More than thirty years of involvement in singing gospel music has brought Miriam Williams to a place of greater enlightenment and realism about the pursuit that is her passion. She has endured, travelled and is currently preoccupied with assessing the crossroads which she appear to have reached in her career.
These days she appears to be far more contemplative of the dichotomy between a pursuit which she insists derives from a spiritual passion and the reality that whether the genre is gospel or pop, there is a dimension to music that is “business,” and it is, up until now, the challenges associated with turning her talent into commercial success that continues to preoccupy her.
She is hopeful the “Dare To Dream,” her recently released fifth album will bring her one of the things she seeks, a greater measure of commercial success. Her voice, the quality of her work, has already won her a generous measure of acclaim among gospel enthusiasts but the reality is – however much she is loathe to discuss it – that that is simply not enough. She has travelled outside of Guyana and has learnt that performers offering the gospel genre in the United States and elsewhere have found their own lucrative niche. There, the talent ranges from ‘old timers’ like the late Mahalia Jackson and Albertina Walker to accomplished contemporary gospel exponents like Beverley Crawford and Ce Ce Winans.
The prospects of transforming talent into commercial success here in Guyana are limited by a host of constraints not least, Miriam says, are consumer tastes that are conditioned by the skewed offerings of the media towards “foreign artistes.” There is a strict dichotomy, she says, between the adoring congregations that will cheer wildly for you at a Gospel Concert and the kind of commercial patronage that tells you that people place some sort of value on what you do. She talks about a culture that appears sometimes to have ensnared us in a habit of expectation, indeed entitlement that friends and relatives are entitled to “a free CD.” It is not that Miriam is averse to a measure of generosity though sometimes she appears fretful over what
