Gospel singer Vuyo Mokoena dies

From an article published in the Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, South Africa.

TBGB says: Mokoena's death is a tragic loss for the South African gospel community. For anyone unfamiliar with the South African gospel scene, Mokoena, Rebecca Malope and Sizwe Zako are the equivalent in prominence and popularity to America's Kirk Franklin, Vickie Winans and Yolanda Adams. Pure Magic albums from the 1990s are superb examples of South African gospel: exquisite harmonies joyfully sung and hypnotic repetition that builds in intensity to boiling pitch. Imagine the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo with a Pentecostal beat.

23 May 2008 01:29

Award-winning gospel star Vuyo Mokoena has died, his record company, Big Fish Music, confirmed on Friday.

According to Big Fish Music, Mokoena died at 5.30am on Friday.

Mokoena was admitted to hospital after experiencing blinding headaches. Tests subsequently revealed that he had developed a brain tumour.

Before making an impact in the late 1990s, Mokoena was known as gospel diva Rebecca Malope's associate until he decided to embark on a solo career.

He began his music career with amateur Afro-pop group Melodi in Springs on the East Rand. He then became a professional musician, joining popular group Pure Magic in the 1990s.

Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) national chairperson Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi expressed sadness at the death of Mokoena.

"Today I am truly sad. Vuyo Mokoena was like a brother to me. He was a fantastic person. He was a great entertainer. He was an unashamed member and friend of the IFP. He will be truly missed."

She said Mokoena's family could be proud in the knowledge that he had lived out his calling.

"His Christian faith was the foundation of all he did. He was a great inspiration to all of us in the IFP." -- Sapa

Chapter One - Dr. Charles G. Hayes & the Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer Choir (review)

Chapter One
Dr. Charles G. Hayes & the Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer Choir
MCG Records 2008
www.mcgrecords.com

New chapter, new label, same electrifying gospel chorus.

On their first project for gospel label legend James Bullard and MCG Records, the Mighty Warriors of Cosmopolitan demonstrate why they are one of today’s most outstanding traditional gospel choirs.

The project opens with “He’s Keeping Me,” a musical testimony from Dr. Hayes who sings with gratitude for being in full physical health “and in my right mind.” Equally impressive is Hayes’ distinctive and authoritative voice, which has every bit as much vitality as on his first record, released for Checker in the mid-1960s, when the church was called the Universal Kingdom of Christ. Hayes possesses one of the truly memorable voices in the African American church.

Hayes returns to the theme of thanksgiving for good health on “I’ll Never Forget.” He explains how he was sick in 2000 but came out all right, thanks to God. It’s clear that Hayes, the fresh new kid on the block in the late 1950s and now part of Chicago’s African American church cognoscenti, is witnessing the passing of the generation before him and considering his own humanity.

Chapter One offers a number of Warriors trademark choral workouts, including “Power” and “Redeemed,” the latter to which we’ll return in a moment. “Real Soon” has a Baptist line hymn flavor with contemporary overtones, led by a gospel-blues vocal, courtesy of the talented Yolanda Johnson.

Although many of the compositions are from the pens of Cosmopolitan music department members Tony Dyson and Tanabe Gatlin, the choir takes on Evangelist Rosie Wallace’s classic “Take It to the Lord in Prayer” and J.C. White's "You Can Make It." Longtime director Allen Cathey has a well-disciplined group – anyone who knows Dr. Hayes knows it would be no other way – and despite its wellspring of large and powerful voices, the choir blends well as an ensemble.

Three songs – “I Can’t Thank You Enough (Joy and Gladness),” “Hold Me Jesus,” and Darius Brooks’ “Say It” – are compositions with a contemporary flair that will find favor with younger listeners even though they don't stray far from the traditional gospel foundation.

Of course, no Cosmopolitan project would be complete without one Diane Williams workout, which is to a Warriors album like the toy prize is to a Cracker Jack box: you would enjoy the container’s contents but be disappointed if the prize wasn’t inside. On Chapter One, the “prize” is Williams’ thrilling performance on “Redeemed.” While the track ends just as Williams is in full evangelist mode, an equally long reprise at the end of the CD continues where the track left off, providing an additional four-plus minutes of Williams’ always compelling singing-preaching.

