Member Spotlight: IziBongo’s Paul and Cathy McAndrew

Paul and Cathy McAndrew have a heart for heart worship.

The McAndrews, who live in Duncanville, Texas, near Dallas, are members of IziBongo, a group which performs worship music from other cultures for U.S. audiences. IziBongo’s CD, Nice Threads, and the group’s occasional concerts feature sacred music from Africa, Indonesia, the Middle East, South America, Central America, and other areas of the globe. “IziBongo” is Zulu for “praises intoned in honor of a person,” the main person being, in this case, of course, the Main Person—Jesus Christ.

In addition to spiritually connecting American Christians with their brothers and sisters in other nations, IziBongo and the McAndrews raise awareness of efforts by Wycliffe Bible Translators, especially its “Last Languages” campaign.

A department of Artists in Christian Testimony International, IziBongo has partnered with Wycliffe for at least a decade. The key to Paul and Cathy’s efforts with the group has been to find out what “heart music” sounds like in other cultures and then to demonstrate it to the rest of the Body of Christ. “Heart music” is the term for music that’s part of a person’s core cultural experience.

“The fruit that we have seen in our performances is that people have developed a more global understanding of the Church,” Paul says. “When they think of Revelation 20, where all nations are gathered together before the throne of God, we’re not all speaking English or even Hebrew, but there are people literally from every tribe and tongue. They’re expressing their praise in a cacophony of different ways, 6,000 or so different ways, over the salvation they’ve received.”

For now, though, the McAndrews and others connected with IziBongo not only share other cultures’ music, but also encourage Christians in those cultures to keep creating by using their own “heart music.”

“I would put it this way,” Paul says. “Michael W. Smith and Matt Redmond and others are wonderful songwriters. But who are the wonderful songwriters in Nepal or in South India or in all the different parts of the world? There are wonderful writers who are never heard often because we exalt certain songwriters above all the rest. We are trying to encourage the lesser-known songwriters to be given a chance to express their hearts as well. Sometimes we find some real treasures.”

Cathy says it’s important for Christians in other cultures to have songs in familiar forms, whether it’s for worship, discipleship, Scripture memory, testimonials, or other purposes. For the cultures that don’t share our same musical scale, it may be hard to learn Western songs that have been translated into their languages. When they hear a truth framed in their own heart music, though, it’s like a whole different, deeper, level of communication.

“It seems people are moved when they hear their own music in a way that doesn’t move them when they hear another culture’s music, even if the words are good and true,” she says. “We’re not looking for emotion, we’re just looking for a connection. We just want to give an integral way of praising the Lord for what He has given them.

“We don’t want the churches in other cultures to be dependent on the West for their songs. We don’t want them to think that their music is somehow evil, which some cultures have been told. It is a scriptural mandate to sing to the Lord, and we try to encourage them to make those songs themselves.”

This falls perfectly in line with the McAndrews’ work through ACT, a ministry which works to help Christians around the world “worship God and express their faith in their own language and cultural style.” Their involvement in what’s called “ethnomusicology” started in the 1990s when they met Tom Avery, an expert in the field who happened to attend their church. He became a mentor and friend.

Cathy took Tom’s classes on the subject, and a couple of years later he asked the McAndrews to join the Wycliffe World Music Band, a recruitment effort that traveled to several Christian alternative music festivals in 1998. When Paul and Cathy took the lead of the group a few years later, it became IziBongo, still promoting awareness and affirming the important work of Wycliffe.

Paul had long been a guitarist, so as his involvement with IziBongo grew, he began to pick up other chordophone instruments, such as the charango from Bolivia, the oud from Syria, the sitar from India, and the bouzouki from Greece. He would learn one song at a time, looking for help from whomever he could get it.

Cathy, trained in piano and guitar, also plays the pennywhistle as well as other flutes from around the world, a Persian hammered dulcimer called the santur, and percussion.

Both sing, as well.

“We consider ourselves folk musicians,” Cathy says. “We love to get with people and learn what they know.”

“What we are trying to do is say, ‘Hey, here’s a song we’ve got. What about the ones you have? What did your mom sing to you as a child?’ or, if they knew the Lord already, ‘What Christian songs have been used that are from your culture rather than from ours?’” Paul says. “The idea is to encourage people from other lands to value their own gifts rather than only using foreign gifts.”

IziBongo performs infrequently as a group in the U.S. and other lands due to members’ other commitments and jobs. Paul, for instance, is a computer technician and Cathy is a bookkeeper. They also are worship leaders at their local church. Paul says about half the band’s members are Wycliffe missionaries. IziBongo has played at such events as the Global Consultation on Music and Missions conferences (known as GComm) in Minneapolis-St. Paul in 2006 and Singapore in 2010—the next GComm is planned for 2014 in the Philippines—and at Wycliffe presentations, including one coming up in Nashville this April.

Nice Threads, though, enables IziBongo to have a wider impact than they’re able to have otherwise. The project started in 2006 after the group had worked up several songs for GComm that year.

“We did 10 different worship sessions for that conference,” Paul says.

When a friend offered free studio time, IziBongo took advantage and put down a half dozen tracks. The project stalled for a few years, though, not picking back up until after Tom Avery passed away.

“Losing Tom was a huge hit to us personally, to the band, and to our whole community,” Paul says. “The band just felt like it would be a good tribute, as well as a good thing for us to do, even if it was the last thing we did as a band.”

Nice Threads was released in 2009.

Although between 30 and 40 musicians have been part of IziBongo in its various forms over the years, about 12 of them ended up performing on the CD’s 10 tracks. Similar to their concert performances, the songs on Nice Threads are offered both in their original languages and with English translation.

For now, IziBongo is in a transitional period. Once it becomes clear who will be able to still play with the group, “we’ll have to figure out how to move forward,” Cathy says.

“It’s hard to replace people who are vocalists and have learned all the linguistic stuff,” she says. “We could use prayers.”

“It’s a narrow skill set,” Paul adds.

And it takes a lot of heart. And music.

Free McAndrew music

Paul and Cathy McAndrew have also recorded (living room style) more than two albums worth of Scripture songs and musical ponderings that are available for free on the izibongo.com website.

To find the free songs, go to izibongo.com and click on the “music” link. Scroll down and click on the link contained in the sentence “Do we prefer our own heart music?” Then click on the links “Catenae on Purpose,” “PM in retrospect,” or “As for Me.”

Several other tracks, including live IziBongo performance files, are available at the end of the page.