Make more music!

The main reason our blog had been sitting unattended was work winning the battle for attention. Part of what we do here is work with the Evangelical Church of Bosnia and Herzegovina on youth work projects. This includes summer camps and conferences. Anyone who has ever been to a Christian camp will probably have experienced singing of some sort or another: maybe camp-fire songs, maybe things that sound like they come from the Bible, maybe tunes that sound like they came off the radio. The English speaking world has hundreds of artists producing all this and more. The Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian speaking world doesn't. All of that to say the work in question - producing new music recordings – is something that needs to happen more here.

Music is such an important form of expression; we don't want young people to miss out on the chance to sing things they mean in their own language. People can, and do, translate English language songs and sing them. Sometimes they work, but often they lose some of the nuance of meaning. They say something good but not in such a profound way as the original text. Our answer is to challenge people to write what they want to say in their own language. We can then help them take these words and melodies and turn them into fully-formed tracks. That's what the recording process over the past couple of months has been about. A week ago we got to unveil the finished songs, playing them live at a conference in Mostar. Judging by the response it won't be the last time we help people like this.

Here's one of the six songs we recorded. You'll find the rest on YouTube.