Adeola Peters is an intriguing vocalist in various ways. Music seems to come naturally to her, and this shows in the way she communicates her ideas in her music. In ‘Hymns and Psalms’, which is about a 15-minute medley of a dozen or more songs stitched together, Adeola basically takes known Christian hymns and brings them into an immersive journey into her art.

One thing that is obvious right off the bat is Adeola’s inclination for indigenous sound. Owambe, Fuji, and tungba are all over the record. Talking drum, horns, choir, strong percussion. These are the kind of instruments that remind you of Adeola’s Yoruban take on what are otherwise Christian hymns and some very old English hymns.

And this is where the record gets exciting.

A lot of the songs here are hymns you would expect to hear in slow piano chords in church. In ‘Hymns and Psalms’, however, Adeola turns them into warm and bubbly tunes that have a very heavy and rich Fuji influence. “Oh Lord my God, when I am in awesome wonder” suddenly finds itself in the same world as “Ejeka finu didun, yin Oluwa oloore.” “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul” comes in without stopping the groove. The code-switching helps. It reminds you of Adeola’s Yoruban interpretation of the hymns while keeping the medley feeling like one act of worship rather than Adeola just switching between hymns.

The transitions are interesting, too. She often uses those intentional pauses in between sections. At some points, the percussion almost overtakes the melody and leads the medley into the next song. The choir comes in hard on the Yoruba refrains, and Adeola takes over once again. So even though the whole medley is 15 minutes, it rarely feels like Adeola has just joined a dozen songs together.

In vocal delivery, Adeola also accomplishes a lot. Her delivery has those crescendos, fast runs, and sometimes even a little bit of rasping where she rushes the line but opens up after that. Her sonority is robust enough to keep above the instruments, which is essential because there is a lot going on underneath her. There is a backing choir providing her with harmonies that either come as unison or fuller responses, making the performance larger.

The middle section is one of the most interesting parts. In the medley, as it reaches “No power of hell / No scheme of man” and later “I am thine, O Lord,” there is this soulful tungba movement underneath it. And this may be one of the biggest shocks in the entire record: listening to the songs that lived for years in a certain sound environment suddenly donning a completely different body.

But even as an experiment, ‘Hymns and Psalms’ is not just interesting. It works because Adeola understands that praise music can also be dance music. This understanding is evident in the way the drums are played, in the choirs, in those little lyric emphases, and even in those moments where the instruments get the chance to talk.

By the time ‘Hymns and Psalms’ hits the closing stretch with “Apata Ayeraye / Se ibi isadi mi,” the medley already feels like it has moved through several rooms without even leaving the same house. This is probably the greatest success of the whole medley. There is an intense, mood-stabilizing energy around the record that never loses that devotional tone.

‘Hymns and Psalms’ is warm, groovy, indigenous, and lively. Adeola takes something that was supposed to be very familiar to the listeners and bends it to make it carry her own musical identity. There are points when the density of the instrumentation seems a bit much, but even this feels coherent with the communal aspect she is trying to achieve.

Adeola is definitely an outlier as a vocalist and arranger of faith music.

Adeola Peters, born Adeola Esther Olarinde, is a Nigerian-born vocalist, choir director, and cultural artist. Throughout a 15-year career, she used heavily Yoruba heritage and oral tradition. She directs Tehilah Voices, mentors young artists in the African Hit Talent Show and develops The Locals, an initiative meant to preserve and teach eulogy traditions in Yoruba and other West African dialects in the diaspora.