Something to Sing About : Gospel Choirs Compete to Raise Money for College Fund

Chris Jordan faces the choir of the Philadelphia Seventh-day Adventist Church, his hands chopping the air in time to the music. The singers--a couple of dozen of them assembled on the altar steps--are performing an exuberant rehearsal, their hands reaching for the ceiling, knees bouncing furiously, voices resonating, a sort of aerobic exercise for God.

Jordan, a 30-year-old paramedic and classically trained pianist, has been rehearsing the choir every Friday night for months.

The reason: Gospelfest. The Long Beach church’s gospel choir is one of five finalists in the amateur competition Saturday at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Gospel choirs from five counties auditioned for the annual event sponsored by an association of local McDonald’s franchises to raise money for the United Negro College Fund. And three of the five finalists are from Southeast and South-Central Los Angeles County.

The area produces some of the nation’s best gospel performers, said Tina Brown-Robinson, talent coordinator for Gospelfest. “A lot of musicians form choirs in that area. They don’t form ‘em out in the Valley,” she said.

That’s because the South-Central and Southeast areas have a multitude of black churches. “Black churches spawn gospel music. And gospel holds (the black) community together,” Brown-Robinson said.

Since Gospelfest began nearly a decade ago, the number of entrants has increased from a few to more than 50. Although most choir members are African-American, finalists have included white senior citizens, Latinos and Hell’s Angels. Some participants have been former drug addicts and maximum-security prisoners.

As the number of gospel choirs has grown, commercial gospel music has tripled its revenues from $180 million in 1980 to $500 million in 1990, according to the Gospel Music Assn. in Nashville. That growth has coincided with a nationwide growth in religious fundamentalism, said Roosevelt Christmas Jr., a Cerritos resident who directs Alternatives Ltd., a Los Angeles choir that is also a Gospelfest finalist.

“It’s the time we’re living in,” said Christmas, who was a nightclub singer and recording artist for years. He attributes the return to fundamentalism to “the moral deterioration of the ‘70s and ‘80s. It used to be sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, love the one you’re with. The attitude toward values is turning itself around. The whole country is coming back to family values . . . It’s a general Christian movement that doesn’t have much to do with race.”

Choir director Jordan agrees with Christmas. “These are troubled, bad times. There’s a need for love and hope in the future, and gospel gives us that,” Jordan said.

Under Jordan’s direction, the Long Beach choir made Gospelfest’s semifinals last year. This year, he wants to win.

Choir members gather for rehearsal every week, and most come directly from work--in a nurse’s uniform, a shirt with a name patch on the pocket, a plaid blazer. Others wear jeans, T-shirts, tennis shoes, sandals.

Before the singing begins, Jordan gathers the choir under the shadow of an American flag and a plain, wooden cross. They hold hands, bow heads and a few members give thanks for the congregation’s emotional support in their efforts to continue schooling and to find jobs--as a teacher, a receptionist, a medical technician.

During the prayer session, Jordan confesses his desire to win Gospelfest.

“Is there anything wrong with that?” he asks. “The problem would be if we won and didn’t give God credit. In winning, we will not change our purpose. We’ll sing for everybody we can. And if we lose, we won’t change how we do our business, the Lord’s business--to win souls for Christ.”

“Amen!” a few choir members shoot back.

Singing gospel “gives us a feeling that what we’re doing makes a difference,” Jordan explains later. “I know it sounds trite . . . but one of the greatest things is to give and not get anything back, to sing and not expect anything in return. That’s what motivates the choir and keeps me going.”

Gospel traces its roots to spirituals, sung by African-Americans to cope with slavery. They worshiped in the fields with song and communicated in musical metaphors, a sort of code to confuse slave owners, said Gospelfest’s Brown. In the 1920s, gospel’s creators blended blues chords, jazz rhythms and emotional, religious fervor to produce “a lot of thump and feeling that’s telling a message,” she said.

In “One Morning Soon,” one of two songs that the Long Beach choir will perform in the competition, “they talk about escaping from slavery. In hearing the angels sing, they could escape the oppression. Now we feel a different type of oppression and problems,” Jordan said.

“The message is plain and simple. It’s a message of overcoming, of being strong with ourselves and with God. That same message has stayed throughout the years,” he said. “We don’t necessarily have slavery, but there is a perception of oppression--with Rodney King and the police beatings. The message is being able to overcome oppression, the same as we overcame slavery.”

For some, the church--and gospel music--provides a safe refuge. Al Johnson, 21, lives in Lynwood and directs the gospel choir at Greater Evangelist Temple in South-Central, another finalist. In high school, Johnson rarely went to church. But he said the trauma of seeing gang shootings and friends die “made me look at my life. I needed safety and the only safety I found was in God.”

More and more members of the twentysomething and baby boom generations are looking for spiritual values in the church and listening to gospel music, said Christmas.

“I’m a good example of that,” he said. During the 1970s, “I was a Christian but the farthest thing from my mind was going to church.” Christmas said his life as a secular musician was “in the entertainment fast lane. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I made a lot of money. I was getting lots of pats on the back, but it wasn’t fulfilling for me. I felt alone.”

Christmas went back to his roots: the church.

“Once you’re in the church, you use the talent God gave you. Gospel is an expression of the black community because church is at the center of the black community.”

The secular stakes are also high at Gospelfest: In the past, winning choirs have launched successful careers, appearing on television, signing contracts and performing with such acts as Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan.

“Our single hope for the future is dedicated to spreading joy and cheer, to giving a sense of hope to our community and our neighborhood,” said Jordan. “Of course we want to win. We’re there to win. We practiced to win.”

NEXT STEP

Gospelfest will raise money for the United Negro College Fund; Shrine Auditorium, 649 W. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles; 7:30 p.m. Saturday; tickets $18 and $12 at Ticketmaster, (213) 480-3232, and on the day of the performance at the auditorium.