CCM: About your music and especially your live shows, you’ve said, “You never know what you’re going to get…” So, what makes your music so diverse?
RS: With a name like “Ricardo Sanchez,” I guess it’s obvious I’m not German, right? I’m Latino. Growing up in “white suburbia,” as I call it, I didn’t really know what multicultural was until I was told, “Hey, you’re a Latino,” by an Anglo guy. You just are who you are and you really don’t know what “racism” or “ethnicity” is until somebody tells you. All that to simply say, I grew up in a racially-mixed community where people listened to rock, pop, rap, country…but I actually grew up singing Mexican music—traditional mariachi music.

I’ve always felt a part of this mosaic of music, and God kind-of put it all together for me when I became a Christian. When I went to go work for Jentezen Franklin and Free Chapel Worship Center in Atlanta, I told my team, “I don’t want to come up with ‘my sound’ or ‘your sound,’ I just kind of want to create one.” Those are the kinds of places where, “You never know what you’re going to get,” comes from.

It’s like, “my band is my band,” but when we show up at an all-black church, we get a little more R&B—not because we’re faking it—but it’s really because of who we are. It’s because we’ve had the opportunity to grow up on both sides of the tracks. I do recognize the power of familiarity. If we’re in a Latino church to do a chorus of “How Great Is Our God,” or something form Covenant Church, or something from Bethel, it’s [going to be] in Spanish. If I’m in an older environment, we’ll drop in a hymn or something like that. Not to sound cliche, but I want to give God the stage and use me, instead of just letting me use the stage. That’s our perspective. It’s spreading the gospel and giving people the opportunity to hear His voice—to create that environment and atmosphere.

Ricardo Sanchez, CCM Magazine - image

photo: Terry Wyatt

I think one thing that people get from our live shows is that we definitely have passion and we believe in what we do and why we do it. It’s not just about singing my songs, it’s about creating that environment, and the multicultural aspect of it isn’t something that’s marketed and planned, it’s just who we are. I’m not afraid to stretch the boundaries and even pass the mic to one of our background singers if they know a song better than I do. Obviously we love to have a great time. It’s allowed us to not just go to places, but be invited back and create relationships.

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