DENVER— Attending the Campbell Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church service on a Sunday morning, you wouldn’t suspect that the music director, Joseph Lamar, who soulfully sings had to grapple with turmoil, depression, and self-acceptance to be able to show up “in the totality of himself”.
“I started going to church at a very young age. My family was really involved in church,” singer and songwriter Joseph Lamar says. “For a good portion of my childhood, my grandfather was a deacon and then he was a pastor. My music foundation was in church, in terms of singing and playing piano and playing drums.”
Although his roots in the church spanned many aspects of his life, Lamar realized he had conflicting beliefs with the church from an early age—officially leaving the church when he was 18 years old.
Colorado Voices
Purging church dogma leads to healing, self expression
Joseph Lamar's latest album is a journey of purging, acceptance and self expression.
“There were definitely issues within the doctrine that I had. I’m just oriented in different directions in terms of some of the beliefs,” he says. “And coming out of the closet and not being received well. All of those things made me feel uncomfortable going to that particular church and church in general.”
“I really left the church when I was about nine, like in my head and in my spirit,” he adds. “I was just going through the motions, to be totally honest. I wasn’t really there.”
Now, as a creative, Lamar channels his experiences into his songwriting and music producing. Instead of repressing who he is, Lamar embraces his individuality, the way he thinks, and his discontent with life through his music.
His latest album, “Sin. [Act 1]”, which he released in November 2020 amid the pandemic, focuses on his complicated relationship with the church.
“With this album I just released, it was sort of purging of the church and church dogma and how that can be negatively impactful,” he says. “And also being intrigued by the mythology of it or the ceremony or the gospel music in those kinds of chords I tried to sort of draw from. I tried to put all those things together and juxtapose them in such a way that, like there are these worlds colliding because where all those different things intersect is me, you know, and I was trying to sort of like diffuse tension, create a sense of like wholeness within me where there was like fragmented-ness before.”
The song, “Fear,” which is featured in “Sin. [Act 1]”, was created during the pandemic with friend and videographer Drummond West. Lamar recalls shooting the video for the song at night while a Black Lives Matter protest was happening just a few blocks away.
“You could hear it as we were shooting,” he says, recalling the creation of the song as emotional. The noise from the protest, he says, was another layer to channel into the song—representing “a rage against a system that is playing God.”
“I feel really good in terms of the way it turned out,” Lamar says. “I'm really happy with it. And I said what I wanted to say, and I like the way that I said it, which kind of encapsulates a sort of crisis of faith, wanting to challenge and divorce yourself from this God, but feeling unable to.”
Lamar recalls his journey to self-acceptance as a complicated one. And while he is still working through it, Lamar attributes a lot of his growth to his relationship with Pastor Leath of Campbell Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
“She, from the very beginning, was very accepting of who I am,” he says. “And expressed that [I] have a right to show up in the totality of who I am.”
“I've reached a point where I'm able to grapple with those emotions directly, and I think it required doing something like making that album because it wasn't just making these songs, but it was really just like this phase in my life...a very necessary part of my evolution. So I'm glad for that.”
Joseph Lamar will be spinning tracks by Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion and more on Sunday, June 27 at 10:30 a.m. at Campbell Chapel AME Church as part of an ongoing series that connects contemporary music and spirituality. Additionally, he will be preforming alongside Machete Mouth and Los Pink Hawks on July 30 at Glitter City.
