That's why whenever we saw Ali in Kinshasa we started screaming, "Aaali, Boma ye!" And, when Ali inquired the meaning of what we were chanting, well, he took it up and, as the saying goes, the rest is history... (smile... Ali, though, couldn't pronounce it right, so he would chant something like "Aali, Boom Ye" instead of "Bo-ma Ye").
The team is in good spirits, singing and chanting well-known songs.
Colonel Qaddafi showed a blithe, perhaps contemptuous, indifference to the appeals he received from Mr. Brown and President Obama not to make a spectacle of Mr. Megrahi's return, staging a carefully orchestrated welcome ceremony at the Tripoli airport on Thursday with hundreds of chanting well-wishers.
His best guess about how those additions should sound can be startling: he draws on the modal turns of Syriac and Byzantine chant, as well as Jewish and Islamic styles, to give this early Christian setting a Middle Eastern accent.
His intensely focused "Beatus Vir" (1979) and "Totus Tuus" (1987), both dedicated to Pope John Paul II, draw on the simplicity of traditional chant as well as richly harmonized, intensely focused choral writing and, in the case of "Beatus Vir," monumental orchestral scoring.
Included are sections of the Mass (the Kyrie, Agnus Dei and Sanctus) in Croatian, using Glagolitic chant, as well as Latin sacred texts, among them a striking Salve Regina setting, offered to soften Tondal's opposition to returning to the corporeal world after having seen the sublime.
Recognizable by both its vocal hooks and its classical section, which is featured in the middle of the song, "Let's All Chant" was well received by critics, who have praised its musical arrangement and its catchiness.
At least two Reddit users have made similar claims online, and an Oklahoma student who attended an SAE event two years ago told NBC News she had heard the chant as well.
American Christianity, whether accompanied by a boogying rhythm or Gregorian chant, may well be another triumph for this nation's true faith: the free market of choice and competition.
And they can chant, as well, in a kind of slow motion, as they check the times along the line.
