Songs of Canaan

[Xiao Kui]

If you have been exposed to Christianity in mainland China, you probably have heard the Songs of Canaan 迦南诗选 before. These are the most popular songs in Chinese churches, especially in rural areas, and all 1000+ of them were written by the same woman -Xiao Min 小敏.

The melodies are very traditional, but the songs are beautiful, and the writer, Xiao Min, has had no formal musical training.

The songs, sung by Xiao Min herself, are available for download in mp3 from this site:

http://www.nimenqu.com/siten/modules/wmpdownloads/viewcat.php?cid=32

You can get the lyrics and the jianpu music for the first 300 songs from this site:

http://www.jdtjy.com/html/zanmeishige/jnsxcp/

Here are 2 articles in English I found about Xiao Min:

www.globallight.org.uk/Sisters%20Songs.htm

www.asianoutreach.org/sample/file/AR_04_MarApr.pdf

Enjoy!!!

[skylee]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[WRMCNAIR]

I am a big fan of Xiao Min and was especially interested in the nimenqu site with mp3 files. Incredible stuff. I don't know enough Chinese to figure out much more than how to play them. I'm tecno illiterate: can I download the files onto my computer?

WRMCNAIR

[Xiao Kui]

To download the songs to your computer

On the nimenqu link: There are pictures of disks with song numbers written next to them RIght click on the writing next to the picture

for example the first one is 第001-018首

When you right click on that a little menu pops up and you should then click on "save target as" then a window will come up and you can choose which folder you want to save it in. For example "my music".

Then when it has finished downloading and the window says" Download complete"click on "run" or "open" (I can't remember which ) and it will play in Windows Media Player, Winamp, or whatever you are using to play mp3's. Then it should be added to the library of Windows Media Player and you can play it whenever you want or go directly to the folder where you saved it and click on the file to play it.

If you scroll down the page at nimenqu you will see more pictures of disks: each is a file with many songs and each file takes up just under 30 MB of memory.

[WRMCNAIR]

Great! Thanks! I was first exposed to Xiao Min in Zhiming Yuan's "The Cross in China" (soundtrack available from China Soul for Christ). Dennis Balcomb's ministry (RCMI) also has a few sort of pop recordings of some of her songs. These a capella ones are the best though.

wrmcnair

[Song You Shen]

Wow, this has to be the greatest discovery I have been told about in a LONG time! Thank you so much for this information! This makes me so excited! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!!

Youshen

[WRMCNAIR]

So what is 'nimenqu'?

[skylee]

So what is 'nimenqu'?

'nimenqu' is 你們去 (you go). I guess it is about the spreading of the good news, such as 你們往普天下去，傳福音給萬民聽。 (Mark 16:15)