Peter Bacon (tenor) investigates our repertoire. This month: Be Like Him (Kwabona Kala)

While last month’s Story Of A Song – Steal Away – was quite easy to research, Kwabona Kala, as we know it, or Be Like Him, as it is more frequently called, is a little trickier. It’s easy to find the lyrics, and there are countless online versions, but the song’s background or origins? That’s much harder.

The most famous and, it seems, the original version of Be Like Him is by the American gospel star Kirk Franklin. It appeared on his 2000 album, Kirk Franklin Presents 1NC – that’s an abbreviation for One Nation Crew, a multi-cultural choir with whom he toured around America and made just the one album.

I had assumed that Franklin had based Be Like Him on a pre-existing traditional African gospel song, but on the various lyrics websites out there the composer credits are always: Kirk Franklin, Emanuel Lambert. They have certainly very cleverly given the melody and 1NC’s performance a very African feel.

Those same sites tell me the names of the nine singers in 1NC, that Franklin himself played piano, other keyboards and programmed the song, and that the arrangement was by Jeremy Lubbock.

Trivia corner: Emanuel Lambert goes by the performing name of Da’ Truth; Jeremy Lubbock is a hugely experienced arranger who has also worked with Barbra Streisand, Joni Mitchell and Whitney Houston.

There is a host of videos on the internet of different choirs performing what has clearly become a favourite around the world, but the one I always go back to, partly for its energy but also for the show-stopping ending, is this one by the New Vision Mass Choir, a Haitian-American gospel group seen here performing in a Baptist Church in Stamford, Connecticut. I love how at one point the choir changes the volume by turning away from the congregation – there’s a trick Themba might like to explore with us one day.