Students Find Musical Opportunities With Hit Worship Group Maverick City Music

The Campus Community sermon began after Nate Diaz, a junior on the Liberty Worship Collective, finished leading the crowd in the powerful song, “Promises,” by Maverick City Music. 

Minutes after stepping off the stage, Diaz’s phone buzzed with a text from an unfamiliar number sending him messages and audio files. Maverick City, by the end of the week, had placed Diaz in a group message titled “Spanish Recording.” 

“After this, I got sent two audio files that were songs we were going to sing on the album… working with them was my dream and everything happened so quickly,” Diaz said. “It was a surreal moment, a door so clearly opened by the Lord.”

Maverick City Music is a deeply connected collective and record label originating from Atlanta, Georgia. The collective made its debut in 2019 with the release of its first extended play, “Maverick City, Vol. 1,” that propelled through traditional worship music expectations. The EP debuted on Billboard’s Top Gospel Albums chart at number 10. 

Maverick City’s following album releases have debuted on the Top Christian Albums and Top Gospel Album charts along with their 2020 radio debut single, “Man of Your Word.” The group is known for its viral live worship sessions on YouTube that usher in a new level of praise and authenticity. The musician’s emphasize unity through diversity and shake the norm of contemporary Christian music.

“Maverick City’s live worship feels like freedom in every sense of the word,” Mariah Adigun, a junior on the Liberty Worship Collective, said. “There is so much freedom of expression—from the young to the old, it feels like rehearsal for heaven.”

Both Diaz and Adigun’s connection with Maverick City Music came at an  unexpected time in their musical journey. 

“This time last year  I was in quarantine just watching the live worship sessions on repeat,” Diaz said. “And to flash forward a year later and be standing in the room with them was just insane.”

The group’s most recent release, “Como En El Cielo” (Here As In Heaven), is a Spanish album released March 19 that is a testimony to the real and passionate music that comes from the heart of Latin America. 

“Maverick City takes the standpoint that the Latino American church is singing songs that have just been translated from English to Spanish,” Diaz said. “But we want Latin America to have their own sound, not merely the leftovers of English worship.”

Diaz is featured in two songs on the album, “Conmigo” (With Me) and “Consume.” “Conmigo” is an original song birthed last year during one of Maverick City’s online songwriting camps.

“There is a section of the songwriting camp that’s at the end of the session called the song share, where people share what they’ve written and everyone celebrates it,” Diaz said. “So, during the song share the writers, Alexis Ruiz and Amanda Rolon, sang ‘Conmigo’ which is the song on the album that Amanda and I sing together.”

Diaz explained that the album tackles the feat of simultaneously speaking to the believer and unbeliever.

“What is a message that can speak to these two different states of the heart?” Diaz said the team asked each other while compiling the album. 

“That message is hope,” Diaz said. “There is hope to be found in life with Jesus, and that is something both the believer and unbeliever need to hear and be reminded of.”

Adigun got involved with Maverick City Music through an invitation to be a part of the group’s online song writing camps during the COVID-19 lockdown. 

“It was my first time songwriting and collaborating with people I had never met before,” Adigun said. “It was really stretching for me as an artist and as someone who wasn’t super confident in my creative abilities                          beyond singing.”

For the next few months, Adigun was invited over and over again to the online writing camps until Maverick City Music asked her to be a part of its upcoming album releases for their label, TRIBL. TRIBL is an extension of Maverick City Music that curates live, moment-driven worship that is raw and authentic. From there on out, Adigun has continued in the process of writing and reworking pieces for future releases. 

“I honestly am in awe that they wanted me to be a part of these things just because of the levels of talent and anointing that walk through those doors all the time,” Adigun said. “But it has been the most wonderfully uncomfortable experience I have ever been in in my life that I actually feel like is preparing me for something I cannot even see, imagine or dream yet…and there is so much comfort in that.”

Jessi Green is the Asst. Feature Editor. Follow her on Twitter at @jessigreen0.