Currently, one of the trendiest secular artistes today was once a gifted gospel singer who flew under the radar for years and was hardly known apart from by the people he fellowshipped with.
When push came to shove and the need to put food on his table overtook everything else, the next I saw was him exploding onto the big secular stages and switching genres completely. In fact, one would hardly believe he has ever done gospel!
Why don’t Christians want to support gospel music? Why can’t we differentiate between a praise and worship ministry and a gospel music career?
The latter requires studio time, video shoots, big wardrobes and management teams among other things, to flourish. But I hear churches that plan to host these artistes get offended when the artiste states a price beyond the token transport refund (if anything) many organisers are willing to part with.
This has compromised the quality of gospel music being released and increased the number of artistes abandoning the genre to go share a more lucrative stage with secular artistes such as Gravity Omutujju – who rides on meaningless and highly offensive lyrics to get ahead.
Lately, I have been listening to music by the likes of Rowenah Birungi (Nga Ndi Naawe, What He Said), Carol Komeza (Forever), Rachel Namubiru (Teri Akwenkana), Jamie Ategeka (Onjagadde Mu Lwatu), Gabi Ntaate (Cheza For Yesu), Nicole Muwanguzi (Nze Naawe) and more, and these people are investing in a good, and in some cases unique sound for the glory of God.
Support them, if you don’t want to see them a few years down the road throwing in the towel. It is not a laughing matter that older generation gospel stars such as Judith Babirye, Julie Mutesasira, Jackie Ssenyonjo and Seku Martin among others abandoned ship and relocated to Canada.
Apart from Babirye, who has been releasing new (but not trending) gospel music, the rest seem to be hustling in typical kyeyo fashion. Christians, support your own. We also need quality music that not only glorifies God, but also makes the artistes behind the music prosperous.
It should no longer be that for one to prosper musically, one has to dump the gospel genre or compromise in some ways.
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