Recently I had the chance to see Williams and the Warriors perform “Redeemed” live. As Williams, in full spirit, was being escorted from the stage by fellow choir members, she was also being encouraged by the audience to return. She did return, and continued to vamp as the crowd gathered around her, clapping and shouting. The scene of Williams singing in the midst of a crowded ring of enthusiasts gave one the experience of being at an old time Pentecostal service or – further back – at a West African religious ceremony.

Needless to say, if all churches had a choir as powerful and inspiring as Cosmopolitan’s, there would be an upsurge of church membership.

Four of Four Stars

The Light Gospel Legacy Series: The Mighty Clouds of Joy (review)

Light Gospel Legacy Series:
The Mighty Clouds of Joy
Light Records 2008
www.lightrecords.com

Released in February, prior to the passing of longtime Clouds member Elmo Franklin, this retrospective – part of the Light Gospel Legacy Series – showcases latter day recordings of the Mighty Clouds of Joy, specifically their projects for Koch (Power, 1995) and Intersound (Live in Charleston, 1996).

Although the retrospective does not include the Peacock hits that established the quartet as a force of reckoning in the early 1960s, it thankfully bypasses the Clouds’ “Mighty High” gospel crossover days of the 1970s and early 1980s. By the 1990s, as the Gospel Legacy project demonstrates, the Clouds were returning (like many musicians after the disco era) to its trademark traditional sound, albeit with fresh, contemporary instrumentation, and the powerful singing of founder Willie Joe Ligon. Ligon is a preaching singer: when he sings it, you know he means it.

The retrospective offers plenty of quartet “drive” songs, some recorded live and some done in the studio, including “Power of the Holy Ghost,” “Meeting Tonight,” and “I Want to Thank You.” “Steal Away” is a superb reading of the spiritual with “Troubled in Mind” interpolated in the lyrics and mood. “Living Testimony” pairs the Clouds with Doug and Melvin Williams of the Williams Brothers for a fine quartet outing. “Nearer My God to Thee” demonstrates the Clouds’ capacity for delivering on slow, moving hymns and showcases Ligon’s convincing preacher style.

Light Records’ Mighty Clouds of Joy retrospective is a chance for some to be reintroduced to Clouds recordings out of rotation for a while, and others to become familiar with tracks that may have eluded them the first time around.

Three of Four Stars

Margaret "Babe" Allison & the Angelics: Touch Me Again (review)

Margaret “Babe” Allison & the Angelics
Touch Me Again
Malaco Records 2008
www.malaco.com

For 86 years old, Margaret Allison is remarkable. She’s still singing, and sounding pretty good, too. She still possesses much of that piercing, plaintive voice that was the force behind the Angelic Gospel Singers, the sweethearts of the gospel circuit. But the fact that Allison is still vibrant in the 21st century is not surprising. God has smiled on her and on the Angelic Gospel Singers since 1949, when the group’s very first record, “Touch Me Lord Jesus,” not only became an instant gospel hit, but a gospel classic.

The title of Allison and the Angelics’ latest project, Touch Me Again, seems a play on the title of that first hit single. The CD is packed with singable traditional songs ("Pass Me Not," for example), and new compositions by Darrell Luster that sound traditional, such as “Thank You for My Storms,” on which Allison asserts that “storms have made me what I am today.”

“When the Gates Swing Wide,” credited to Luster and Allison, puts a Dorsey bounce behind lyrics that portray heaven as a place where the saved will have “fifty miles of elbow room.” “God Has a Use for Me” pairs Allison with Luster on a song that is part tongue-in-cheek, part testimony as the legendary singer admits that while she “can’t do things like I used to do,” God still has a use for her. Touch Me Again is a tangible example.

Allison and the Angelics swing the quicker tempo numbers like “God Said It,” “Homecoming,” and “Work On Me” with such ease and familiarity that you’d swear you’d heard the songs years ago.

I learned that Ms. Allison was recently in the hospital but is doing okay, still on “the battlefield,” as the final song on the project attests. God bless Margaret Allison!

