Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia lead to a syndrome of cognitive and functional decline that ends in death. Health sciences research has identified loneliness and social isolation as major dementia risk factors. Current counseling of older adults includes recommendations for social engagement to mitigate loneliness and social isolation, including a health-focused intervention to increase dementia awareness among Black/African-American faith communities. Ethnomusicological research has identified myriad ways in which the expression of faith through music supports personal well-being and social engagement. Yet the two bodies of knowledge rarely intersect. In this paper, we integrate health sciences and ethnomusicology perspectives in a secondary analysis of a four-year longitudinal ethnography of Pentecostal, Baptist, and non-denominational African-American women in churches in the San Joaquin Valley, California, to show how gospel music performance may reduce loneliness and social isolation. Older women in these congregations used gospel as a central site for demonstrating resilience, forming communal bonds, and enacting perseverance. Gospel musicking served as a form of intergenerational storytelling, spiritual and cultural transmission, and, with continued engagement, a means of reinforcing important memories. As a spiritual resource, gospel musicking supported emotional-well-being, replacing feelings of loneliness with a sense of belonging. We recontextualize these findings within the National Institutes of Health Science of Behavior Change framework to demonstrate the potential for gospel music to function as a dementia risk-reduction strategy and to lay a path forward for studying the impact of faith-based musicking on cognitive health.