By Valentine Marc Nkwame

"... Thou shall not tell lies!" The Bible says but some church groups that participated in the recently ended choir competition did exactly that. The choirs reportedly tried to cheat their way to victory by miming along CD play backs of original recordings.

The judges however found out about such gimmicks but held onto their discovery until the end when the 22 Lutheran church choirs that made it to the finals, were waiting for their performance results. The Church choir finals at Diocese level were held at the Kijenge Lutheran Parish grounds last Sunday, October 21.

The Managing Director of Kenya Airways, Titus Naikuni was the guest of honor at the event in which four choirs emerged winners under respective categories. The Imani Choir of Kijenge got the trophy for being the best female group in the entire diocese.

The Oldonyo-Sambu choir were named winners of the singing groups that used unplugged instruments. They are also going to be the last such group to get the percussion trophy because this category will be scraped off in future events. According to organizers most church choirs are no longer using ‘cold instruments’ as most rush for electric guitars and keyboards for their music departments.

In singing Capella that is without using any instruments, the Ilboru Choir won the overall trophy. Not surprising, because being the first ever church to be established in Arusha, Ilboru parish must have started their first choir in 1900, without any backing music equipment.

There was also the tradition singing category, of which the Mundalala choir of Longido became the overall winner. The guest of honor commented that, it was only Tanzania out of all the countries he had ever visited, that ‘praises God with tradition music!’

"It is high time that Tanzanian teach Kenyans some traditions because back in my country the English culture has eroded almost all the indigenous culture," said the Kenya Airways boss, a long standing fan of choirs concerts staged in Tanzania.

The Mteteeni Choir from the Unga Limited Lutheran parish became the overall winners in the modern singing category.

A total of 22 choirs out of the expected 25, made it to the finals in the cut-throat choir competitions that started in June at parish level and climaxed last week at diocese level. The Arusha Diocese comprises Babati, Arumeru, Longido, Arusha Municipality, Monduli and Simanjiro.

Commenting at the end of the event, the judges pointed out that some choirs sang along CD play backs during the final competition and thus lost hundreds of points.

The Guest of Honor awarded the winning groups with cash money amounting to Tsh. 1.4 million to be distributed between them.