I recently had the joy of interviewing Yancy, and it was a great blessing to me. It was a morning chat over the phone about her new Christian Spanish-translated album, and her awesome zeal for spreading God’s Word gave me that much needed boost to start my day:

What made you decide to record an album in Spanish?

I make music for kids and for families in general. From time to time I have had people ask for Spanish stuff. I have a lot of churches that use my music in their children’s programming. Last fall I was at a conference and a guy came up to me that was from Columbia, and he was explaining to me what the need was and how there wasn’t really a lot of great resources that are done with kids music in Spanish. It was just one of those conversations where, in it, I was like, “Well, I will give it some more thought.” And as the days and weeks passed after that I just kind of kept thinking about it. So I started to research who I knew was a part of that community that I could maybe partner with and work with on getting songs translated. So I went in and took some of my existing songs and translated them and recorded the vocals all in Spanish and made the videos as well: they are little cartoon music videos and have the lyric line on it for sing along. I am just excited to just help out and hopefully help fill a need that is out there.

Was it difficult to translate songs from one language to another?

It can be. I knew enough from being a part of a few things in the past that obviously not everything can and will translate exactly the same. Most all of the songs that I wanted to translate ended up working. It’s not the same songs and the same thought verbatim, but the phrase gets put together in a different language and is translated the best way possible. It definitely has been hard work but someone else that wasn’t me had to put it all together. [laughs]

Can you tell us more about your special guest performers on this album?

Nic Gonzales from Salvador and Jaci Velasquez: they helped me and actually produced the Spanish vocals. Nic sang several lead vocals on the album, Jaci sang background on a lot of it, and Chris Rodriguez — a phenomenal studio musician and vocalist right here in Nashville — sang background vocals as well. it was really great to have people of their talent and caliber to help me make this music that I hope will be real special for some kids and families out there.

Did you make this album with intentions to inspire locally and globally?

I am excited, you know, obviously there are a lot of Americans that go on mission trips all year long and missionaries that are in some of these countries; automatically I know that this music will be helpful to them. On the mission field side of things even domestically there is a lot of people that are right here in our neighborhoods that are Spanish speaking churches or Spanish speaking services that will also be able to benefit right here at home.

Is there a DVD that also goes along with this album?

These songs are based on my praise party album that I have made before in English, so the videos on the DVD are kind of like a little animated cartoon music video for the songs. And there is a lyric line that goes across the bottom with the soundtrack versions of the video for people who want to lead these songs live at their churches or for outreach events or whatever; or if you just have a child in your family that loves to perform then the soundtracks are there for those performances as well.

Tell us about your downloadable app?

I have an app that is ready for Little Praise Party. The app is totally free and each month five of the music videos play within the app, and we switch out the playlist once a month, and it is a good little tool for parents that have a smart phone or some sort of smart device on the go in different places when you are out and about — not just to let your kids be entertained but to sing songs that bring praise to God and hopefully draw them closer to Christ. We are incorporating the Spanish songs in with the English versions, so hopefully kids will be able to learn the songs both ways if they choose to.

Will you be performing these songs live?

[laughs] You know, that part of the story is yet to be written. I don’t have a big firm plan on performing the songs live in Spanish right now. It’s kind of one of those things like where I felt that this is the step that God wanted me to take and I needed to take. I am completely open to where the door opens and where God leads me and where He wants me to go with it. So never say never. [laughs] I am sure some opportunities will present themselves to do these songs live. There are already talks of me going on mission trips this fall and go to a Spanish speaking country and perform this music. We will see…