Tfolakele.com - My View

	Saturday 31 July 2010
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As my priest said in last Sunday's sermon, "Noma kungasi kubi kubukeka kukubi" "It may not be bad but it looks bad".

Selling Gospel Music is a SIN!

There! There you have it! I said it! "Selling Gospel Music is a Sin!" I say this because gospel music is suppose to be a medium used to preach and tell the world about Jesus Christ. If money is the root of all evil, then gospel artists should not be selling gospel music! Period! If they are, it means they are effectively trading their music for the one thing that causes a lot of problems and evil in the world. I mean, the current financial debacle is because of people's greed for money. Gospel music should be freely available and downloadable for free on the internet.

You may be wondering, why I am bringing this topic up this morning, afternoon or evening; depending on where you are in the world and what time it is now. I'll share with you how this all came about. I decided to take my woman out for brunch (breakfast/lunch) as she has been studying hard for exams. Whilst driving to the place where we had this brunch, I see an Audi Q7 (my dream car) and I say,

Buka lomgamu lengimboleke lemoto suwufuna kuyigicita (This person I borrowed my car wants to crash it)

then I told her about this Q7 that I had seen in Mbabane that had a personalised license plate written FRANS and I told her how I thought it belongs to a Swazi Gospel artist who goes by the same name.

I don't understand why you would make money out of gospel music?

She replied.

Then I thought, actually, it does not make sense. Why would you effectively sell the gospel of the Lord? I guess it indicates the state of the churches these days; many of them are obsessed with money. Church (especially Christian ones) has seemingly become a million emalangeni industry where anyone (with character or behaviour that can hardly be deemed holy) can just come in preach the gospel and make money. As my priest said in last Sunday's sermon

Noma kungasi kubi kubukeka kukubi (It may not be bad but it looks bad)

There are all sorts of churches with questionable leaders mushrooming all over Swaziland in the name of preaching the gospel, but it looks as though they are really in it to make money and live lavishly whilst the very people that give offering in their churches live on debts and shylocks. I don't think this is what church is about.

However, at the time the question of selling gospel music was posed, the comparison that came to mind is that of open source software. Open source software is free software that can be developed, used and modified by anyone in the world under the GNU license. The idea here is that software should be available for all to use as opposed to only those that can afford commercial software. The fact that the source code for open source software is published to everyone means that bugs and other software problems may be quickly spotted and hopefully fixed by programmers; creating very secure and stable products. The use of open source software is on the rise worldwide as it is the cheapest way of getting the world to be computer literate. Products such as Ubuntu OS are the base on which a lot of networks on the world wide web operate. If you ask your webhost, your website is probably hosted on a Linux web server hence cheap web hosting prices can be passed on to the customer. As a result of open source, a lot of people have learnt how to use computers, have networked, shared resources and browsed the internet because of open source software. This illustrates the potential power of a free product or service.

Now back to the topic at hand here. Imagine if gospel music was free. More people in the world would be able to listen to Shongwe ne Khuphuka, Ncandweni Christ Ambassadors, Hlengiwe, Kirk Franklin to name but a few. Maybe if gospel music was free, then maybe more people in the world would know and understand the joy of the gospel that the gospel artists are trying to convey. Don't get me wrong, I think people should preach the gospel through music but they should not be selling it. They should adopt the open source policy that you may pay a sum as a token of appreciation or acknowledgement of the work and resources used to produce this important work. There should be free gospel music concerts every month, everywhere. That's just my view. As for now, I think selling Gospel music is a sin!

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