K-Pop, Samosas and Intercultural Church: A Dialogue with Jessie Tang (Part I)
Musings on the intersection of music, faith and identity
I recently met up with Jessie Tang at a pub in North London to have a chat. We’d connected on social media a few months ago after discovering we both had an interest in decolonising worship. Jessie is a British-born Chinese who studied Ethnomusicology and is currently Intercultural Ministry Director in Leicester. She has a passion for music and identity, and diversifying churches, worship and songwriting. We had such a long and insightful conversation that I’ll be sharing it in two parts, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
JUSTIN LAU: So, would you like to introduce yourself: Who are you? What’s your background? And what do you do?
JESSIE TANG: I’m Jessie Tang. I’m a BBC, which stands for British-born Chinese. I’m a second-generation immigrant – one of my parents is from Hong Kong, and the other is from Malaysia. I studied Ethnomusicology, so I’m really interested in how music intersects with society, particularly music and identity, as well as musical instruments from around the world. I have musical instruments hoarding tendencies (laugh).
JL: That’s not a bad thing!
JT: I’m currently involved in intercultural ministry, so most of my time is with the Diocese of Leicester in the Church of England where I’m the Intercultural Ministry Director. I’m also part of Intercultural Churches UK, and within that, I specifically lead the Songs2Serve UK network, which helps churches and worship leaders diversify their worship repertoire in order to reflect diverse congregations.
JL: How did you get into music? Did you always have a passion for it?
JT: You know, commonly, Chinese kids, they learn piano and violin –
JL: Yup, at the age of about five or six (laugh).
JT: My older sister started learning piano first, and then at the age of six, I was like, oh mummy, I want to start learning! And then my sister started guitar, so I picked that up too. I also started learning percussion because I wanted to play in orchestras. I really love ensemble playing, being able to play with other people. Then, I was first exposed to church at 14 where I was really struck by the worship time and music, and that’s the thing that stayed with me.
JL: Did music ever tie in with your cultural/ethnic heritage growing up? Or was it just something you did, and you didn’t really think about the overlap?
JT: I didn’t think about it much. When I was in sixth form, I did A-Level Music, and I remember having to share which set work was my favourite. Loads of people chose western classical ones, but I chose one from Latin America.
JL: Fascinating.
JT: I can still remember how it goes (sings tune). People were like, oh, interesting, Jessie. So it struck me, like, oh, why do I think like that? Then when I was looking at unis to do music, I wanted to study Ethnomusicology because I realised there was something there that I wanted that had been missing.
JL: Just really quickly, what’s Ethnomusicology?
JT: Ethnomusicology – is a lot of syllables. If you break down the word, ‘ology’ is ‘study of’. So it’s the study of ‘ethno’ and ‘music’ – people and music. But people sometimes get confused because they think it’s just studying music from around the world.
JL: Yeah, what people call ‘ethnic music’.
JT: Exactly (eye roll). So things like music and religion, music and politics, music and identity, even sound and space.
JL: You studied that in university, and now you’re the Director of Intercultural Ministry.
JT: Intercultural Ministry Director.
JL: Sorry, yes.
JT: They changed it because otherwise the acronym would be ‘dim’ (laugh).
JL: Part of what you do is intercultural worship. Did what you study benefit what you’re doing now?
JT: I think it’s helpful. You don’t need it, it’s not like a stepping stone. I know in the US they have more Ethnomusicology or World Arts studies from a Christian perspective, but mine wasn’t. What helped was the openness of learning about different musical styles and instruments, and different issues in society. It also revealed to me what I’m actually interested in. When I started, I thought the two main things I’d be interested in was East Asian music and Ethnodoxology, which is the study of people and worship.
JL: Right.
JT: One of the reasons I studied Ethnomusicology was to be equipped for the mission field. I had friends who were going overseas and running workshops for people to write Christian songs in their own languages. I thought, oh I’d love to be equipped for that. But when I got to uni, I realised there was a lot of healing that needed to happen with my ethnic identity which I completely didn’t expect. What really drew me in was studying about second-generation identity, like the Korean immigrant church. For the first time I was in an institution where people were studying minority cultures. People were interested in, for example, the shamans in Jeju Island of Korea. We also had a module on East Asian pop and politics.
JL: Pop and politics?!
