#14 - Live from South Africa

As number 14 in the series, this album is this latest in a long and prestigious line of worship albums from Vineyard. This album continues in the vein of live spiritual worship of the style that Vineyard has become famous for. But innovative, this album is not. With the series so far having travelled to such daring and far off destinations as Stockholm, Australia and London, South Africa should be a dramatic new world of musical inspiration, with its banks of traditional tribal music. And thankfully, this album has been quite successful in pulling in some traditional African style, with many of the songs being written in Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho as well as English; there is also some excellent percussion and some superb vocals, sounding fresh from a Ladysmith Black Mambazo album on "Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika (God Bless Africa)", a tradition African hymn. This originality, however, is quite sparse, the rest of the album comprises of some run-of-the-mill pop rock worship. The album is a reasonable example of modern Christian worship music, but there doesn't seem to be quite enough difference from the rest of the worship section at the local Christian bookshop to make anybody notice it.