’Bigger than the church.’ This MS Coast gospel music awards event has gone global.
LeKeisha Cotten and her team are on a mission to bring gospel music beyond the four walls of the church.
This year, their Gulf Coast Gospel Music Awards will air on television for the first time on Sunday, Oct. 4. More than 200 nominees from across the United States, plus the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago, are up for awards.
Organizers want the awards to honor independent gospel artists and give them a platform to share their music and celebrate an art form that has shaped American music for at least a century.
“We connect gospel to church, but gospel is bigger than church,” said Derrick Bridges, community relations coordinator for the event. “All Black music came from gospel music, but... the money, the manpower, the music power, everything else goes to secular. But gospel is the foundation of all of our music.”
Cotten grew up in Indianola, where music was always a part of worship. As an adult musician, she traveled to awards shows and wondered why South Mississippi didn’t have one to celebrate local gospel artists. So she started one herself.
The first event, founded in 2017, honored 25 Gulf Coast gospel artists. After that, the awards have been open to nominees from all over the country, and the ceremony has grown every year, to 1,000 attendees in 2019.
The show gives independent and emerging artists a chance to reach new audiences, Cotten said, and gain recognition for their talent.
“We just found that there are some of the most talented, phenomenal singers, musicians, songwriters out here that the world does not know about,” she said. “And everybody had to start somewhere.”
Paula Vega Vondenstein is one half of the duo Bible Belt Blues. She and her husband, Harold Vega Vondenstein, are up for Song of the Year for their song “Down the Rabbit Hole.” It’s a “repentance song” that Vega Vondenstein thinks shows how blues and other genres can cross over into gospel.
The awards ceremony, and performances as part of the program, can give local musicians a push to be more ambitious in their work, she said.
“It encourages everyone here to think, maybe I have a talent here, maybe I need to explore it,” she said. “And others that have been singing, to challenge them to start creating their own music or write their own lyrics, because they know the Bible, they go to church, they study it.”
COVID-19 pandemic changes
This year, the coronavirus pandemic has forced the awards to make a major change: it will be entirely virtual. The artists who might have performed in person during a normal year have instead submitted prerecorded performances, which will play during the show.
Cotten said that many of the nominees and performers have been affected by COVID-19, from contracting the virus themselves to helping care for family members who have been sick. Organizing the show remotely, she didn’t always know who was dealing with what.
“It taught me to be patient,” she said.
Because the show is virtual and free to watch, it will be more accessible.
“The banging, shouting, clapping, the hands raised, the essence of gospel music, the fellowship: We won’t have that,” Cotten said. “That’s what makes it different. ... But the good thing about it is, now we’re reaching the nation.”
And for people who love gospel music, it’s never more relevant than during times of crisis.
“Especially in times now, dealing with the pandemic, we need the inspiration, we need the reminder that God is there with us, because he loves the saint as well as the sinner,” Bridges said.
The awards will also honor nominees in a category called Kingdom Influencer, for people “who affect or influence change across genres of music and sectors,” including through nonprofits and churches.
Jacqueline Hall of Biloxi was nominated in that category. In previous years, she’s been a “trophy girl” at the awards show, handing out the trophies for winners. She said the formal recognition is a signal that her efforts to help others are not going unseen.
“It was a blessing to me,” she said. “To know that someone’s watching, to know that someone’s taking it seriously, what I do, and I’m hoping that it’s helping them, and to be nominated for that is a great feeling.”
Hall will be working at the Beau Rivage during the ceremony itself, but plans to watch on her phone.
On the Coast, viewers can watch the event on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. on Fox. It will also be livestreamed on their website and Facebook page.
And although the awards seek a broad audience for gospel, the musicians it honors are first and foremost committed to music as a way of honoring God. Javion Shotwell, 19, was nominated for Emerging Artist of the Year. He has been singing with Cotten’s praise team at Faith Works Ministries church in Long Beach for two months after making it through an audition process run by LeKeisha Cotten Enterprises.
“You can’t let just anyone get up there and sing,” he said. “People’s lives are at stake. Their souls are at stake.”
To Shotwell, music is an integral part of worship.
“The word is also important, but some people get more from singing,” he said. “It touches somewhere deep inside when you hear... A cord can make a difference in how somebody can feel, how somebody is gonna react to the presence of God.”
(Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article used the wrong name in a photo caption to refer to the drummer who plays with Cotten at Faith Works Ministries. His name is Chauncey Felix.)
This story was originally published October 3, 2020 at 8:00 AM.
