Alise King has a gift and she knows it. The Detroit native is known as The Soulful D.I.V.A. (Divine Instrument Vocalizing Her Ability). She is a powerhouse vocalist with impeccable stage presence. Her dynamic voice takes you on a journey and her live performances leaves you wanting more. She has performed all over the city playing iconic venues and festivals. Most recently the songstress opened for funk legend George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic at the MotorCity Sound Board earlier this year.
Life is looking up for this singer but it took time to get to this point. After discovering she had a voice at the age of 12, she has been on the track to stardom, but a troubling situation at church nearly silenced this beautiful voice forever. “At 14, my pastor told me, ‘Your calling is singing. This is what you’re meant to do but I feel like you’re meant to do more,’ she said. “So at 14, I was ordained to be the youth choir director and I had been directing choirs ever since.” The level of leadership that the pastor placed on King gave her a whole new outlook on life. She began to soar and worked tirelessly on song arrangement and chord progressions to ensure that under her direction the choir would make a joyful noise. “It was an amazing feeling to think that somebody saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. Church was my free space to be me. In church, on that stage, it didn’t matter about anything else but my voice,” she said.
However, things would change and leave King feeling as if she never wanted to sing again. She has spent the last few years trying to find her way back to the place that gave her so much life. “The past few years I have been out of church because the church I attended wasn’t accepting of my lifestyle,” she said. “I am married to a woman. God loves me for who I am and made me in his image and I believe that wholeheartedly. I don’t believe He made me to be a mistake. Her previous pastor accepted King for who she was but when the church merged with another church and that pastor left, King found herself in a new situation. “When the new pastor took over, I shared my truth with him and he accepted me,” she said.
But when someone else who was very high within the church had learned of King’s truth, they told various members of the congregation and King began to feel as if she was slowly being pushed out. Eventually, King resigned as youth choir director. The relationship between her and that church further deteriorated when she posted photos from a church trip to her Facebook page that included the name of the church. “I was approached by that same person and was told that because people know what I am (homosexual), the church cannot be affiliated with that lifestyle and I was asked to remove the pictures and any mentions of the church from my page,” she said.
After that she left the church completely, and that was a tough time for King. “Here I am with this gift and all I want to do is share it. Whenever I see a choir perform, everything in me wants to jump on that stage and just give my all because my gift is His I want to give it to Him first,” she said. King would soon realize that being shunned from the church was a blessing in disguise. “That experience forced me to stop masking myself for other people. For years I did what I had to do to keep up appearances and I got tired of hiding me,” she said. “And when I finally said ‘hey this is who I am’ and I decided to be proud, a funny thing happened.Although my church life disappeared, everything else seemed to soar because I was truly happy and at peace.“
Now King lives her life on her own terms. “Music saved my life. It allowed me to tell my truth and be free. Every time I perform, I sing like it’s my last time,” she said. “When I sing I am saying, ‘This is me, like it or not.’ And I don’t label myself as a gay artist. I am an artist that happens to be in love with a woman, and I want people to judge me for my talent, not who I love.”
A bright spirit, King keeps spreading her message of love and acceptance through her performances. “I always promote positivity and love at my shows,” she said. “I just want to bring joy and if my music and my voice can do that then I’ll never stop singing.”
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