Jorge Morel, born May 21 in Santiago de los Caballeros, is a Dominican singer, songwriter and guitarist. He reached an international audience in the late 1990s as half of the bachata duo Junior y Jorge, then left secular music at the height of it and has spent the twenty-five years since as a Catholic worship musician and preacher.

Junior y Jorge

He formed the duo with Junior Arias in 1995, and it ran until 2001. Piensa en Mí, Olvídala with Alexandra, Tú Vas a Volar, Amigo Mío, Vuelve, Corazón Herido, Si Te Pudiera Mentir and Mi Historia Entre Tus Dedos carried them across the Americas and broke sales records at home and abroad. They played Bayfront Park in Miami, Madison Square Garden and the United Palace in New York, and toured widely through the Latino communities of the United States.

The conversion

Around 2000, at a Thursday-night prayer meeting at the Iglesia San Antonio de Padua in the Bronx, Morel and Arias both decided to leave secular music. Morel has said that nothing they had reached before — the fame, the stages, the recognition — compared to what he called the love of loves. He went on to study at the Escuela de Reevangelización founded by Father Emiliano Tardif, in his own city of Santiago.

Luz de Cristo

In 2000 he founded the group Luz de Cristo, which grew into the Comunidad Jóvenes de Luz, a youth movement he still directs. Since then the work has been healing and worship concerts, preaching, and training new evangelisers. Nadie Es Más Grande Que Mi Dios, his own composition, carries the message he is most identified with.

The recordings

Abre los Cielos, El Poder de la Fe, Vivir por Fe, Solo Vivo para Ti and Lluvia are among the albums, released through God’s Project Productions and distributed by ONErpm. In 2010 he gathered the work into Lo Mejor de Mis 10 Años II, more than twenty-seven songs across two discs, following a first volume, and toured it through Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Panama and Honduras, and across the United States from Denver and Los Angeles to Boston and Washington. He also works as a producer, writer and director for other Christian artists.

Legacy

Dominican music has produced plenty of conversion stories, and most of them end the artist’s career as a public figure. Morel’s is unusual in that both halves are documented: a bachata duo with a real international record, and a quarter-century of Catholic ministry that has outlasted it by more than twice over. He is also one of the few Dominican figures working in Catholic rather than evangelical music, which is a distinct tradition with its own circuit of parishes and festivals.