Volney Morgan – The artist making waves in Europe and the UK

Juliet Fletcher talks with choir director and church leader Volney Morgan, and shares why he’s an artist making a major difference on the gospel landscape

I first saw Volney and New Ye in action at the New Testament Assembly, Tooting, south London. This dynamic group were jumping and leaping – while singing and staying harmonically in tune! I was bedazzled. Since exploding onto the scene in 2006, international stages, broadcast films, multiple awards and accolades galore have ensued. When it comes to choral works and songwriting that reflects the gospel sound, form and delivery, Volney Morgan represents everything I’m enjoying that is British Gospel, and what it needs to be in this 21st century.As New Ye prepares for a landmark 20th anniversary tour, here are five reasons why I rate Volney Morgan to be one of the most important leaders of his generation.

1. From a youth

Volney was just 16 years old when, in 2006, he gathered a group of singers and musicians and began what would become New Ye. What drove a teenager to take on such a vision? The answer, Volney says, was inseparable from where he grew up in the Firstborn Church of the Living God – a church that his mother, Faye Morgan, has pastored for almost 20 years. “It was real,” he says of his faith journey. “I couldn’t explain it to people. When people used to ask, ‘Why do you do this?’ I’d say, ‘It’s just the way I want to express what is within me, the way I give God glory.’” That early conviction never dimmed.

Even as a young choir member, Volney recalls the house of God being a place of genuine sanctuary, noting that, while knife crime and street violence claimed young lives outside, he and his peers were always found in church. Volney explained: “The generation that was constantly looking at us and praying for us, they were saying: ‘They could be elsewhere, but they’re in the house of God, giving God praise.’ That rootedness in both community and conviction is the bedrock upon which everything New Ye is built. New Ye prepared me to be the pastor I am today.”

2. Mentors and transformers

Ask Volney about his inspirations, and three names rise immediately: Clive Brown, Bishop John Francis, and the late Solomon Facey. It was Clive Brown and the Shekinah Singers, who first captured the young Volney’s imagination so completely that he became one of their dancers – a detail he shares with a laugh, noting that those VHS tapes have long since been destroyed (he hopes!). He travelled with the choir to Poland – his first time abroad – simply to be close to the ministry and watch how it moved. Bishop John Francis, a second cousin on his mother’s side, provided a further layer of aspiration – not least through an EP whose cassette Volney played so relentlessly that the reel eventually came loose from the tape. Solomon Facey, directing the mass choir at conventions for the Ministry of Praise events, completed his formative trio. “Those three, I would say, have been my greatest inspirations in the UK,” he reflects.

Across the Atlantic, Kirk Franklin, Hezekiah Walker, Fred Hammond and Donald Lawrence also fed his imagination. But it was the American choir director Tye Tribbett, who crystallised something essential. Watching Tribbett move, stage-diving into the tenor section, erupting with physicality… Volney saw his own instincts validated. “Every idea I had that I thought was crazy, he (Tye) just made me make sense.”

3. The New Ye sound

New Ye is not simply a choir. It is a sound. At its core is a commitment to originality, rather than the endless repetition of American covers. Volney is passionate on this point and is measured in how he raises it: “I won’t say it upsets me, but it makes me question. Some of my friends in the gospel industry write such amazing songs, and then they’ll go out and won’t sing one of them.”

His answer has been to model the alternative – writing, recording and championing original works. He also believes that songs should be freely shared. Taking inspiration from his mentor Noel Robinson, who he says, freely invites others to put their own spin on his compositions, Volney has woven fragments of classic British Gospel – for example, by including a segment of Bishop John Francis’s ‘Broken Pieces’ – into his own recordings; another is ‘Into My Heart’, incorporating a popular British Sunday School chorus ‘Come Into My Heart, Lord Jesus’. “The next generation should use these songs,” he says. “They’re still relevant.”

Volney regularly leads workshops in a number of European countries, including Germany, Poland and Denmark, often hosting thousands at a time. He says many of these events are not staged by churches and are specifically promoted for the public. For three consecutive years, Volney’s Swedish tour has opened with his songs appearing in a shared sheet music book distributed to thousands of choirs across the country – an organised, grassroots network, singing from the same page, quite literally. “It really opened my eyes up to a singing community,” he says. “When you get a community that says: ‘These are some amazing songs, let’s sing them,’ you then see the impact it has. And that’s what’s been blowing my mind in Europe.”

4. Ministry and performance

“The upcoming 2027 tour promises to be different from anything that has come before”, explains Volney. “We recently completed a BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship from our Alive City Church for Pentecost. The producer is asking why gospel music, particularly what we do, is drawing such extraordinary responses across Europe, including communities that are mainly Catholic or Protestant and largely non-Black audiences.”

He continued: “Not only that, but we’re literally seeing people give their lives to Christ. Many of these people are starting to watch our services on stream and relate to our church because of the message they’re getting from the workshops we do. It’s kind of like a revival.” He is careful to articulate what the music must do beyond its joyful surface. When asked about the balance between exuberance and the weightier call to surrender one’s life to Christ, he reaches for Scripture: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, serve Him with gladness” (Psalm 100:1-2) and notes that there is a crucial difference between mere noise and joyful noise. He sees the Manchester-based Warehouse Worship gatherings and their thousands of young attendees as echoes of his own generation’s mass meetings. “History only repeats itself,” he smiles. “We had our joyful noise from then to now.” He has now established a diverse cultural and colour ensemble called the Bridge Gospel Paris Choir. They’re making an impact – and it looks like a template for a major activity across Europe to me.

5. Family and church

At the heart of Volney Morgan’s story is his wife and creative partner, Angel. Together, they form a pairing of rare complementarity – his expansive, exuberant vision held in dynamic tension with her deep love of hymns, rooted in a faith inherited from her late father, Pastor Isaac Babajide, which spawned the anthemic song ‘I Will Not Fail’. Volney speaks of a hymns project he believes Angel is carrying within her – one he is gently pressing her towards. “When she does it, I think it’s going to be absolutely amazing,” he says. “That’s also judging the impact to her rendition of ‘How Deep the Father’s Love’ (Stuart Townend)”. Faith, family and calling are not separate compartments for Volney Morgan; they are one continuous thread. I love the way he handles his social media, and integrates his children, Volney Jnr and Zoe, and wider family with a balance of the right levity, gravitas and wholesomeness.

As he prepares to mark 20 years of New Ye, he does so as someone who began as a 16-year-old, dancing in someone else’s choir, dreaming of a sound that did not yet exist. That sound, unmistakably, is now his own.

Visit www.alivecityuk.org and www.vmandnewye.com

JULIET FLETCHER
Creative Director of Green Tree and Windrush Church and Music. Founder of Songshare www.songshare.co.uk