JT: Like Ai Weiwei and Jay Chou. And I was like, what? Because all of this stuff, I never got to study at school. I felt like I had to hide it because nobody else knows it, and it was part of my culture which I didn’t feel able to bring to my life. Uni became a site of healing for my ethnic identity.
JL: What was your dissertation on?
JT: I did a dissertation on music and identity in British-born Chinese people – seeing what kind of music they consumed and how that impacted how they navigated their identity.
JL: Very personal, I imagine. What was your biggest takeaway?
JT: I really enjoyed interviewing people. For the first time I felt like… I don’t like saying ‘giving voice’, but it was providing a platform for people’s stories which you don’t usually hear about. Friends and friends of friends who are BBCs. That’s one of the reasons why I started my podcast called ACross Culture. [Note: More on that in Part II.] I also noticed generational differences between Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z. For example, Gen Y: they would consume East Asian or Chinese music on an iPod, but when they got to school they switched it off and didn’t show anyone. But when it comes to Gen Z, people are sharing more music. I wrote about the K-Wave, about more people listening to Korean music. There’s just more of an openness in Gen Z for people to be like, oh this is who I am, this is the music that I like.
JL: You definitely see that in wider society, the openness towards K-pop.
JT: For sure.
JL: Right, so now you’re involved in intercultural ministry/worship. Could you please unpack that?
JT: I love that word, unpack.
JL: We do it all the time as nomads! I’ve only recently learnt about intercultural churches, and I find it absolutely brilliant and amazing and beautiful. Because up to this point, I’ve only been at white-majority churches which are beginning to get multi-ethnic, or perhaps even pushing for multiculturality. But I thought that that was kind of the endgame. And then I hear about this next step that goes beyond, that almost transcends multicultural churches…
JT: Yes, yes.
JL: …about intercultural churches and ministry and worship. So, could you please explain what intercultural ministry is?
JT: It’s interesting that you talked about the ‘endgame’. Recently I heard that the most diverse place in the universe is heaven.
JL: I really like that.
JT: And if we think about that, then we think about what is the endgame or the end point. How can we have a foretaste of that on earth as it is in heaven? Often people quote Revelation 7.9, where every tongue, tribe and nation come together before the Lamb and they worship God together as one. Why do we wait for that? Why don’t we have that as a reality now?
JL: Agreed.
JT: But is multiculturalism it? What I would say is multiculturalism is something that we often see in society – we see different groups of people living on the same street or in the same organisation. But very often they don’t interact with each other that much. They might on a surface level, but they’re more just coexisting. But if you’re thinking more intercultural – it is semantics – then it’s more like people are having relationships with one another, deeper ones, interacting with one another.
JL: Interacting.
JT: Yeah, ‘inter’. They’re actually learning from each other’s cultures – a mutual sharing and blessing. To the point where you can worship in a language of your sister and brother, or adopt part of their culture. I think the ideal is that intercultural church is a Third Space.1 People from different cultures come together and bring the good of their culture, and that creates a new culture of the church. And that culture is dynamic, so it always changes as people come, as people go. I heard this quote from Dr Vince Bantu, who is a Fuller Seminary professor. And he wrote the book –
JL/JT: A Multitude of All Peoples.
JT: Jinx (laugh). In that he says that the gospel both embraces and transforms culture. You can’t be colour blind, and you can’t say your culture doesn’t matter. You can’t say that all that matters is that we’re all in the family of God and we should all be one – because that easily lends itself to white normativity. When you say ‘it doesn’t matter about your culture, just come to church and we can do church in a “Kingdom way”’ – sometimes that actually equates to a white western way, and people are blind to that. It says in Isaiah that cultures will be preserved and brought into the New Jerusalem.2 We shouldn’t leave it at the door now, this is something we’re bringing with us into eternity.
JL: I completely agree. It’s a beautiful attempt to manifest the future reality in the present – Kingdom on earth. But in your practical experience, is it simply theoretical? How easy or how difficult is it to actually have intercultural churches, to create that culture of learning from each other? What are the challenges, and what’s been encouraging?
JT: I’m glad you’re asking. Some books on intercultural church ministry are theoretical, and the people who write them aren’t necessarily practitioners. There are definitely difficulties and a lot of resistance, because people want to be comfortable. What I’m encountering are people on the journey of their church developing into intercultural church, but who are really strong on inherited culture. It’s like, well, for 30 years this is the way that we’ve done refreshments, for 30 years we’ve always had these kinds of biscuits – so no, I don’t want to let this other person bring samosas. And unfortunately I’m seeing it in more traditional churches where people are used to liturgy.
