Heavenly Harmony : L.A. Convention Center Resounds With Songs of Salvation as Gospel Music Workshop of America Holds Annual Convention

The infectious gospel music cascading from the Los Angeles Convention Center’s cavernous Exhibit Hall K this week drew the faithful and the curious.

Inside, a 3,000-voice mass choir was rehearsing songs it will record Friday--a highlight of the Gospel Music Workshop of America’s 28th annual convention, which wraps up Saturday.

More than 10,000 members of the workshop have descended on Los Angeles from nearly every state in the union as well as from England, Japan and the Bahamas to unabashedly make a joyful noise with spirited music that moves its listeners without regard for race, creed or color.

In a hall next to the mass choir rehearsal, music and merchandising come together as exhibitors do a brisk business in T-shirts, books, sheet music, recordings, jewelry, clothing, cosmetics.

As delegates renew old friendships with warm embraces, a common response to “How are you?” is an earnest “I’m blessed, tremendously blessed.”

One fast-selling T-shirt warns the devil to watch out because “I’m too blessed to be stressed.”

Another shirt advises: “No Jesus, No Peace” on its front. The back reads: “Know Jesus, Know Peace.”

Small, independent gospel music labels hawk compact discs featuring their talent roster, and larger recording companies and producers are drawn to the annual event where they can scout a seemingly endless stream of talent.

“Record companies court the workshop,” said Steven Roberts of Hayward in Northern California, who helps coordinate the mass choir, which is formed for a week each year by convention delegates and produces a recording that is later released worldwide. “This is a multimillion-dollar business.”

And every day, virtually all day, there is music in workshops, rehearsals and performances.

“Gospel music is moving into all cultures, and we’re trying to give everybody a chance to participate,” Roberts said.

The mass choir, for instance, “is full of music directors from all over the world,” he said. “What they hear here, they take back.”

The concept of a mass choir was pioneered by the workshop’s founder, the late Rev. James Cleveland, who made huge throngs of singers a gospel staple.

Workshop board member Shirley Berkley is directing this year’s mass choir, negotiating what would appear to be a logistic nightmare with a combination of determination, energy, cajoling and earthy sarcasm.

“Is a B-flat on y’all’s music?” she asked when she heard a wrong note. The choir began again:

Lord I’m available,

Willing to serve you . . .

Seated among the singers were several whose identification badges said “East Alabama Chapter,” but their names and accents had a distinct Japanese ring.

Karori Hayashi, 21, and Miko Iwashita, 22, are among a group of gospel singers and musicians from Tokyo at this year’s convention, courtesy of the workshop’s East Alabama Chapter.

“Gospel music is incredibly popular in Tokyo,” said Ronald Rucker, who trains gospel singers in Japan. Rucker and the Japanese musicians were invited to attend the convention as East Alabama delegates after that chapter’s president conducted a workshop in Tokyo.

“We brought 12 people, but we could have brought 40,” Rucker said. “We just couldn’t get the airline tickets. Next year we’ll sing at the convention--a first for a Japanese choir.”

A group of delegates from Texas also had problems with airline tickets, and their faith was tested when they turned up at the airport in Dallas only to find that their tickets had been canceled. They had bought them through a travel agent, but their money never reached the airlines, said Donald Lynch of Tyler, Tex.

“About 40 members had to come up with another $480 for their tickets,” he said. “Our spirits were down, but once we arrived, we were revived. We knew the Lord would work it out.”

Lynch’s fellow Texan Joe McNeil echoed that faith. “God is good all the time,” he said. To which Lynch quickly responded: “And all the time God is good.”

Cleveland, acknowledged in gospel music circles as “King James,” founded the Gospel Music Workshop of America in Detroit in 1968 to promote and preserve the musical tradition. The organization has since grown to about 200 chapters with more than 20,000 members, staffers said.

The first gospel performer to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Cleveland won four Grammys, had six gold albums, played Carnegie Hall and collaborated with Aretha Franklin on her seminal 1972 album, “Amazing Grace,” which is often credited with generating renewed interest in gospel.

Cleveland’s stature ensured that giants of gospel--Shirley Caesar, Andrae Crouch, Tremaine Hawkins, Albertina Walker--regularly showed up at conventions. Even now, music directors from small churches in rural areas are drawn by the prospect of rubbing shoulders with and learning from gospel’s established stars.

“Rev. Cleveland traveled the world and found that singers and musicians had no way to get their music exposed,” Roberts said. He founded the workshop, in part, to correct that, Roberts said.

Workshop veterans spend hours at various displays in the exhibits area listening to CDs by new groups or just watching talented musicians try out instruments on sale.

“That boy over there can play the keys off the piano,” one delegate observed as a youngster passed by. A group quickly fell in behind the young man as he headed toward an exhibit of electric keyboards.

A young woman was running through powerful gospel chord changes on one keyboard until Richard D’Abreu, 25, of Boston began a virtuoso, impromptu performance at another, showing off his gospel/jazz fusion style.

D’Abreu, musical director at Massachusetts Avenue Baptist Church in Cambridge, Mass., was at the convention looking for a recording contract for his 10-member group, Persuaded.

“It’s a good place to network,” he said. “You can find out what’s happening all over the country, and you can meet important people in the industry.”

So in awe of D’Abreu’s talent were other musicians that as he played, their nearby keyboards fell silent. D’Abreu, who studied music at Brown University and at Boston’s Berklee School of Music, accepted their compliments with grace and good humor, telling wide-eyed onlookers: “Actually, saxophone is my principal instrument.”