Zeke Locke – https://livefreeillinois.org/
On the eve of Independence Day, inside the historic sanctuary of APC Morgan Park on Chicago’s South Side, the room felt like a pressure valve opening. The SOVA Gospel Mass Choir—an international ensemble from Geneva—rose in a swell of harmony that hit like thunder and soothed like summer rain. Chicago gospel mainstay Ernesha Ledbetter-Miller followed, her voice raw and reverent, turning pews into an altar of release. People cried, shouted, laughed. Shoulders dropped. Breath returned.
At the center of it all stood Zeke Locke—gospel artist, music director, and site coordinator for the Community Healing Resource Center (CHRC) at APC Morgan Park. He calls this gathering Healing Voices, and he’s clear about its purpose:
“This isn’t about performance,” Locke told me, eyes steady, voice weighted with conviction. “This is about presence—God’s presence, and our community being present with each other. That’s what makes this space different. This is not entertainment. This is healing.”
Healing Voices is not a concert series; it’s a sanctuary. In a neighborhood living with the daily aftershocks of gun violence, Locke’s simple, radical invitation is to sing through the trauma—to turn songs into medicine and a room full of strangers into a circle of care.
Locke’s work grows out of a plain, painful truth: even when you aren’t the one directly harmed by violence, the shockwaves still reach you.
“It doesn’t just impact the person who was shot,” Locke said, pausing as if letting the weight of that truth settle in the air. “It impacts an entire community. It impacts mothers, fathers, friends, kids walking by, neighbors who hear the shots in the night. Trauma echoes, and if we don’t address it, it grows.”
The CHRC at APC Morgan Park sits at 11401 S Vincennes Ave, serving Morgan Park, Roseland, and West Pullman—communities that know the sound of sirens too well. The center’s mission isn’t to chase shooters or solve crime statistics—that’s the lane of partners like CeaseFire and Chicago CRED. CHRC’s lane is healing: a place to exhale, to be seen, and to connect with resources that help people stabilize and grow.
The origin story is seared into the network’s DNA. During neighborhood canvassing, a Live Free Illinois leader once came upon a young man’s body near a park—found before police even arrived. The question that followed birthed the work: Who is caring for the neighbors, the kids, the bystanders who saw this? Who is tending to their fear, their grief, their sleepless nights? CHRC was built to stand in that gap.
Locke is a signed gospel artist and the church’s music director. But he also understands that not everyone walks into a therapist’s office first. Many will walk into music.
On second and fourth Thursdays (7:00–8:30 pm), he and his team set a low-key, soulful groove—think lo-fi, R&B, gospel, and spoken word textures that leave space for reflection. Then the room gets to work together.
Someone crafts a hook. Another scribbles a verse. A young man tries a rap he’s never said aloud. A grandmother-aged neighbor writes a poem she’s carried for decades. Some people just listen. No pressure. No livestream. No judgment.
“I call it a support group with music,” Locke said. “People get a moment of woosah—to breathe, to unload, to leave lighter than they came. That’s all I want: for folks to leave lighter.”
The result is deceptively simple: a room steady enough for people to tell the truth about what hurts—and to practice what healing feels like.
Healing Voices measures its impact in quiet, human-sized wins:
And then there’s the magic you can’t script: a 21-year-old and a woman in her 60s who now sit together each week, hugging like family. The younger one calls the elder when she needs a voice of calm. Healing, it turns out, is contagious.
Men, Music, and the Myths We Break
Locke is especially candid about male mental health.
“It’s a myth that men aren’t emotional,” he told me. “Anger is an emotion. ‘Hardness’ is an emotion. A lot of that is untranslated grief. Music gives us another language—one that says, ‘Brother, it’s okay to feel this. It’s okay to say this out loud.’”
That bridge matters. After sessions, some participants choose to enroll in counseling or support groups—not because anyone forced them, but because they tasted safety and want more of it. In a community where therapy can still carry stigma, a Thursday night song can be the on-ramp to care.
Why Church? Why Here?
For more than a century, APC Morgan Park has been a music hub and a spiritual anchor. In the Black church tradition, the sanctuary has long been where people bring their whole selves—tears, praise, doubt, joy—and leave with the strength to try again. Healing Voices extends that legacy beyond Sunday morning.
Volunteers greet, pray when asked, and offer hugs that say, “You belong.” The church shares space, history, and heart. But Locke is adamant: everybody’s welcome—believer, skeptic, whoever you are.
“Everybody doesn’t go to church,” he said. “But everybody needs healing. And everybody loves music.”
A Theology of Peace (In Practice)
Locke loves the phrase “divine disruption.” In a place where chaos can feel relentless, he defines the divine as anything that interrupts harm with peace.
“For an hour and a half, you get to step out of the trauma,” he told me. “You get sanctuary. You get peace. That’s a divine disruption. And if you carry a little of that peace back to your block, to your family, now the disruption spreads.”
One of the songs the group returns to carries a simple chorus that has become a kind of community prayer:
Healing Voices is one doorway into a wider web of trauma-informed care supported by the CHRC Network and Live Free Illinois. Across sites, offerings include:
Clinical counseling and case management
Individual and group therapy
Support & advocacy groups
Self-care and safety planning
Community events (vigils, canvassing, peace pop-ups)
Somatic practices (from drum circles to creative arts)
Every site lifts what its people do best. At APC Morgan Park, that means music as medicine—and a team trained in compassion and cultural competency to walk with survivors of violence, grief, and generational trauma.
Here’s where I step out of the journalist’s lens for a moment. I don’t just know Zeke as an interview subject—I know him as a brother.
We go back years, to LXW Chicago and Deidre Cannon’s choir, where I first saw his grind and his gift. He’s older than me by a year, and I’ve always looked at him as an older brother—a man whose hustle and heart remind me to keep pushing in my own journey. I’ve seen his resilience up close, how he carries his community even when it would be easier to focus on his career alone.
Zeke motivates me. Not just because of his talent, but because of his commitment. And when I walk into Healing Voices, I don’t just see “participants” or “community members.” I see family. I see a reflection of the same grind and grace I’ve seen in Zeke for years—only now it’s multiplied in a room full of people learning to breathe again.
That’s why this story matters. It’s not abstract. It’s real. It’s personal. It’s love in practice.
What happened on July 3, 2025, was one luminous night. But Locke’s aim is long-term: neighbors who sleep a little easier; men who learn to name sadness before it hardens into rage; teens who see poets, producers, aunties, and elders loving them into their next brave step. Ultimately, he dreams of a day when the community can “live in the freedom and peace” other neighborhoods take for granted—and of the collective courage it takes to get there.
“We’re just one agent in a bigger ecosystem,” Locke said. “But if a song can give somebody two degrees of hope tonight, maybe that’s the degree they need to turn toward help, toward community, toward life.”
The choir swells again in my memory: thunder, then rain. A room exhales. For ninety minutes at a time, peace interrupts the script. And when the last notes fade, people carry that peace into the night—one block, one home, one heart at a time.
If You Go / Get Help
Healing Voices meets on the 2nd & 4th Thursdays, 7:00–8:30 pm at APC Morgan Park, 11401 S Vincennes Ave, Chicago, IL 60643.
CHRC @ APC serves Morgan Park, Roseland, and West Pullman.
To learn more about CHRC services or get involved, visit Live Free Illinois online or stop by the church office during weekday hours.
All quotes in this article are from an interview with Zeke Locke conducted in 2025. Reporting, multimedia, and story by Christopher Tru Hood.