they played recordings of their music and they promoted not only the upcoming semester in the choir, but the following summer’s men’s choir trip to Kenya. As an incoming music major, I already knew I would be singing in the men’s choir, but this was the first time I had heard about the trip (and the group’s history of travel to Kenya). At the time, this sounded like an incredible opportunity to visit a new part of the world with a choral and missional component (reasons enough to go, to be sure). 

I did not realize at the time, however, how much the Baylor Men’s Choir would come to shape my entire experience at Baylor, and how much this trip to Kenya would transform the way I understood the nature of music and the nature of God.

Jambo Rafiki Yangu | Welcome, My Friend

By the end of my freshman year at Baylor, the members of the men’s choir had become some of my closest friends, and it had become clear that the group would continue to serve as a consistent thread through my undergraduate experience (little did I know that I would wind up in the group through most of my graduate studies, too!). When it came time to travel to Kenya in May 2013 with approximately 70 (!!!) choir members, I looked forward to building on these relationships.

One of the pieces we had prepared to sing in Kenya was called “Jambo Rafiki Yangu,” or “Welcome, My Friend.” When we landed in Kenya, it was immediately evident that the Kenyan people embodied these words that we were singing to them. There was hospitality and welcome in every sense, but especially in times of shared music. In fact, we were not really singing to people at all. Everywhere we sang, we sang with people. Everywhere we sang, we also danced, because the experience was a full-bodied, all-people one. The participant-observer/performer-audience walls had been broken down, the inhibitions of any self-conscious 19 or 20-year-old college students went out the windows of our crammed Rosa buses, and the rest of the trip would be marked by these beautiful moments of cultural and musical exchange.

Hakuna Mungu Kama Wewe | There Is No One Like Jesus

The 2013 Kenya trip also was the first that included the arrangement that has now become part of the standard repertoire of the Baylor Men’s Choir: “Hakuna Mungu Kama Wewe,” which means, “There Is No One Like Jesus.” Then men’s choir member Will McKee (BM, 13) arranged this Swahili song as another element of cultural exchange: the group had heard it on an earlier trip to Kenya, we recorded and transcribed it, Will arranged it for men’s voices, and we brought it back as a choral arrangement in 2013. This song had been described to us as the Kenyan equivalent of “Jesus Loves Me,” but I don’t think anybody had anticipated the sheer joy on people’s faces and in people’s bodies when we would begin to sing it. Everyone knew it and sang every word, as we all worshiped with one another.

This worship was especially meaningful in the Pokot village. One of the primary purposes of the Baylor Men’s Choir’s visits to Kenya has been to partner with the remote village of the Pokot tribe, repairing classrooms, initiating gardening projects, hosting health clinics, and supporting the education of young women from the tribe with the goal of reducing Female Genital Mutilation. During this trip to Kenya, I was moved deeply by the work of our friends Zippy and Daniel Sindiyo, who have been doing this work for many years. Coming into the 2013 trip to Kenya, I had some misplaced notion that the Baylor Men’s Choir would be coming as problem solvers, so when we left the Pokot village after a few short days, I had feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Fortunately, wise words from Dr. Randall Bradley and others re-centered my understanding of God’s holiness, particularly in light of the faithful work of the Sindiyos. God is with the Pokot people always, not just in our being there. There is truly no one like Jesus. Will McKee’s arrangement of “Hakuna Mungu Kama Wewe” was published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing in 2016, and all royalties of the piece go to the Komolion Human Development Fund.

Injili Iende Mbele | Let the Gospel Go Forward

The hospitality and welcome of the Kenyan people in 2013 shaped me both in the short term (through the rest of my time at Baylor) and in the long term (in my understanding of music and ministry to this day). I sang with the Baylor Men’s Choir from 2012–2020, taking a couple of semesters off. The group became a core community for me because of the shared hospitality we experienced in Recital Hall II and in Nairobi, Nakuru, and Marigat. Music and mission opportunities would become critical and consistent parts of my Baylor experience. I traveled to Malaysia in 2014, 2016, and 2018, El Salvador in 2015, and Kenya once again in 2017. I was a student leader on the 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 trips, helping to coordinate travel logistics and music.

Now serving as a music minister, my travels to Kenya and interactions with the people there transformed my understanding of music and ministry in deeply foundational ways. They instilled in me that music is to be a shared experience. There must be active participation from everyone in all musical contexts, and especially in musical worship. I am always looking for opportunities to break down walls in worship between those on the platform and those in the congregation, encouraging full-hearted participation. Traveling to such a different context also allowed me to see God as so much bigger than I ever could have imagined. The experiences of our sisters and brothers in Komolion are so very different from my own, and God is faithful over all of it. Thanks be to God!

Iende wapi injili oh? Iende mbele…

Where should the Gospel go? It should go forward…

Adam Cogliano
Bachelor of Music in Church Music, 2016
Master of Music in Church Music (Conducting), 2020
Master of Divinity (Truett Seminary), 2020
Minister for Music and Worship, South Main Baptist Church, Houston, Texas