Three of Four Stars

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TBGB Pick of the Week: May 19, 2008

“Oh How Precious”
Kathy Taylor
From the CD The Worship Experience
Katco Music Group 2008
www.kathytaylorlive.com

Houston's own Kathy Taylor is already a familiar name to those who have followed her various projects with Favor, the group she founded, with the most recent being Taylormade on Al “The Bishop” Hobbs’ Aleho International label. She has been a featured soloist on GMWA recordings, shared the stage with Maya Angelou, and sang for Queen Elizabeth during Her Excellency's visit to Houston. Now how many people can claim that!

Taylor latest single, “Oh How Precious,” is a traditional piece reminiscent of the Pentecostal treatment of the gospel classic, “Jesus.” Taylor sings with an evangelist's fervor, a touch of blues in her voice. The backing choir (could it be Favor?) is at once powerful and harmonically steady. By the middle of the recording, a slowly pulsing gospel beat dares listeners to try and stay seated. And when the vamp comes, Taylor navigates it with the stamina and conviction of Dorothy Love Coates.

The album has an 11 minute extended version of the single, which must be quite something.

Light’s Gospel Legacy Series: The Winans & Vickie Winans

Among the first Gospel Legacy CDs Light Records released this year were tributes to the Winans, the Detroit family that was to the Eighties what Andrae Crouch and the Hawkins Family were to the Seventies. The Winans, like Crouch and Hawkins, employed the medium of contemporary music to express a spiritual message. Although disparaged at the time by some traditionalists, what these artists did was very much in keeping with gospel’s time-honored tradition of taking the mountain to Mohammed, instead of the other way around.


The Winans

The Winans brothers – Marvin, Carvin, Michael and Ronald – encapsulated lyrics of encouragement and inspiration with the smooth jazz-soul treatment that propelled artists such as the Commodores, Earth Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang and Peabo Bryson to fame.

The brothers’ first album as the Testimonial Singers was introspective and musically complex, sounding nothing like the gospel music of the day. But when the group signed with Light Records in 1981, they commercialized their sound and hit the gospel charts with songs such as the quintessential call-and-response “The Question Is,” “Bring Back the Days of Yea and Nay,” and “Restoration.” Another hit, “Long Time Coming (Holdin’ On),” was a conscious or subconscious follow-up to Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come.” “For We May Never Know” was a pleasant surprise for me, as I had never heard this lovely ballad before, and was smitten with it.

Obviously the twelve songs on this CD are culled from the group’s Light Records days, with two from 1981’s Introducing the Winans, four from Long Time Comin’ (1983) and the remaining six from the Winans’ third and most popular Light LP, Tomorrow (1984), though ironically the title track and major hit is missing from the latter. Overall, however, Light offers up what amounts to an aural charting of the Winans’ rise to superstardom, which they achieved by juxtaposing lyrics about simpler times with musically complex arrangements, harmonies and instrumentation that pointed clearly toward the future.

Three of Four Stars


Vickie Winans
If the Winans men are a string section, Vickie is a one-woman brass section, capable of wrecking a church – steeple, cross, lightning rods and all – with her concrete-crushing voice. And that’s a good thing.

The Gospel Legacy CD devoted to her artistry is the finest of the lot, though similar to the 2005 Greatest Hits set, with Vickie’s version of the late Dottie Rambo’s “We Shall Behold Him” alone worth the price, right up to its heart-racing high note. A number of tracks on the CD come from Vickie’s two Live in Detroit CDs (1997 and 1999), including Darius Brooks’ hit for the Tommies, “Safe in His Arms,” which Vickie renders almost as marvelously as did the Tommies. Another live track is her Aretha-like gospel workout of hometown hero Bill Moss’ “Already Been to the Water.” Here, Vickie delivers lyrics with machine-gun force and with an authentic gospel rasp missing from her earlier material.

“Because He Lives” and “Oh What Love” are also live and vintage Vickie. They demonstrate her ability to pack ounces of charisma into every single line. Of course, the set would not be complete without her concert version of the late Calvin White’s “Long As I Got King Jesus,” introduced by White’s Gospel Wonders but popularized by James Cleveland.

