Tope Alabi is one of the biggest gospel acts in the country. Always rendering her songs in Yoruba language, but her melodious gospel rhythm and beautiful messages have won her many hearts both among Christians and non Christians alike from all tribes. MORAKINYO OLUGBIJI had a chat with Tope Alabi over the weekend at her annual concert “Praise Da Almighty” in Lagos where she.
How would you rate the performance of gospel music at the moment in Nigeria, in comparison with secular?
Gospel music is doing very great. It’s about the audience and Nigeria can boast of the audience. Nigerians are religious people, so everywhere you have religious people, gospel music must fare. So you aint seen nothing yet. We are still going up there, we are soaring. We are getting there. This is the work of God. The work of God will always triumph. Gospel music is going places.
Your new single is “Oruko Titun”(New Name), what informed the title?
Oruko Titun is about when you are down and it seems nothing good is coming your way. So when you are down and begin to praise God, your name will beginning to change from sadness to happiness.
What’s your advice to Nigerians about God?
Well, let me tell Nigerians that there is God. We need God in everything we do. The world that we are in is full of sorrows and problems, but if we have God, we will have peace. There is no one else we can run to. The government may fail us even our parents and family might fail us but God will never fail us. Let us all come close to God and he will deliver us. Let God be our first and foremost. You’ll see that the world is getting tenser by the day. We should pray for our children and families. We should pray for our nation.
You are organising a concert, what brought about the idea?
The idea is just to bring together my fans. And lovers of gospel music in general.
I can see the crowd that has turned out for this event, hope this won’t lead to you establishing a church soon?
I’m not starting a church. God has not sent me to start a church, he only told me to do music. We are just doing this to bring people together for free and perform for them. We don’t have sponsors, we only have supports from people of God all around the world who are supporting us with donations and honorarium. It is a joint effort of me and my husband and God has been faithful to us. This is the third year we’ve been doing this.
What’s your opinion about gospel artistes who are not really living like true Christians in terms of their lifestyles?
Well, I’ll just tell them not to let fame and worldly things to derail them. Gospel artistes are role models. We are ministers of the gospel, therefore our lifestyles must be in line with our music, otherwise how do we expect people to believe the message we are passing. So that’s my advice to them.
What about gospel artistes that indecently dress in their music videos and even in real life?
Well, I personally do not know about any gospel artistes that do that, but if there is any that is really not nice. Like I said we must show good examples, people must be able to perceive godliness through us. You can see the way I’m always dressing; it’s an abomination for me to expose any part of my body. It’s not possible. I don’t dress anyhow. One can still look beautiful when you are well covered up. So I don’t know where all this artistes and our youths learn that bad habits. Everyone must not derail from the part of God.
It’s the election period and one would have expected that you’d want to do something to advice the people this period, why not a song like that?
I’ve always done songs that talk about Nigeria. My music is full of messages of hopes for Nigeria, too many! So my releasing this particular song is based on the inspiration I got from God.
There have been so many scandals about your person for a while now, what would you say to that?
Ignore the scandals. Those who are cooking up those scandals are only inviting the wrath of God. When you are up there, the devil will always raise people to attack you. So all that is not surprising to me. I’m focused and listen only to the voice of God. Every other voice is noise.
There has been this debate on whether gospel artistes should charge churches for performance?
Why not? There is nothing bad if gospel churches charge churches because, that is where they make their living from. Music is their talents and they have to be compensated for it. For someone like me, you don’t expect me to come and perform in your church with a full band and we will fuel our band truck, yet you won’t appreciate us for all that efforts. There are occasions I don’t charge though, because I know that the church knows what to do. They know how to compensate us. If someone like Pastor Adeboye invites me for performance, I can’t charge him.
Why?
Because he knows what to do as a father In the Lord. I know that I cannot leave his presence without appreciating me. It’s. All about discretion. There is nothing bad in billing churches, but most churches don’t know how to give honorariums to encourage gospel artistes. The music is our business and we have to get paid for it. We may be considerate with our charges but we have to be appreciated.
Finally, what’s your take about gospel acts who are fond of fusing ‘worldly’ dance in their music, and. People that even dance these styles in the House of God?
It’s not right. Anything that does not glorify God must be avoided. You cannot be dancing the devil dance. Inside the house of God or in gospel music videos. How do we distinguish ourselves from secular artistes if we do that? So it needs to stop.
