Apart from The Gaithers and anything black gospel, our all-round most popular selling music was an Irish lady called Marilla Ness, Celtic singer Máire Brennan, composer of choral music, John Rutter, anything by Hillsongs, and CD compilations from yearly events such as Soul Survivor, New Wine, Spring Harvest, The Mandate and Grapevine.
I liked Casting Crowns and Phillips, Craig & Dean. Casper liked Michelle Tumes. In fact, apart from Máire Brennan, she was the only singer he did like and was therefore very relieved when I was asked to take over from him as the multimedia specialist.
In my teenage days, I had been Amy Grant’s greatest fan and I had also loved Clay Crosse and Sandi Patti. I then moved onto Point of Grace, Gary Chapman and Cindy Morgan.
Being black, however, there was pressure on me to stereotypically like the music of everybody negro.
There was no confusion about what expectations our customers had. I could just about tolerate Christian reggae and Hip-hop, but this was not enough for our ethnic possé. I was expected to be heavily into the Black Gospel genre, which I did not like at all.
I hated the sound of their keyboards resting on one note in vibrato and I could not bear the way Afro Caribbean singers tended to strain out a syllable so that every short word would take fifteen seconds to sing.
To date, I have seen the error of my ways and there are a few gospel singers who I appreciate, especially, Ce Ce Winans. I also love Nigerian worshippers such as David G, Jimmy D Psalmist, Joe Praize, Mercy Chinwo, Nathaniel Bassey, Chris Shalom and Minister. Also, who doesn’t love Hezekiah Walker’s, “Every Praise”?
But back then, I disliked everything that had that native sound and I had nothing like it in my music collection.
I would complain whenever Integrity Music, Authentic Media or Kingsway categorised certain singers as ‘Black Gospel’, because of their ethnicity, rather than their musical style. I loved Ron Kenoly and Nicole Mullen. Neither of them sang ‘black’ yet in the catalogues, there they were sitting in the same section as Kirk, BeBe, Israel, Donnie, Fred, Deitrick, Marvin, Smokie, Kurt, Dottie, Byron, Darwin, and Andrae and The LCGC.
When their new titles arrived, I would place Nicole under the section entitled “Female Singers” and Ron under “Hosanna Music”.
At the end of the day, inevitably, I would find that Nicky and Ronnie and been surreptitiously re-homed somewhere between Alvin and Yolanda.
I didn’t feel it was right to reveal my true feelings. It made sense to focus on the two most popular genres while at the same time, not to let on that I wasn’t keen on either of them. I was warming to The Gaithers after noticing how dedicated they were to magnifying the Lord and how well their videos were put together, but I didn’t appreciate them half as much as I do now. Best sellers deserved a prominent place and the buyers of them deserved to have a sales assistant who at least appeared to be as enthusiastic about their favourite music as they were.
Gospel lovers were not the slightest bit interested where Bill and Gloria were travelling to and why they were always homecoming, but never actually arriving. Likewise, Gaither fans wanted to own all of Bill & Gloria’s DVDs so they could pretend they were sitting in a circle with the gang, singing about the joys of Heaven.
So, I had to be shrewd. Very shrewd. Our customers needed someone to know what the fantastic new releases were, and they needed that someone to be ecstatic about it. But pretending was hard. I liked Mary Mary’s ever-so-popular, popular, “Shackles”, so I played it often, hoping it might throw people off the scent, and nobody would realise that I was actually into ‘white worship.’
I may be deluded when I say that I managed to fool them quite well. Maybe they all knew I was a fraud and laughed about how pathetic I looked when trying join in with their enthusiasm. But I do know that there was one guy who was suspicious of me from the very beginning.
Whenever he asked me a question about an artist, he would peer at me through his glasses and squint. One day, a few weeks before I went off on maternity leave, he was squinting at me so much that I could no longer see his eyes. I had done my usual acting and had tried to be in a rave about the upcoming new gospel releases. Then it happened. He glared at me and said,
“So, who is your favourite gospel artist then?
I quickly named the most popular person I could think of:
“Oh. Well Kirk Franklin’s quite good, isn’t he?”
He wasn’t going to let me get away that lightly.
“So, what is your favourite track of his?“
I picked one of his most popular songs.
“Stomp.” I said hurriedly avoiding his gaze.
But alas, I had made a fatal error. ‘Stomp’ had been released many years before and was now quite old.
“What about a more recent one?”
I was beginning to panic and wondered if I should feign the early stages of labour.
“Well, I like er…er… other artists too.”
“Such as?” He raised an eyebrow. This guy was definitely on to me.
Thankfully, my husband was a long-time fan of Ce Ce Winans, so I was familiar with her songs.
“Well, I love Ce Ce ya know. “Throne Room” is well good innit?”
Why I tried to ‘talk black’, was beyond me. Living in an area that is predominantly Pakistani, I ended up sounding more like an Asian teenage boy. I couldn’t do a Caribbean accent if my life depended on it. I couldn’t even do that ‘fan thing’ properly. You know – when ethnic women are trying to show contempt or disapproval of something, they spread their fingers out in a fan shape, and wave it near their neck. My poor attempts always made me look like I was trying to dry my fingernails or swat a fly.
I was getting nervous. I shifted from foot to foot hoping that his eyes would do the same and move away from my direction. They didn’t.
“Umm…” he retorted. He picked up his goods and said goodbye, not before taking one last narrow-eyed glare at me as he descended the stairs.
I had managed to sell a great number of gospel CDs by forcing myself to be a little interested in something I really couldn’t bear. I wondered if this guy thought I was a coconut – brown on the outside, white on the inside. I wanted to call him back and say,
“Hey, I don’t have a problem with my race. I like some Christafari. I have a Tonex album. My parents love Mahalia Jackson.”
But he was gone. Off to spill the beans and reveal to all about the imposter that I really was.
Repentance Review
It is never good to be deceptive, even if it is to help boost your employer’s sales. I realise that I should have been more honest with our customers. Maybe they could have taught me some things about that genre which would have helped me to appreciate it more.
I still love a large variety of Christian music and I am also pleased to say that before I ceased working at the shop, I eventually developed a love for The Gaithers, even if I couldn’t persuade Casper to.
Like I mentioned earlier, I have developed a deep appreciation for many Nigerian worshippers so, all in all, I feel less of a coconut these days. Besides, my arms are not that hairy.