The final two tracks are spoken word snippets, though the CD would have been even better if these tracks had been replaced with another Vickie special, such as “Victory” or “No Cross, No Crown.”

The liner notes – taken from Bill Carpenter’s Uncloudy Days – provide a dramatic summary of the ups and downs of the singer’s life. But like all good gospel songs, Vickie’s life and career are on the upswing. She’s looking and sounding good, and gospel music is all the better for it.

Three and a Half of Four Stars

Regina Belle - Love Forever Shines: The Backstory

Special thanks to Jason Rubley (Rubes Marketing), Ruben Rodriguez and Pendulum Records for this well-written press release on Regina Belle's Love Forever Shines, released this past Tuesday (May 13).

It’s not without some measure of fear and trepidation that gospel music puts checks and balances on reverse crossover artists. After all, for every general-market hopeful with pure, Christ-honoring motives, there’s always a controversial artist—good-intentioned, but ultimately far from the integrity, character, and value system required to represent Jesus to the church and to the world.

Four-time GRAMMY®-winning R&B/Pop songstress Regina Belle is a different story. Even as the New Jersey native rode high in the urban charts throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s with such urban classics as “Baby Come to Me,” “Make It Like It Was” and “What Goes Around,” faith, churchgoing, and gospel music remained at the very core of her life in the spotlight. Today, Belle is a pastor’s wife and minister of music at New Shield of Faith Ministries in Atlanta, where her husband, John S. Battle III, is senior pastor.

“I still went to church,” says Belle, whose LOVE FOREVER SHINES, her lifetime-in-the-making gospel debut, is set to make a splash via Ruben Rodriguez’ Pendulum Records with Walker Davis Entertainment and distributed by Fontana. “I carried it with me. I wasn’t necessarily in a church because I traveled from city to city. But God is not something that you can box in a building. You have to take him with you. Even though I didn’t have the understanding that I have now, He was still covering me even at that stage of the game.”

LOVE FOREVER SHINES is a triumphant homage to God’s faithfulness through it all, a testament to how His goodness and mercy followed the vocalist all the days of her life, from the cradle all the way through her decorated music career. Most importantly, the album is a tribute to the singer’s gospel music heritage—14 songs that speak to the bedrock of Belle’s faith, never more evident in the disc’s stunning centerpiece, the stirring traditional first single, “God Is Good.”

A precocious singer since a young age, Belle launched her music career with a bang when, as an 8-year-old, she performed her first church solo—a take-no-prisoners rendition of the gospel standard “Don’t Drive Your Mama Away,” originally by none other than Shirley Caesar, one of Belle’s early influences. Such was Belle’s talent that, by age 12, the budding songbird had her first professional gig, and, come high school, she received a full scholarship to attend the prestigious Manhattan School of Music.

Her stint at the school was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Belle’s future endeavors. There, she was mentored by the tireless Inga Wolfe, a diligent voice teacher who believed in Belle’s unpolished gift so much that she was moved to tutor her in private. Unlike her musically inclined schoolmates, Belle actually had to work hard to bring out the best in her. “When I came into the school, I never really thought I was going to make it,” Belle says.

While she cherishes the lessons learned there, something was amiss: the school’s rigid music-only curriculum left her wanting something more, namely, a better grasp on her identity as a singer. “While that was a great experience, it was something that I really didn’t want for four years of college,” Belle says. “I wanted to have a broader sense of things. I wanted to get a broader idea of who I was…a better understanding of how the world works.”

That desire to expand her horizons drove Belle to Rutgers University, where she majored in history and accounting, two careers she complemented with music courses at what is now the state college’s famed Mason Gross School of the Arts. Once there, she was mentored by professors William Fielder and Kenny Barron, two greats who built on Belle’s raw talent and previous schooling and provided the tools that prepared her for the national stage.

Only 12 credits shy of graduation, Belle got the break of her lifetime when she received a call to audition for the Manhattans, an R&B group that soon asked her to record a duet with them and be their opening act. “At that moment, it was like, goodbye school,” says Belle with a laugh. “What I wanted to do was handed to me on a platter. All I had to do was walk through that door. I had to grow up real quick. That was my real training. The life work started to happen.”

