The Schermerhorn Symphony Center isn’t exactly known for catching the Holy Ghost. However, on August 16, the 40th Annual Stellar Gospel Music Awards filled the Nashville landmark like a Sunday service—sequins, organ runs, tears, and praise breaks. Forty years in, the Stellars still feel like the one night gospel music gets to remind the world that it’s not some polite church genre off to the side. It’s the engine. The DNA. The reason pop, R&B, and hip-hop even exist.
With such a momentus occassion, the evening was hosted by none other than Stellar and GRAMMY Award-winning duo, BeBe & CeCe Winans.
Pastor Mike Jr. owned the night. Again. Snagging his fourth Artist of the Year trophy, he etched his name into gospel history. Watching him take another victory lap, you couldn’t help but think: this is what the future of gospel looks like.
Still, no matter how loud the new guard roars, gospel royalty commands the room. When CeCe Winans stepped up to claim the Albertina Walker Female Artist of the Year award, it was reverence. CeCe is gospel, a voice so steeped in fire and velvet that stops everyone in their tracks.
Adia’s breakout as New Artist of the Year felt like a passing of the torch, proof that gospel isn’t short on fresh blood ready to spill new sound into old bones. Meanwhile, Don Jackson, the man who dreamed up the Stellars in the first place, finally got his flowers with the James Cleveland Lifetime Achievement Award. Without him, there is no “Greatest Night in Gospel Music.” His fingerprints are all over this tradition, and the ovation he got was part thank-you, part coronation.
The Stellars, at 40, aren’t chasing viral moments or Billboard relevance. They don’t need to. They’re the receipts that gospel, Black gospel, is America’s most durable, most radical, and most eternal music. Scroll below for an inside look at the 40th Stellar Awards.
The ceremony will air Sunday, August 31st at 8PM ET/7PM CT on BET.
