House Gospel Choir
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- House Gospel Choir. The Original House Meets Gospel Experience - Church!Mobilising people is something that Natalie Maddix knows a lot about, as the creative director of the mighty House Gospel Choir for the past five years. So too, is Brixton. Arms outstretched, gesturing to the South London home of the Caribbean diaspora in the UK where she grew up, she tells the story. “I think I did a post on Instagram and I had been mentioning this idea of a house choir to people, so I just wanted to see if anyone came” she laughs. A few did, and the first iteration of a choir singing gospel version of house tracks and vice versa, started with twelve people in a rehearsal room in Hackney, East London, one Tuesday evening. The fact the group could sing was lucky, because unknown to Maddix, the loose gathering of friends was soon to become unintentionally official. “My last project before HGC was programming some choirs for Olympic Park” she explains. “In passing, one of the directors I was working with at the time mentioned that one of the bookers was looking for a choir for Glastonbury. He asked me if I had a choir and I said yes but they do house music, is that alright? He was like ‘yeah, I think so but you need to do gospel music as well’. So before our first session we had secured our first booking which was Glastonbury on the Acoustic stage… we had twelve weeks.” Such is the magic of the choir that by the time they performed at Glastonbury (complete with Barbara Tucker’s ‘Beautiful People’ and Kirk Franklin’s ‘Up Above My Head’ as part of the set ) there were thirty members including DJs, keyboardists and vocalists. Safe to say, Maddix knows how to make magic happen. She talks about her Pentecostal church in Vauxhall where she sang gospel, her Catholic secondary school in Camberwell where she sang Latin hymns and her primary school in Brixton all fine-tuning her early ear for what she calls “finding harmonies”. It’s no surprise that the likes of Kirk Franklin and Aretha Franklin (of whom she firmly counts as a gospel singer) and gospel TV show ‘People Get Ready’ were the early soundtrack to her house that she gravitated towards. For Maddix though, it was searching out music independently as a teenager by going to house and garage raves that made her fall in love with the dancefloor. Seeing the devotional elements of club spaces, she recalls hearing house tracks that took her out of herself, and into the music. “I remember hearing ‘We Are One’ by Hugh Masekela and Black Coffee for the first time” she recalls. “I was like, ‘That’s it! Isn't that just the truth’ - yes we look different, yes we all sex different, but we all fundamentally want to be united under something a bit bigger than ourselves”. We Are One has become the choirs mantra, Maddix explains “We can't all speak at the same time and have our voices heard, but we can sing together as one voice and be understood”. They embody this by inviting members of the public to their monthly Mass Choir, which Maddix calls “their safe place”, also inviting a guest artist to create a special moment where 200+ voices sing the artists song back to them, previous guests include Karen Harding, Riton, MNEK, Rachel Kerr, Jem Cooke and Camel Phat. It was this moment of collective power that Maddix wanted to recreate after she became disillusioned with the house scene in London’s clubs (owing to cliques, venues closing down and a lack of resource), and she became involved in a project called Urban Development, working with young people and talent such as Shola Ama and Labrinth to harness skills in music. It was here that she started a vocal collective and realised that despite her short-lived MC days in a crew known as PG’s Finest as a teen (“It was a shameful time, and no I could not rap!”), she saw how much she “enjoyed singing with other people”. The current House Gospel Choir has grown to 150 members of all religions and backgrounds, although to Maddix, acknowledging that the origins of both gospel and house music are predominantly a black expression born from marginalised communities has been crucial. “If you listen to certain house or disco and hip hop, all of that was happening at the same time and all of those musicians would have learnt their craft in church” she says. “I think the two are more closely linked than people realise and if you listen to the lyrics of what we’re singing, these are the biggest house songs; they’re super inspiring, they’re about upliftment, they’re about unity, self-love. In the first instant, house music was rebel music”. For Maddix, it's a spiritual experience to sing. The vocal affirmations as part of a group, and mobilising and celebrating black heritage