NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

For Mar­cel Williams, mu­sic and min­istry go hand-in-hand. The singer-song­writer wants his songs to in­stil hope in oth­ers and bring joy to all who lis­ten.

A Gas­par­il­lo na­tive, he at­tend­ed the VOS Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, as well as Pleas­antville Ju­nior Sec­ondary School and Mara­bel­la Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive School. Once he grew out of the com­mon child­hood phase of want­i­ng to be­come a doc­tor or lawyer, he said he knew he want­ed to pur­sue mu­sic. “My fam­i­ly will tell you that I was al­ways singing, es­pe­cial­ly as the youngest of four sib­lings. Some­times I would stand out­side and sing the na­tion­al an­them at the top of my lungs for no rea­son at all… I would make up my own songs too,” he re­called.

He said his moth­er even re­cent­ly re­mind­ed him of some of the sil­ly lyrics he wrote dur­ing his child­hood. “It was so…” he be­gan be­fore his laugh­ter took over at the mem­o­ry. “I have no idea where it came from. I used to be chang­ing keys and every­thing.” But he was al­so sur­round­ed by mu­sic as his fa­ther sang with a group, and his grand­moth­er “al­ways had mu­sic play­ing.” “... Alvin Slaugh­ter, He­len Bay­lor, Ron Kenoly. Hear­ing that kind of mu­sic grow­ing up would have had a heavy in­flu­ence on me.” He would sing in the choir, wor­ship team, as well as per­form so­los at his home church, Re­vival­Time As­sem­bly in San Fer­nan­do. He al­so sang for spe­cial events at school and even per­formed at San­fest.

Recog­nis­ing that he tru­ly had a tal­ent, Mar­cel al­so de­cid­ed to re-ex­plore song­writ­ing as the years went by. “I ac­tu­al­ly start­ed writ­ing to in­stru­men­tals to oth­er songs so I could get the un­der­stand­ing of the pock­ets you have to write in and the phras­ing, etc.” He said he tried keep­ing it sim­ple at the time as he nav­i­gat­ed how to tell sto­ries through mu­sic. He tried his hand at R&B and hip-hop, still be­ing un­der the Chris­t­ian/gospel mu­sic ban­ner. “From my call­ing and in terms of my per­son­al re­la­tion­ship with God, I know that he’s the one who has giv­en me this gift and this tal­ent, and I want to be able to use it for him,” he said as he ex­plained it was al­ways his in­ten­tion to sing Chris­t­ian mu­sic.

Mar­cell has since re­leased songs like De­pend on You, God’s Mas­ter Plan, and his most re­cent, Most High. He said he has writ­ten about var­i­ous ex­pe­ri­ences—neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive—in­clud­ing re­la­tion­ships, heart­break, find­ing one­self in Christ, and sal­va­tion, among oth­ers. “As I al­ways tell peo­ple, as much as I’m a Chris­t­ian and even in my Chris­t­ian walk, I want to al­ways make sure that my mu­sic points back to Christ. 
We are still Chris­tians liv­ing in the world, you know, and we do have hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences.”

He said he ad­mires artistes such as BeBe and CeCe Winans, Fred Ham­mond, Yolan­da Adams, Com­mis­sioned, and even Ush­er and Brandy. And lo­cal­ly, he point­ed to artistes such as Pos­i­tive, Jaron Nurse and Sean Daniel, among oth­ers. When it comes to his live per­for­mances, peo­ple have told him that he is en­er­getic and per­son­able when on stage. “Peo­ple al­so tell me they re­al­ly love my voice… peo­ple have al­ways grav­i­tat­ed to­wards it.” To date, he said, his biggest live per­for­mance was open­ing for Kirk Franklin in 2005. But sur­pris­ing­ly, he was not ner­vous. “Hon­est­ly, I en­joyed it thor­ough­ly. When I was on that stage, it’s like, ‘Okay, yes, it’s fi­nal­ly hap­pen­ing,” he re­called. He added that he hopes for more ex­pe­ri­ences like that as an artiste in the fu­ture.

Asked how im­por­tant mu­sic is to min­istry, he said he be­lieves they go hand-in-hand.

“Mu­sic is so pow­er­ful be­cause you can tell a sto­ry and you can have an im­pact. And based on telling sto­ries through song, ex­pe­ri­ences through song, whether it is heart­break, whether it is trust­ing God through a sit­u­a­tion, I be­lieve that it’s im­por­tant to tell a sto­ry in a dif­fer­ent way.”

Mar­cel wants his mu­sic to re­as­sure oth­ers that God can and will get them through what­ev­er chal­lenges they may be fac­ing in life and in­stil joy. “I want peo­ple to feel that there’s hope, that even if I’m talk­ing about some­thing that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a pleas­ant top­ic. He is there to help you get through it,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here with­out him, and some of these sit­u­a­tions that I would have dealt with and got­ten over, I would not have made it with­out him, ei­ther.”

If you’re in­ter­est­ed in fol­low­ing Mar­cel’s mu­si­cal jour­ney, he can be found un­der the han­dle @singmar­cel on so­cial me­dia. His mu­sic is al­so avail­able on dig­i­tal stream­ing plat­forms.