When i fell in love with gospel
Wakeelah Cocroft-Aldridge
When I fell in love with Gospel, I remember my mother playing a Shirley Caesar song. It was one of the many I heard growing up as a Muslim. I was sitting in the car one day (the adolescent me, couldn’t have been more than 10 years old), my mother was playing a Shirley Caesar tape. I realized she enjoyed this music about Jesus Christ, although we were not Christians, and we religiously practiced our Muslim faith. I knew the difference. This music was about Jesus Christ, which by then, I had established in my mind, was just another faith. It was something we just did not believe in, stressed to me, through my own Islamic religious experience.
In spite of this understanding, I remember enjoying Shirley Caesar, hearing her voice, listening to her vocal storytelling, and enjoying each story she told. I would always picture the characters she spoke of in her musical narratives. I especially enjoyed her song— No Charge. It made me appreciate the parental sacrifice, particularly my mother's sacrifice more so. Mother battled two ravaging illnesses--- Sarcoidosis, and Epilepsy. She still managed to work harder than anyone I knew---delivering newspapers, creating and developing businesses with her sharp mind for entrepreneurship. She was being as industrious as she could, all while taking care of me and my two sisters, living life as full as she could, despite her disabilities. |
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I remember sitting in the car with my mother, wondering why she played this music called Gospel (music about Jesus, which in my understanding was synonymous) when we were Muslims. I leaned forward and asked. Her response was, that it was just music. She said, it made her feel good or better, but it was just music. I thought about this response, as I sat back and again rested my head against the backseat. It did make me feel better. Yet it seemed to do more for her than the explanation she offered. Mom always seemed more buoyant with this music, singing along with the lyrics. It also somehow made me feel better. I didn’t know it yet, but I accepted it---Gospel was just another genre of music, another instrumental tool, when played, made me feel good or better. I don’t believe I was aware at the time how much this musical genre was affecting my life. I didn't realize it, but I was falling in love with Gospel music.
After that conversation, that love for Gospel lay dormant inside of me for some years. However, it continued to woo me. As I got older, my mother continued to listen to Shirley Caesar. She even attended one of her concerts. I remembered her speaking of it so enthusiastically, long after that night. It buoyed her. I had never seen her so happy. My mother kept listening to the soothing, peaceful tones of Shirley Caesar, and I continued to listen as well.
When my mother, and my family---me included, gave our lives to Christ Jesus, and she experienced His awesome healing power, that dormancy awakened. I began listening to gospel music more attentively. When it became more than music to me, I realized that Gospel was---Jesus. It was His message set over beats, and riffs, and tones, and sounds, and vocal harmonies. It was music that spoke of the love of Jesus Christ for me. It spoke of Jesus' Good News. In essence, Gospel was about Jesus. So, the difference between the music I listened to growing up and Gospel was simply Jesus. |
I begin to discover a whole genre that spoke to me in intimate tones, that wrote me love letters, told me words of sweet somethings, and embraced me with so much love. I could not resist. I would listen to Gospel and He would converse with me about love, family, encouragement, life, people, relationships, and marriage. He was my Friend and became my Greatest Love. As much as Gospel would adapt and change with the times, His message was still the same---I’m in love with you.
God had mastered me with His tenderness and gentleness of Spirit and His love for me. I know with Him, I am going to make it. I can hold on, and a change will come. He doesn't have to do much because He's already done so much for me. He will never change, and He will never back down from His love. How can He? He is Love. I am floored. I am undone.
God had mastered me with His tenderness and gentleness of Spirit and His love for me. I know with Him, I am going to make it. I can hold on, and a change will come. He doesn't have to do much because He's already done so much for me. He will never change, and He will never back down from His love. How can He? He is Love. I am floored. I am undone.
If anything, aggregately speaking, Gospel music tells a story---His story. It’s a story of love, life, and a deep-seated relationship of loving kindness that speaks to, fleshes out, God's love for me. I can't thank Him enough for introducing His plethora of love letters, narrated musically through love songs, all told and sang to me. This story told through many vessels of song, is God's story. His story includes me in everything---His loving kindness, His gentleness, His Grace, His everything.
It is with great privilege and honor, I speak with liberality of His love, because His love is so ... liberal. Let me be as frank as possible, since He is so frank with me through His music, Jesus (as Gospel) and music based on that Gospel---are one in the same. So I call it as it is---The Gospel is Jesus and Jesus is The Gospel. |
So many years have passed, since that day, I sat in that backseat and conversed with my mother about gospel music, and how it made me and her feel good or better. What we found out later, is that Jesus always make you feel so good and be so much better just by His presence alone. His presence was in Shirley Caesar’s vocals when she intimately reverenced Him in her song: No Charge. When Jesus surrounded my mother and I that day, He sealed our fate. He told me then, through His music: I love you.
So, when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and got to experience His love firsthand, He hit me with the revelation:
I fell in love with Gospel, but long before, Gospel had already fallen in love with me.
-Wakeelah Cocroft-Aldridge
So, when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and got to experience His love firsthand, He hit me with the revelation:
I fell in love with Gospel, but long before, Gospel had already fallen in love with me.
-Wakeelah Cocroft-Aldridge
Wakeelah Cocroft-Aldridge is a Freelance Writer residing in Chicago, IL with her husband. Her writing includes academic writing and creative writing such as fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Wakeelah likes to laugh and cry about the sweet somethings of life, and find out about the unique stories of others. She loves comedy, animation, extended metaphors, quiet times, and she is an avid listener of gospel music. Oh … and she likes Peppermint Stick ice cream!
Wakeelah has joined us as a Columnist, forming Purposeful Gospel Profiles. She hopes, as she interviews each Gospel Artist, to portray their purpose for singing gospel music and what it means to those who provide a musical narrative for the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Wakeelah has joined us as a Columnist, forming Purposeful Gospel Profiles. She hopes, as she interviews each Gospel Artist, to portray their purpose for singing gospel music and what it means to those who provide a musical narrative for the Good News of Jesus Christ.