It wasn’t long until Belle scored for herself a solo deal with Columbia Records, a successful partnership that yielded the albums ALL BY MYSELF, STAY WITH ME, PASSION and REACHING BACK. STAY WITH ME, in particular, catapulted Belle to the No. 1 slot of Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums tally, a feat driven in part by two chart-topping singles, “Baby Come to Me” and “Make It Like It Was”—the latter a soulful ballad originally passed on by the Winans.

The whirlwind of activity, accolades, and media attention eventually got the best of the singer, to the point that her gospel foundation was put on the backburner—no more testifying like Pastor Caesar anymore.

“I don’t think it was time for gospel music,” Belle explains. “I think that when God had me in a place to do gospel, that my life was going to be very different. I don’t believe that the Lord just wanted for me to do a gospel album. He wanted it to be a testimony as to where I am in my life. He wanted to put me in a place where I could share things, intimate things with my audience, to help them get through.”

“I know 10 years ago I wasn’t ready for gospel. I had way too much pride for that. Maybe in confidence I would share with someone that I tripped up on some different things, but I wasn’t going to tell that to anybody in public. But He put me in a place now where I’m not bound by that. I’m not bound by the things that I used to do because I don’t do them anymore.”

In a chapter that Belle isn’t afraid to recount, the singer candidly tells of the time when, behind the scenes, she was dealing with demons of her own—brought about by her pride, her long days on the road, the limelight, and the lack of accountability. “I wasn’t an alcoholic, but I drank socially,” Belle says. “It came to a point when I really started having a little bit too much to drink.”

Soon enough, hitting the bottle began to take a toll on other areas of Belle’s life, eventually leading her to believe that it was she—not God—who was at the helm of her life. “I had a bad attitude—wanting things when I wanted them, not having a good attitude about life in general,” Belle says. “I had money, and my money made me who I was.”

Slowly but surely, God began smoothing Belle’s rough edges, showing her that His power could be made perfect in even her darkest weakness—in her case, her ongoing bout with pride and self-sufficiency. “The Lord had to deal with me in that aspect because He allowed me to know that I needed a little bit more humility in my life, that everyday that I get to be on this planet is because of Him, not me,” she says.

As soon as that realization hit her, brought about by the realization that she needed to model Christ for her own children, Belle says that, little by little, “the whole drinking issue, even socially, began to dwindle to nothing. It was a major turning in my life. I began to see differently. It was a serious awakening.”

She continues: “That’s when I really started to sit down and study the Word. All the sermons that I heard before were really just sermons that I heard—I had never really received the Word. I began to see not only who Christ was, but I also got a better understanding of who I was.”

With her identity in Christ now firmly in place, Belle set out to record LOVE FOREVER SHINES, a disc that showcases her soulful, elegant alto set to the two styles that make up her musical persona: contemporary R&B and gospel music. Leave it to Belle to perform an early ‘90s quiet-storm number like the title track, only to switch gears and deliver a fiery, Sunday morning delight like the hand-clapper “Can’t Nobody.”

In the vein of great gospel storytellers, Belle recounts the story of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment in the heartfelt “Who Touched Me,” a song that slowly builds from a gently caressed keyboard to an impassioned cry of heart. That song is the perfect segue for one of LOVE FOREVER SHINES’s early climaxes, the sprawling, take-it-to-the-old-school “God Is Good,” a song that is both an acknowledgement of God’s never-ending goodness and a testament to the influence Belle’s grandfather had on the singer growing up.

Ultimately, Regina Belle wants to communicate both sides of the spectrum: that life is not just about the mountaintop experiences, but that it’s also about the valley of the shadow of death, that dark place of despair where, above all, love forever shines.

“There’s nothing on this side of this earth you can commit that you can’t be saved from,” Belle says. “There isn’t anything Jesus didn’t die for. That’s one of the devil’s greatest tricks—to make you feel that God won’t own you. But that’s a lie. God will own you. No matter what we do, he still owns us. If He did it for me, He’ll do it for you.”