Officially speaking, Lauren Daigle is firmly rooted in the Christian music world, and has asserted a strong presence and a string of hits in that specialized music branch for nearly a decade. But as she amply demonstrated in concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl last week, drawing from her songbook and last year’s 23-track eponymous album, Daigle’s music is both contemporary gospel music from the source and accessible to all, regardless of religious leanings.
Daigle taps into soul-pop grooves, infectious hooks, emotional highs and lows, and power to connect a charismatic vocalist with a large crowd/congregation. She is one of many artists who remind us once again that without the deeply rooted influence of gospel music, there would be no American R&B or other areas of pop music as we know it. Never mind the preachable and Jesus-sonic moments. Daigle and her tight, dynamic 11-piece band enmeshed in an epic confetti stage set, rocked both within and beyond belief systems at the Bowl.
Not incidentally, according to Bowl volunteers, powers that be, and my own observation, the full, rapt audience which favored food and non-alcoholic choices over beer sales, won points on the “nice” factor, as Bowl shows go.