Anders Nyberg
1955 - Present
Biography
Anders Nyberg is a Swedish-South African choral conductor, composer, arranger, editor, lyricist, and cultural worker born in Malung, Sweden, in 1955. He studied choral conducting at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm with Eric Ericson and pursued composition studies with Bengt Hallberg. Alongside that formal training, Nyberg drew strongly on folk traditions from his home region of Dalarna and later on musical relationships formed in South Africa.
As musical director of the Swedish group Fjedur, Nyberg traveled to South Africa in 1978 at the invitation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa. He later returned for a year of choral work in Gugulethu, Cape Town, and traveled widely recording sacred, traditional, choral, and political music. The Nordic Africa Institute preserves a collection of about 125 hours of field material associated with his work from 1978 to 1986, documenting the close relationship he observed between communal singing, church life, anti-apartheid resistance, and solidarity.
Nyberg edited and arranged the collection Freedom Is Coming: Songs of Protest and Praise from South Africa, first published in Sweden by Utryck and the Church of Sweden Mission and issued internationally through Walton Music in 1984. The collection helped songs such as Siyahamba, Thuma Mina, and other South African praise and freedom songs enter European and North American worship. In hymnals, his role with Thuma Mina is variously described as adapter, collector-editor, or arranger; these terms should be distinguished from authorship of the underlying anonymous South African song.
His later work has included hundreds of choral compositions and arrangements, international workshops, world-music education, and film writing. His career is notable for sustained cross-cultural choral work and for helping global congregations encounter South African song while preserving acknowledgment of its communal origin.
As musical director of the Swedish group Fjedur, Nyberg traveled to South Africa in 1978 at the invitation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa. He later returned for a year of choral work in Gugulethu, Cape Town, and traveled widely recording sacred, traditional, choral, and political music. The Nordic Africa Institute preserves a collection of about 125 hours of field material associated with his work from 1978 to 1986, documenting the close relationship he observed between communal singing, church life, anti-apartheid resistance, and solidarity.
Nyberg edited and arranged the collection Freedom Is Coming: Songs of Protest and Praise from South Africa, first published in Sweden by Utryck and the Church of Sweden Mission and issued internationally through Walton Music in 1984. The collection helped songs such as Siyahamba, Thuma Mina, and other South African praise and freedom songs enter European and North American worship. In hymnals, his role with Thuma Mina is variously described as adapter, collector-editor, or arranger; these terms should be distinguished from authorship of the underlying anonymous South African song.
His later work has included hundreds of choral compositions and arrangements, international workshops, world-music education, and film writing. His career is notable for sustained cross-cultural choral work and for helping global congregations encounter South African song while preserving acknowledgment of its communal origin.
Hymns by Anders Nyberg
Send Me, Lord
Role: Lyricist