Micah Stampley – One Voice

Micah Stampley
One Voice
Music World Gospel/Interface Entertainment (2011)
http://www.musicworldent.com/

By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog.

“Different colors, many expressions/But when we worship, we sing to an audience of one.”

So sings Micah Stampley, his vocal arms outstretched, like Bono, in universal embrace on the title track and current single of his new CD One Voice.

The lyric encourages world unity around one Creator, but it also works as a description of the multi-culturalism of Stampley’s new album, released yesterday.  It deftly and seamlessly blends gospel vocal techniques with the optimism of CCM melodies and the largesse of pop-rock musicianship.

As such, you could say that One Voice is the album the crooner was destined to produce since his introduction to the gospel community seven years ago via Bishop T.D. Jakes.  Stampley himself must feel that; he writes in the liner notes, “I’m so excited to share what I believe to be my greatest work EVER.”

Throughout the project, Stampley’s marvelous voice soars over tuneful, majestic praise and worship songs such as the opening “Heaven on Earth” and the hypnotic “Overcome,” which created such a peaceful aura of collective worship in the recording studio that the succeeding “Worthy” was created organically on the spot.

And here’s the rub: while One Voice was recorded in only four days, its production is sufficiently complex that it sounds as if it took months to complete. From the new age ambience of “Prophetic Interlude” – Stampley’s wife Heidi contributes Enya-like vocals – to the P&W anthem “Search for You” and the U2-style layered guitars of “Call of Love,” plenty of thinking went into the creation of the album’s textures. Violins, flutes, piano, all swirl in a multi-faceted soundscape that is as pleasant to perceive as it is difficult to define.

Although most of the selections are, to use Stampley’s own terminology, “vertical” in lyric content, he has included a couple of message songs. In addition to the title track’s ode to brotherhood, “Desperate People” offers a glimpse of humanity in lockstep agreement of being “tired of the status quo…gotta be more than this.” Hearing this track, one cannot help but think of the protesters on Wall Street or the vanishing heroes in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. On the other hand, “Call of Love” is an ode to the power of giving of one’s self to others and could serve as the soundtrack to the Stampley’s Operation I Believe, which provides life essentials to the homeless and destitute.

It is possible that years from now cultural historians and musicologists will look back at the work of Israel Houghton, Kurt Carr and Micah Stampley, the latter as expressed in One Voice, and see the roots of the future of sacred popular music. For now, just listen, enjoy and be moved.

Four of Five Stars

Picks: “One Voice,” “Heaven on Earth.”