JL: Interesting.
JT: Also an unwillingness to let go and to allow other people to step up. We are people who have a lot of biases, and it’s easy to just let them be unconscious and not work on it. But when we’re thinking about intercultural church, we need to have the openness of letting God convict us. And we need to keep reminding ourselves about why this is good, why we want to do it. Even people who are ‘converted’ into intercultural church can fall back – it’s so much easier if I was just friends with the people I want to be friends with, why do I need to force myself to talk to someone who’s different from me just because I can learn about who God is through them?
JL: It requires an openness and a posture of humility. That’s the foundation, isn’t it? And some people are more inclined to that. Like I’m –
JT: Are you humble? (laugh)
JL: I am the most humble person ever (laugh). My inclination is always to be open. I don’t know everything, and every single person you meet will always know something you don’t. I always view that as a learning opportunity, because I want to grow. But I know that that’s my temperament and my personality. Other people don’t necessarily have that same openness.
JT: It’s probably because we, if you don’t mind me saying it, have grown up more in the margins.
JL: That’s true.
JT: We’re used to seeing what the culture is like and assimilating. We’re always thinking, actually I have something to learn because I’m not in the majority.
JL: You’re absolutely right. It’s both nature and nurture, rather than one or the other. What encouraging things have you witnessed in intercultural ministry?
JT: I love seeing the way that people react. As part of my Songs2Serve ministry, we go around to different churches and conferences to lead worship and workshops. When I plan worship sets, which exposes people to this kind of worship for the first time, I always think of ways that we can make it accessible. For example, singing a CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) song with one chorus in another language – though I personally don’t like it that much because I’m also thinking about decolonising worship. Maybe one song predominantly in English with a couple of words in a different language, one song which is stylistically different, one song which comes from another part of the world. I’ve seen people connecting with God, even though they don’t understand the language or they’re not used to the style of worship.
JL: Yeah, yeah.
JT: I’ve also seen people being touched because other people are touched. For example, there’s an increasing number of Iranians in churches, and they’ve never been able to worship God in Farsi outside of Iran or wherever they were. And it’s powerful being able to bring a song which actually causes them to cry.
JL: Wow.
JT: Just the way God speaks to them in that, and then other people seeing that and going, oh wow, my family members are coming alive in worship. It’s really beautiful. I have goosebumps right now even though I share these kinds of stories all the time.
JL: I have chills as well. It jolts you out of your comfort zone, out of the norm, at least in the UK with freedom of worship, freedom of speech. And then you see other people experiencing something so profound for the first time.
JT: It’s beautiful.
JL: It’s the horizontal element in worship.
JT: Yes. And that’s something that people don’t think about enough, especially those who are more individualistic.
JL: Do you think that in the West that vertical element overwhelms the horizontal?
JT: Yeah, for sure. Where you dim the lights and you close your eyes and it’s all like –
JL/JT: You/Me and God.
JT: ‘You’re a good, good Father, it’s who you are, it’s who you are’. But worship is also a collective activity.
JL: Going back to Revelation 7.9 where every tribe, tongue and nation are worshipping together. We’ll all be there with our unique tongues, and we’ll all be worshipping at the same time.
[Stay tuned for Part II.]
Jessie Tang is part of Intercultural Churches UK, leads the Songs2Serve UK network and hosts the ACross Culture podcast (Spotify, Apple). You can follow her on Instagram (@jjjjessie.t) and X (@TangJessie_).
Coined by Homi Bhabha, ‘[t]he Third Space is a transitional space in which hybrid identifications are possible and social transformations can happen. In this in-between space, where different cultures intersect and collide, new identities are formed, negotiated, and are constantly in a state of becoming. The exploration of the Third Space might avoid the politics of polarity and enable new possibilities to emerge’ – Kwok Pui-Lan, The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspectives (New York: Seabury Books, 2023), pp. 116–17.
Revelation 21.22–26 recalls the vision in Isaiah 60.10–11 where the kings of the earth will bring their splendour (Rev. 21.24) – the people bring the wealth, glory and honour of the nations (Isaiah 60.11; Rev. 21.26) – into the New Jerusalem. Isaiah further talks about the ships of Tarshish (Isa. 60.9), which denotes that not just the Israelites, but ‘foreigners’ and their gifts were accepted and incorporated in rebuilding the temple.