ABSTRACT
As scholars, teachers, and activists, Mary K. Oyer and David A Shank recognized the value of African expressions of life and thought in their respective fields of ethnomusicology and theology and church history. They shared a vision that led to a greater appreciation, even incorporation, of these expressions in Western institutional practices. Their discovery of African forms of aesthetics, ritual, and belief occurred mid-career, from a deep formation in Western cultural and philosophical canons. Oyer, an accomplished college music teacher and director, following a 1972 sabbatical in Africa, devoted the next decades of her long career to learning, recording, cataloging, analyzing, and performing African music. In Africa, she served as chair of the University of Nairobi’s music department; in North America, she helped introduce Africa music to the world of hymnology. Her many recordings are accessible in Indiana University’s Archives of Traditional Music. Shank, after many years as a relief worker, missionary, and teacher in Belgium, began to relate to and research African Initiated Churches (AICs), first the Congolese Kimbanguist Church then the West African Harrist Church. His Africa work, from a base in Ivory Coast, includes his classic book on the prophet William Wade Harris, and the convening of two international conferences with AIC leaders, theologians, and scholars.
