Triumphed Recording Company is a Christian and inspirational music recording label based in Redondo that emerged during the pandemic.

Mark Smith, alongside his wife, Maya Smith, founded the recording label after he began writing Christian music because he couldn’t go to church. Smith was involved in the R&B and rap music scene since the 1990s as a producer. After getting older and growing in his spirituality, he said he got burned out on rap music.

“I’m an adult now. I’m grown up. We’ve got to teach people. We’ve got to be careful with what we say,” Smith said. “I used to be a rap producer, so I’ve heard every curse word in the world every day at one point during a recording session. I got burned out on that, so it was a joy to be able to change even my own language and portray that on paper and on recording.”

Maya Smith said part of their business plan for their label is to invest in their community. She said that as they start, they want to provide low-cost music teaching workshops in the Federal Way community. As they move forward, they want to offer scholarships and free workshops.

She said in their workshops, when they’re teaching music theory and how to play instruments, they don’t want to impose their religious beliefs onto people. But, she said they’re always going ensure that they’re teaching people age-appropriate music, and staying positive.

“The goal is to help young adults that are reaching the age of middle school teenage years to make a good use of their time. To understand that they do have an opportunity in music if they choose to partake and learn about music, because we find that programs have diminished over the years,” Maya Smith said. “For us, when we were growing up, music was always an available option. Now, it’s becoming more prevalent, but it really went away for a long time, and people got away from being able to learn music unless their families could afford to send them to private music lessons.”

Love of music

Mark Smith said that when he was growing up, he was in funk and soul groups, and the music he made was just based on whatever he was feeling at the time. But now, making Christian and inspirational music, he is more careful about the message he portrays through his music.

Smith is the lead singer of one of the label’s groups, Voices of Rejoice, whose style is Christian contemporary. Two other groups under his label are Increase, whose style is more like urban gospel, and Inspiration Fusion, which is a jazz group. He said because their music inspires people to do good, and they’re trying to spread positivity, they wanted to fall under the inspirational genre of music, but they still have other genres that inspire their music.

Smith said he started thinking about starting a label because he wanted to create a positive legacy for his family. Before that, he said he began singing and playing instruments in church as a worship leader, but he never liked singing because he thought he wasn’t good at it. But, after he began singing Christian music, he developed his singing voice, lost his timidity, and gained confidence.

“When it comes to writing gospel and Christian music, I do not run out of ideas ever, for some reason. And I think God blesses us,” Mark Smith said. “He touched my voice to sound better because all of a sudden, all these people said I could sing good, and I couldn’t stand my own voice when I was singing secular music. I just would sing the harmony, fake a couple of leads.”

When the pandemic began, Smith said he started writing his own songs and singing other people’s songs to continue worshipping. But then, he began recording the songs and producing them with their first group, Voices of Rejoice. Their first song, “Nothing Compares to You Lord,” came out with a music video in November 2021. Smith said he had written other Christian songs for his kids in the past, but this was the first one that he was serious about getting it published and copyrighted.

“Being quarantined during the pandemic when we needed to have an income, we had to look at ourselves and say, okay, that job I just had, we can’t even go in anymore, we can’t go to church,” Smith said. “An epiphany just came, and I heard God’s voice say, this is one of the times where you should start a label. Because it came down to, how do you have ownership over your product?”

Smith said moving forward, they’re looking to get their label signed to a major label, and then start doing some tours or concerts with major artists, even if it is just as an opening act. He said they also just want to set an example and do what is right through positive music.