About three years ago, gospel singer/composer VaShawn Mitchell made two crucial decisions. The first was to leave his Chicago home and move to Atlanta, to become music minister at Higher Living Christian Church. Mitchell also chose to put his burgeoning recording career on hold so he could pay attention to the 10,000 members of his new congregation. They had a lot to tell him.
“I encountered people in foreclosure, losing their job, applying for unemployment, or couldn’t get student loans,” Mitchell said. “I wanted to put together a project that would point people toward the source, which is God, and not their resources.”
The resulting “Triumphant” (EMI Gospel) came out in August, and his songs express that empathy as his voice implores, and embodies, optimism: primarily on the disc’s title track and such songs as “Conqueror” and “Can’t Take My Joy Away.” Mitchell sounds equally convincing on his quiet plea to a higher power on “I Need You.” All of which is tied together within a thoughtful narrative.
For Mitchell, his third disc also resulted in more earthly rewards — his first two Grammy nominations: best gospel performance, for the song “Nobody Greater,” and best contemporary R&B gospel album. His response to the new acclaim was level-headed — at 34, he mentions having worked on his art for more than 20 years — and awe-struck.
“Just to be nominated is good enough for me,” Mitchell said. “To have the disc recognized so quickly is a prime example that when it’s your turn, God will just continue to blow your mind.”
Mitchell’s understanding of his community, and even deeper faith, go back to his upbringing around Chicago, where his grandparents raised him primarily in Harvey. Lonnie Hunter, who was the minister of music at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church in Harvey, noticed early on that Mitchell “didn’t have a lot of positive male role models” and became a big brother to him while he was singing in a children’s choir.
“From an early age, VaShawn was always a leader type,” Hunter said. “Even though his situation was less than perfect, you could never tell by his presence, his joy.”
While Mitchell concedes that as a teenager attending Thornton High School, he was tempted to hang out with his friends at the skating rink, his religious commitment and dedication to music took priority. He also paid attention to gospel legends here, so much so that Hunter referred to him as the “adult baby.” Those mentors included the late Albertina Walker.
“I found it inspiring to glean from her wisdom, her plight and what she had to endure to minister this music,” Mitchell said. “It was amazing to see how The Caravans would drive across the country to sing gospel, had to go in the back doors, didn’t get paid much to do what they love to do, but it was a desire and paved the way for what we do today.”
Then, as now, Mitchell absorbed contemporary music along with classic gospel, which didn’t exclude current R&B. But even if that put him in a “contemporary” Grammy category, his perspective links him to gospel founder Thomas A. Dorsey, who had his roots in 1920s blues and James Cleveland, who drew on soul music during the 1960s and ’70s. During a conversation, Mitchell will talk about his admiration for Brandy Norwood, Usher and John Legend: At times, “Triumphant” echoes their production techniques.
“If it’s gospel or R&B, it’s still a musical sound,” Mitchell said. “It’s about the message, but sometimes the sounds are intertwined.”
Mitchell used all of these resources when he became minister of music at Chicago’s Sweet Holy Spirit Church at 20, the youngest person to hold the position at the 1,500-seat institution. The pastor, Bishop Larry Trotter, mentions that along with the size of the church, the demands on his young protege included creating distinctive music for four services every Sunday and making sure that the different choirs were trained and ready. Another challenge included the church’s open attitude toward different strains of gospel.
“In trying to meet the demands of our audience, we ended up not having a traditional Baptist church sound, even though we could do that,” Trotter said. “We had to move into urban music to reach younger people with contemporary gospel. VaShawn mastered that we had to have music for people 16, 18, 80 and 90 years old. To go from (Dorsey’s) ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand’ to (The Edwin Hawkins Singers’ 1969 hit) ‘Oh Happy Day’ to VaShawn’s own ‘Nobody Greater.'”
While Mitchell was directing the music at Sweet Holy Spirit, he was also a communications student at Columbia College Chicago (with a minor in classical music), and writing his own compositions. He doesn’t play an instrument but collaborates with such longtime partners as keyboardists Daniel Witherspoon and Rick Robinson. A sense of musical economy is the hallmark of his songs, which emphasize melody and hooks over more baroque arrangements.
They demand to be heard as more than just vehicles for over-the-top performers, according to gospel radio announcer Bob Marovich.
“Many of Mitchell’s famous contemporaries tend toward the theatrical in their musical presentations, but he crafts songs that a gospel singer can perform flatfooted, and it will come across just as effectively as a choreographed choir,” Marovich said.
Even though Mitchell claims that he wasn’t clear about what he was doing when he started composing — saying “it was kind of surreal at the time, but now I can see that it was God’s plan” — he has become an in-demand writer for a litany of top gospel singers, including Vanessa Bell Armstrong (who covered his “Help”) and Smokie Norful (who interpreted “Just Can’t Stop”). Trotter marvels at seeing a Polish mass choir perform Mitchell’s “It’s Only a Test” on YouTube saying, “from 87th Street to the world.”
Around Mitchell’s 30th birthday, he started thinking of personal changes, and that’s when he learned about the position at Higher Living in Atlanta. Though he adds that the decision to move was difficult — not just because of his connections with Sweet Holy Spirit, but also because of his friends, family and the strong gospel tradition in Chicago.
Nowadays, Mitchell carries a full workload at Higher Living. The church has 10,000 members, and each service seats about 4,500. As he had to do at Sweet Holy Spirit, Mitchell is concerned that the music in the large halls sounds convincing to a cross section of generations. Even though he’s been performing since childhood, Mitchell admits to still feeling nervous before hitting the stage, or pulpit, and chewing gum to calm down. But he also believes that his main audience transcends the size of any room.
“Gospel speaks to the heart of people,” Mitchell said. “I’m not one of those who is going to write a song for right now. I ask God to give me music that will live longer than I ever can.”
