BANTÈ, BENIN
May 2, 2026 · Psalms Refresher Workshop
At the end of April, Bio Athanase conducted a Psalms Refresher Workshop with a few translators who had previously attended one of Scriptura’s workshops, working through Psalm 23 and 121. By the third morning of the workshop, the Incà community had been living inside Psalm 23 for two days. They had heard it read aloud. They had discussed its background — the specific danger David was navigating when he wrote that the Lord was his shepherd. They had mapped its emotional arc, section by section: provision, protection, the shadow of death, the table set in front of enemies, the cup running over. They had broken into small groups and tried to find, in the rhythms and forms of their own musical tradition, something that could carry it.
On the third day, the groups came back together. A composition had been chosen — built on the akoto rhythm, a form woven into Incà musical life. And now everyone learned it together.
What happened in that room — the sound of a psalm that had been sung in Hebrew, in Greek, in Latin, in the languages of the Reformation, in the hymns of the 19th century, in the contemporary worship music of the 20th — being sung for the first time in Incà, by the people to whom Incà belongs — is not the kind of thing that fits easily into a report.
The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. In a language that has its own word for that, its own melody for it, its own way of making that ancient confidence felt in the body. Then they recorded it. So it would not be lost.