music is part sonic sensation, part protest. Here, filling the gap in knowledge of the historical contributions of black British gospel artists is crucial. “There are so many singers from the UK, from Beverley Knight to Mica Paris, to Sean Escoffery, the UK has an incredible gospel history. Those who know, know.” HGC’s magic is their ear for production, thanks to the songwriters, producers, vocal arrangers and selectors who make up the collective. The joy is through thoughtful digging in the crates and selecting house tracks that work alongside others - refixing, sound clashing and taking the classics, well, to church. Take the story of Barbara Tucker ‘s Beautiful People’ and ‘Most Precious’ - of which the HCG version is a rousing reminder of beauty of the everyday complete with pulsing stabs of euphoria and 90s nostalgia. “I actually came to the Barbara Tucker one the same way that most people do which was from the ‘deep, deep inside’ hook” she says. “When you don’t know names you have to just sing to people until you find it. Just start from the hook and start digging”. Other tracks that “raise the vibration” - which is the only prerequisite of songs that make the cut - include Dennis Ferrer’s ‘Hey Hey’, Floor Plan’s ‘We Magnify His Name’. Plus their first release, ‘Battle’, a re-work of UK Garage legend Wookie’s 2000 classic that features brand new production and instrumentation by Wookie himself, the result of him hearing the collective perform ‘Battle’ at Southport Weekender. He loved it so much, he reached out personally to produce a cover and the rest, as they say, is history. Curating and making the songs work in a live vocal space outside of the club is a challenge that house Gospel Choir spent time finessing - and not everything works. Maddix recalls a failed experiment of attempting a version of of ‘Hallelujah Anyway’ by Candi Staton, before finding what she calls was ‘the truth’ of it (their final version is a glorious dose of Mister Fingers meets-gospel disco). After all, to say that the group simply perform straight covers would be to miss the point of what House Gospel Choir really achieve. In reality, they take us to church, literally and metaphorically and remind us, whatever spiritual inclination we may have, of the sonic swells in our ribcage that truly great harmonies can inspire. The art of finding the truth in deep house gospel refixes and garage classics is something that House Gospel Choir simply do better than anyone else. Whether it’s performing at the Mercury Music Prize Awards with Loyle Carner, joining Emilie Sande for Channel 4’s Stand Up To Cancer, performing at BBC Gospel Christmas with Beverley Knight, Gregory Porter & Tom Jones, appearing as part of Kylie Minogue’s headline gig at Hyde Park, or joining Jax Jones and Mabel respectively on a Radio 1 and 1Xtra Live Lounge, HGC have taken these seemingly disparate musical moments and shown us the connection. And people get it. Last year saw House Gospel Choir tour in Singapore, Denmark, Ibiza (with Annie Mac and Disclosure for Radio 1 Ibiza), France and Australia - revising Maddix’s old stomping ground of Ibiza club Beach House to perform garage her way, to performing trackside at F1 in Singapore. It’s music that agrees with a live performance, and HGC have graced stages at V Festival, Bestival and Lovebox, a sold out headline shows last year at KOKO, and Annie Mac Presents. In fact, Annie Mac and BBC Radio 1’s Toddla T are such fans they also asked them to perform at their wedding with Jessie Ware last year. Next for them is working on the album which is currently bubbling away in studios across London, working with a roll call of iconic dance music producers from global house icons Todd Terry, DJ Spen, and MJ Cole, to Toddla T, UK gospel icon Nicky Brown and Jimmy Napes, fresh from working with Sam Smith and Disclosure. Maddix puts the story it’s trying to tell simply: “it’s that we are one” she shrugs. “We make ourselves heard as a collective and we are agents of mobilisation!” Talking about the activism that underpins the music, she goes on, “We talk about homelessness and inequality and displacement - and the project is about tuning into people’s frequency and uplifting their voice with ours”. That is the beauty of House Gospel Choir, taking us to new heights of euphoria, imploring us to feel empowered, connected and always looking for a chance to uplift our voices with theirs. They remind us of the altitude of our last euphoric club moment and with each note, we’re there again, watching the magic unfold in front of us, ready to receive.̸House Gospel Choir x Adelphi Music Factory - Salvation House Gospel Choir - Battle Riton ft MNEK, House Gospel Choir - Deeper
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