I-to Loh: Asia's Apostle of Church Music

Thursday, Jul. 21, 2011 Posted: 10:03:55AM HKT

Dr. I-to Loh. (Photo: The Christian Post)

Like the Apostle Paul he made several trips across a region, breaking new ground in his mission and building deep friendships.

Meet Dr. I-to Loh, apostle for the contextualisation of church music in Asia.

This was how Loh, 75, described his journey as an ethnomusicologist over a period of 40 years.

Armed with his tape recorder and tape, he went to the streets and visited churches and gatherings. If he found a song interesting, he would ask natives to recite the lyrics to him, give him the text, or do a rough translation.

On his return to Taiwan, he would do a literal translation of the lyrics into English. If it was simple enough, he would do a paraphrase. And if it was too complicated, he would enlist help in his task.

"I collected, I recorded from the grassroots," he said. "I knew the composer, the author, I knew how those hymns were sung."

Through his efforts, many hymns appeared in writing for the first time.

"I felt I had to introduce them," he said.

To date, he has compiled over 22 collections of hymns and published over 100 original hymns and anthems.

He mainly composed hymns for a seminary setting though he also published hymnals for ecumenical meetings and even churches.

His publications include: New Songs of Asian Cities (1972), a compilation of 64 songs from Asia; Hymns for the Four Winds (1983), a collection of hymns from Asian American ethnic groups for the United Methodist Church; and Sound the Bamboo (1990), the official hymnal of the Christian Conference of Asia.

The third was perhaps the first hymnal in which references to God as 'Parent God' - a term encompassing God's masculine as well as feminine character - were made.

That hymnal was expanded in 2000 to comprise 315 hymns in 44 languages from 22 countries.

Loh also just published the only handbook on Asian hymnology to date. This is the Hymnal Companion to Sound the Bamboo.

Behind all his efforts is the conviction that Asian cultures, like their Western counterparts, are gifts from God.

"God's revelation is not limited to Western music," he said. "God has given us as Asians our own cultures and those are gifts from God, so we should integrate those into our hymns or praise or thanksgiving or other witnesses."

He wanted to show students that "we (as Asians) have a lot of Asian resources," he expressed.

So he set out to compose hymns in Japanese, Indian and Indonesian styles. "I used different styles to show people it's possible to express the Christian faith through those different kinds of music," he said.

His efforts have made headway across the world. Hymns from Sound the Bamboo are being used in at least some mainline churches in Taiwan. Many seminaries and international gatherings in America use material from the hymnal.

For all his achievements in the field of Asian hymnology, Loh did not have the opportunity to take music lessons until he enrolled at Tainan Theological College and Seminary (TTCS).

His plan was to train to be a pastor to assist his father, a pastor. A request by his teachers to translate hymns, passion plays and medieval dramas from English into Taiwanese changed all that.

Loh tells of an important realisation he had while translating a passion play performed by Harlem, an African-American group from New York.

He said: "When I was translating I said, 'Well, it was going to be heard by African Americans so they have to use Negro spirituals. Now it's going to be sung in Taiwan - we have to sing that in Yellow spirituals.'

"I coined that word but of course there was no such thing."

So he began to compose hymns. In 1968, the seminary tasked him to collect songs from Asian cities.

"After doing that (collecting Asian songs), I knew that I was interested in promoting Asian music," he said.

To better equip himself, he obtained a PhD in ethnomusicology from UCLA.

His work as an ethnomusicologist did more than help him understand other Asian cultures.

"You are studying about the music of the people, the music in the culture, so you not only love the music - you love the people," he said. "You share their culture to understand them" and their music, he expressed.

As a result, his students love and honour him.

"We've already become a kind of family," he said.

Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com