By Jonathan Mbiriyamveka
For Everton Mlalazi, the most powerful worship isn’t captured on stage or in a studio—it happens in the quiet, when no one is watching.
There is a version of Everton Mlalazi that audiences never see.
It is not the award-winning gospel artist commanding a stage, bathed in lights, leading thousands in praise. It is not the polished figure in a music video or the guest on an international television segment.
It is a man in a room, alone, with no audience but God.
In a recent feature on Trace Gospel, the Zimbabwean gospel star opened up about what he calls “the closet”—a sacred space that has shaped his music, his faith, and the very essence of his latest work.
“Worship when no one is there is like my own moment with God,” Mlalazi shared. “This is the time I get to speak to Him, tell Him about my own cares. This is the time I also get to speak to Him about who He is, just to thank Him for who He is here in my life.”
It is in these private moments that Mlalazi says he feels most safe.
“It is when I am in His presence that I feel I’m safe and secure. I don’t have to fear anything because even though I may walk through the valley, I am fine because I know I’m with Him. When I’m in the mountain and everything is good, I’m also very happy.”
For an artist whose life is often lived in the spotlight, the closet represents something counterintuitive: freedom from performance.
“The closet is my moment with God. Like it’s that moment I just want to be with Him, me and Him alone.”
That intimacy has become the blueprint for his music. His upcoming Great God album, he reveals, was born in that same spirit.
“If Great God was recorded in the closet, just me and God, out of the studio, out of the lights, out of the live recording that I did.”
He points to the song Murimutsvene—”You Are Holy”—as a product of that unguarded posture.
“It would be that moment when I just lose myself and share who God is in my life and just forget about everything.”
There is a vulnerability in this approach that Mlalazi does not shy away from. He admits that the trappings of professional music can sometimes become a barrier to authenticity.
“You know, sometimes I think the lights, the studio makes us to be very careful.”
But in the quiet, carefulness falls away.
“And I think when you are in a relationship with someone and it’s just the two of you, you stop being careful.”
He imagines what it would be like to record an entire album under those conditions—no studio, no lights, no engineers, just him and God in a room.
“And I believe if I had an opportunity to be recording the Great God album and it was just me and God, I really think that would see fireworks because then I’m not careful. It’s just me and Him. I just express, you know, how I want Him to be in my life and I thank Him for who He has been in my life.”
For Mlalazi, worship is not a product to be packaged. It is an ongoing conversation. And the most important parts of that conversation happen where no one else can hear.
But, as he also acknowledges, those private moments inevitably shape what the world eventually hears.
Because what emerges from the closet, he believes, carries something that cannot be manufactured under studio lights: presence.
And presence, for Everton Mlalazi, is everything.
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