A friend to us all

You know, I don’t think in all the years I’ve been doing music posts for Advent that I’ve had anything from Africa. I don’t know why that is, but it’s changing today.

I confess that I don’t know anything about this piece, “Bethlehem”, and only marginally more about MozuluArt. They’re a group of three African guys generally accompanied by a pianist, who fuse African traditions with classical music. Zulu meets Mozart, see? Seems appropriate, somehow, for the day we believe Ludwig van Beethoven was born, to pay tribute to expanding the parameters of music.

From their website, the lyrics translate to:

Jesus Christ is born in Bethlehem

He lies in a manger

He is a friend to us all

And he has come here to give us salvation

On this particular piece, they’re accompanied by the Ambassade String Quartet. Not a lot to tell you about this, but I love it, and I love them. Here’s how much: I’ve just ordered their African Christmas CD, which includes this, from Amazon, and I’m paying $3.99 for incredibly slow shipping, because this seems to be the only option.