Bishop Albert Harrison has been traveling and singing gospel music solo since the 1980s. When he was in the hospital in 2006, he took stock of his life and decided resolutely to start a group—The Gospel Tones. Harrison hails from the experimental planned black community of Soul City in Warren County, North Carolina, while The Gospel Tones make Ahoskie, NC their home base. Talking about gospel musicians in Eastern North Carolina, he says, “We all come back from a long way back. We all come up on farms. Our mothers and fathers and grandfathers always used to sing. It’s something we love to do.” Harrison says that he sings in the “old jubilee style.” And he sings it anywhere he can. “Wherever the Lord sends me, I go,” he says, “that’s the way I feel about it.”
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April 4-6, 2025