Review

Israel and New Breed have always delivered high energy, celebratory praise and worship, but they have really outdone themselves with their new CD 'Alive In South Africa.' This recording is a tour de force of jubilation made manifest through joyful praise and breathless, expectant worship. Recorded live in South Africa, this double CD does an amazing job of conveying the feeling of being in Africa worshipping with thousands of people.

I must say I was blown away when I first heard this CD. In fact I wasn't quite able to put my finger on what I was actually listening to. 'Alive In South Africa' is like a documentary, a worship service and a big party all rolled up into 31 tracks. I don't want to reduce this disc down to a feel-good experience, but this CD is just plain fun to listen to. It has the 'we're all just getting together to celebrate the Lord' feeling of a live 1970's Andre Crouch and the Disciples record, mixed with the relentless energy of a Kirk Franklin project.

One nice thing about this CD is that Israel & New Breed didn't try to take advantage of a double-disc format by cramming it with a million new songs. While there is a lot of new material, many of the tracks are 'reprises' of the song before, either offering a slow version of the song or the same song with alternate lyrics. In other words, this CD isn't rushing from one song to the other, but rather it stretches out and takes time to tell its story.

The most notable song on this CD is the ground breaking 'Not Forgotten.' With its driving Afro-Latin beat, I'll guarantee that you haven't heard a congregational song like this before. Whenever we play this song in the car my two year old daughter never hesitates to chime in from the backseat and sing along at the top of her lungs 'I am not forgotten/ I am not forgotten/ I am not forgotten/ God knows my name/ He knows my name.' Another strong moment in the CD is the stretch of worship songs 'To Worship You I Live,' 'Worship Medley,' and 'Alpha and Omega.' Finally, Israel closes out the CD with a home-run medley of his well known, older songs like 'You Are Good,' 'Again I Say Rejoice,' and 'Friend of God.'

I'm going to refrain from predicting that 'Alive In South Africa' is going to become a classic worship CD (though it just may), but I do suspect that it will at least have an impact on how we think about live worship recordings in the future. The depth of this CD is something that worship and gospel music lovers will be exploring for a long, long time.

Review by Jeremy Dunn