Sam Rocha – Featured Artist - My Catholic Tshirt

Sam Rocha is an academic, author, and musician. His interests involve and revolve — and evolve — around philosophy, music, and religion. In philosophy, his work is in the philosophy of education as it intersects with the life and thought of William James, an odd brand of Augustinian personalism, “folk phenomenology,” and Latin/American philosophy. In music, he sings and plays guitar, performing blues, soul, Latin jazz, and folk music (especially Mexican folk music). In religion, he writes and speaks about Catholicism and religious culture and experience. These three main interests, intersect frequently, and constantly. He is a husband and a father: he and his wife have two young boys, Tomas and Gabriel, and a precious daughter, Sofia.

On August 28, 2014, Wiseblood Records released our inaugural collection of music, Late to Love, by Sam Rocha. Late to Love is musically inspired by the genealogy of soul music that scans the genres of spirituals, folk, gospel, country, R&B, blues, funk, jazz, hip-hop, neo-soul and nu-jazz. T-Bone Walker, Ray Charles, Gil Scott Heron, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, and Curtis Mayfield—with dashes of Willie Nelson and Pat Metheny—are the old foundation for something entirely new: Augustinian soul music.

“Late to Love is an original concept album that performs a reading of Augustine’s Confessions through soul music. It is not a generic ode to a saint or holy person, nor it is a neutral and uncontroversial celebration of an important ancient book. From beginning to end Rocha offers a bold and fresh reading of Augustine’s Confessions where the form is the content, where melody and verse take the place of assertions and argument.”