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The London based Kingdom Choir will perform one of this year’s Christmas adverts. The choir shot to fame after a sublime retention of “Stand by Me” at the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle earlier this year. Since then, numerous commercial opportunities have come their way, including a major record deal, a shot at the Christmas no 1, and to top it all, performing for a soft drinks company’s 2018 Christmas advert. For many, the growth of gospel music in mainstream culture is to be celebrated. Yet, questions are also raised about its authenticity when it transcends the boundaries of the Church. In this case, one may ask, “Is it appropriate for what some consider to be a sacred art form, to entangle itself, with the consumer interests of a multi-national corporation?” Questions like this, and the underlying tensions they represent, gesture towards a longstanding debate over the meaning of gospel music, which surfaced, at the birth of the genre. The musical roots of gospel music are a fusion of the African American spirituals and the blues. The coming together of two opposing, yet related musical forms. The Classic Spirituals are slave songs, expressing amongst other things, God’s deliverance of embattled peoples. Many spirituals, demand justice, and freedom from racialised oppression and mask their social intentions with a clever double-speak. Spirituals can sound heavenly while promoting resistance. Songs like ‘Let My People Go,’ are figurative and literal. In contrast, the blues are the popular music of the African American underclass; they are raucous, humorous contemplations of everyday life especially the profane. In contemporary Britain, for over 50 years, we have celebrated and benefited from the African American gospel tradition. We have television competitions to find the best gospel act, and gospel choirs have backed some of Britain’s biggest pop artists. A number of companies use gospel music as the soundtrack for commerce. Yet, for me if gospel music is reduced to its aesthetic, and only valued for its commercial viability, it runs the risk of severely weakening the radical message of social justice intrinsic to the Spirituals. The image of God in the Spirituals is one who defends the outsider, comforts the broken-hearted and denounces bigotry and greed. That’s a message I don’t want to lose.