Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

“It is not the healthy who need a doc­tor, but the sick. I have not come to call the right­eous, but sin­ners.” This quote from the Bible, in the book of Mark, chap­ter 2, verse 17, is part of a larg­er con­ver­sa­tion where Je­sus de­fends his as­so­ci­a­tion with tax col­lec­tors and sin­ners, high­light­ing that he came to of­fer for­give­ness and re­demp­tion to those who recog­nise their need for it.

This mes­sage is at the core of Chris­t­ian Bub­ble, the up­com­ing sin­gle by Trinidad and To­ba­go gospel artiste Carl­ton Loui­son, set for re­lease on Ju­ly 11.”

The song, bold in both sound and mes­sage, chal­lenges the idea of iso­lat­ing faith from the world and en­cour­ages be­liev­ers to step out­side their com­fort zones to tru­ly live the gospel.

The mu­si­cal jour­ney of this singer-song­writer start­ed ear­ly, though not en­tire­ly by choice. Raised by a sin­gle moth­er along­side his two sis­ters, he was in­tro­duced to mu­sic at age nine.

“At first I didn’t like it,” he said, re­call­ing the strict pi­ano lessons with a teacher named Mrs Bartholomew. But mu­sic was in his roots as his grand­fa­ther had a strong mu­si­cal pres­ence in his life, and those fam­i­ly mem­o­ries helped shift his mind­set.

“I had a lot of fun in it,” he said. “While mu­sic lessons may not have seemed so fun be­cause of the strict­ness of the teacher when you had fam­i­ly mem­bers com­ing around and singing hymns, it was a re­al­ly nice mem­o­ry for me.”

His ear­li­est record­ings did not start as gospel but as Sesame Street songs. He and his sis­ter would sing along and record them­selves on an old cas­sette play­er. That play­ful cre­ativ­i­ty is what sparked his love for mu­sic.

Though gospel is now his fo­cus, Loui­son’s teenage years were filled with R&B in­flu­ences. He ad­mired groups like New Edi­tion for their style, vo­cals, and chore­og­ra­phy. His gospel path of­fi­cial­ly be­gan in 2008, when he re­leased his de­but al­bum Praise Him Up, which blend­ed his love of R&B with his faith.

An­oth­er ma­jor in­flu­ence was Kirk Franklin, known for merg­ing gospel with con­tem­po­rary sounds and push­ing bound­aries. Loui­son adopt­ed the same ap­proach, fus­ing gen­res and ex­plor­ing bold ideas, much like he does with Chris­t­ian Bub­ble.

The idea for the new track came dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic when peo­ple were re­quired to stay in phys­i­cal “bub­bles”. For Loui­son, the metaphor went deep­er.

“One of the main scrip­tures that I based the song on is when Christ was lim­ing and eat­ing with sin­ners and tax col­lec­tors,” he ex­plained. “Peo­ple ques­tioned him, but he said he didn’t come to call the right­eous, he came for the sin­ners and then I was like this song is re­al­ly about that. You can’t reach peo­ple with your mes­sage by iso­lat­ing your­self in a Chris­t­ian bub­ble.”

Work­ing on Chris­t­ian Bub­ble was a deeply re­ward­ing process. He teamed up with Sone J, a Ja­maican artiste liv­ing in the US, to bring a dance­hall flavour to the track. They nev­er met in per­son, but this col­lab­o­ra­tion was arranged by pro­duc­er Ju­dah Pe­ters, who al­so brought in lo­cal singer Can­dice Caton for back­ground vo­cals.

“It was a de­light to work with them,” Loui­son said. “It just came to­geth­er beau­ti­ful­ly.”

Still, he knows the song may spark a de­bate.

“I know it’s go­ing to be con­tro­ver­sial,” he ad­mit­ted. “The cho­rus says things like ‘I can’t do this and I can’t do that’ and peo­ple might think that Chris­tian­i­ty means be­ing trapped but it is not that, it is the bub­ble, the Chris­t­ian bub­ble is not just trap­ping you, the con­cept of iso­la­tion and not reach­ing out out­side your com­fort zone, out­side of this in­ner Chris­t­ian cir­cle a lot of peo­ple try to form and not get dirt­ied by the un­saved or non-Chris­t­ian. That is the bub­ble that is mak­ing us trapped, it is not Chris­tian­i­ty it­self but the wrong con­cept of Chris­tian­i­ty,” he ex­plained.

The tim­ing of the re­lease on Ju­ly 11, the start of the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion, is no co­in­ci­dence. Loui­son wants this mes­sage to reach every­one, es­pe­cial­ly young peo­ple who may be ex­plor­ing faith and pur­pose.

He al­so be­lieves gospel mu­sic must evolve to re­main rel­e­vant.

“I think that gospel needs to ad­dress more re­al-world is­sues. While we praise God and ho­n­our God, we need to deal with these things be­cause peo­ple are hurt­ing and deal­ing with dev­as­ta­tion and all kinds of is­sues,” he said.

Carl­ton Loui­son is no stranger to the stage ei­ther as he spent ten years in ca­lyp­so, ful­fill­ing a long-held pas­sion. Now, as a gospel artiste, he’s still tak­ing bold cre­ative steps.

Up next for Loui­son is an­oth­er sin­gle with a very dif­fer­ent tone.

“This one is not so chal­leng­ing in terms of con­cept but it’s more of who I want to be. I want to be an in­flu­encer through my mu­sic through­out my life, so that is what’s com­ing up,” he ex­plained.

With Chris­t­ian Bub­ble, Loui­son is do­ing ex­act­ly that, invit­ing con­ver­sa­tion, break­ing tra­di­tion, and re­mind­ing lis­ten­ers that the gospel was nev­er meant to be con­fined.