Foremost gospel singer, Panam Percy Paul, has explained how the very influential marketers in Alaba International Market, Lagos, made gospel singers to spice their songs with “speaking in tongues”.

He gave the insight in a recent conversation with Pastor Emmanuel Iren, lamenting how the industry now dictates trends rather than allowing gospel ministers to lead with their faith.

According to Panam Percy Paul, “Today, the extreme is that the music ministry has now become music industry.

“The industry now dictates to the ministers what to do, how to sing and when to sing.

“For example, we were not singing in tongues, because if you sing in tongues there should be interpretation.

“But it was the marketers in Alaba that discovered that when there is tongues in any sermon, people will buy.

“So they (Alaba marketers) started encouraging singers to put some tongues somewhere. The younger folks now started singing in tongues.”

Describing a typical performance scenario, the gospel music icon said: “You give me 15 minutes, and I came up, and I did my 15 minutes.

“But if you give a younger musician 15 minutes, he will take the first three minutes to rap (he demonstrates by ad libding), you know. Then after all of that, they say ‘Now we’re doing the real thing’.

“So you see, the extreme here is that money is now dictating to the ministers what to do.”

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Panam Percy Paul’s evergreens include ‘Come Let’s Praise the Lord,’ ‘I Will Follow Him’, ‘Master of the Universe’, ‘The African Way’, among many others. (Vanguard)