Mainstream Getting On the Gospel Train

With the faithful gathered in their brightly colored Sunday best, Ange Buckingham belts out yet another soulful gospel standard in a gravelly praise-the-Lord voice sure to rock the heavens.

Sounding like a modern-day Mahalia Jackson, Buckingham leads her two-man backup band, gliding easily from an upbeat rendition of “Amazing Grace” to “This Little Light of Mine” as two dozen celebrants move in unison, each starting to sweat through their clothes.

Which is exactly what they have come to do.

Because in this hall of worship, the regular get-up isn’t suits and skirts but spandex, sneakers and leg-warmers: It’s a trendy Hollywood fitness center featuring the Sunday morning “Gospel Moves” aerobics class.

“Gospel music has gotten people sweating and moving and rejoicing in churches for hundreds of years,” said the 33-year-old Buckingham, a compact, muscular aerobics instructor. “So, why not in gyms?”

Down the street at the House of Blues nightclub, the seven-member Mighty Sons of Glory take the stage before a crowd of hand-raising, Hallelujah-crying, dancing-at-their-seats Japanese tourists reaching out to the musicians as though this were some second coming of the Beatles. It’s the club’s 3-year-old Sunday gospel brunch.

Gospel music’s raw energy and vocal interplay has had a strong following for decades, primarily among African Americans. It long ago made its mark on popular culture when singers like Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding blended the dramatic gospel of their childhoods with rhythm and blues to create “soul music” in the mid-1960s.

But now, an ever-widening international audience is stomping its feet and joining its hands as the music moves from the confines of black churches to venues attracting all races, religions and musical sensibilities.

From dance clubs and community centers to concert halls and local theme parks, gospel has become the new music of choice for both religious and non-churchgoing music enthusiasts.

Along with a growing number of gospel brunches featuring a menu of authentic Southern-style cooking, there are gospel shows playing to packed houses--not only at the Shrine Auditorium, but at the Wiltern Theater and the Great Western Forum.

The growing popularity of black gospel music--which has its roots in the sorrowful slave spirituals of more than a century ago, and later in soulful-sounding church choirs throughout the American South--has been sparked by recent crossover hits by singers such as Kirk Franklin. Signs of gospel’s emergence as a cultural force trickle as far down as that corporate advertisement you hear on the radio, in which a gospel singer and choir fervently urge you to dial a particular phone number when you make your collect calls.

“People are finally learning not to be afraid of gospel, that it’s not going to bite them,” said Frank Breeden, president of the Gospel Music Assn. in Nashville, Tenn. “Because it’s not just for the church or choir lessons. Gospel is spreading to every walk of people’s lives: The gym. The rock club. The beach. Even for washing your car.”

Influences Even Hip-Hop

You could always find gospel music on black-oriented AM radio. But today you can turn your dial to most any urban music station, AM or FM, and hear songs with a gospel inflection: There’s jazzy gospel, rhythm and blues gospel, even hip-hop gospel--a funky urban fusion of rap and church chants.

There are gospel aerobics tapes and gospel-inflected jogging cassettes. Gospel-themed plays are being staged at local theaters and neighborhood centers.

Among young people--some of whom are saying that violent “gangsta rap” music is moving out of fashion--there are special non-alcohol nightclubs and skating parties where gospel is an important part of the musical mix.

Gospel music has also become a vibrant part of the sound at the hippest dance clubs. It’s part of the sound parade at Disneyland. Along the crowded Venice Beach boardwalk, in-line skaters wow crowds with choreographed routines set in part to the rhythmic strains of gospel.

Kirk Franklin’s debut CD in 1994 was the first formal gospel record to crack Billboard magazine’s R&B; Top 10 since Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” in 1972. His new CD’s first single, “Stomp,” which talks about holding a “Holy Ghost party” and “getting a church thing going on,” became a top request on urban radio, and its video received heavy rotation on MTV--another unprecedented feat in the gospel world.

The packed-house success of the gospel brunches at the House of Blues has inspired some far-afield requests for the music, according to Sylvia St. James, the national gospel-brunch coordinator for the chain of music clubs.

“I’ve been asked to bring gospel to everything from corporate meetings of insurance companies to local golf tournaments,” she said. “We even placed two gospel groups on a recent episode of ‘Mad TV.’ It’s incredible. I’m already getting calls from big talent agencies looking for acts for the year-end holiday season. It looks like it’s gonna be a gospel Christmas this year.”

Officials at Disneyland, one of a number of theme parks nationwide that have incorporated the gospel sound, say that a particular crowd pleaser is the gospel score played to the Hercules victory parade at the park.

On Saturday, Disneyland co-sponsored a gospel music festival at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, joining McDonald’s, which has sponsored the charity event for the past 12 years.

“So far, the sky is the limit for this music,” said Bruce Healey, senior music director at Disneyland. “It’s so infectious, so easy for people to grab onto, who wouldn’t want to hear it?”

One reason for the resurgence, said Dana Tascher, chairman of the Century City-based Praise Today, one of several nonprofit groups devoted to spreading the music, is that “the alternative is the music that glorifies sex and drugs. The message in gospel is that I personally will have a better tomorrow. That’s what everyone has turned on to, as much as the inspiring rhythm of the music . . . the meaning behind it.”

The Father of Gospel

Modern gospel boasts a founding father who at the height of his career made a rather bizarre musical about-face: Thomas A. Dorsey had made his mark as a young blues pianist performing in bawdy saloons and bordellos.

In 1923, the accompanist for blues singer Ma Rainey hit the top of the blues charts on his own with “It’s Tight Like That,” a suggestive song that sold more than 7 million copies. Then Dorsey, who went under the name Georgia Tom, had a spiritual change of heart.

Georgia Tom got religion.

Hearing a chorus sing a spiritual at the National Baptist Convention in Chicago, the son of a Baptist minister left behind that part of his life he later referred to as his “sinful days.”

Then Dorsey went to work writing a new type of song.

“He took the popular form of music, the verse and chorus, grafted on lyrics and called them gospel songs,” said Bruce Nemerov, director of the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University.

“He circulated them to black churches and initially got some resistance because of his history as a blues artist. But the music was so moving, it just caught on.”

In 1932, gospel became the music of choice at Chicago’s Pilgrim Baptist Church, the first National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses was held, and the first gospel publishing company, Dorsey House, was founded.

By the time of his death, Dorsey had written more than 1,000 gospel pieces, roughly one out of every four modern gospel standards.

His best-known gospel song, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” was written after he learned that his wife had died during childbirth in Chicago. Looking for comfort, he sat at a piano and the words of the song simply dropped into place:

“Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on. Let me stand.”

By the 1940s and ‘50s, Dorsey’s songs had become as popular in white churches as in black churches in the segregated South. “Take My Hand” later became a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The song, made famous by Mahalia Jackson, who once toured with Dorsey, has been translated into more than 50 languages.

Another Dorsey classic, “(There’ll Be) Peace in the Valley,” has been recorded by everyone from Aretha Franklin to Elvis Presley.

In time, gospel began finding its way into popular music. Beginning with Sam Cooke in the mid-1950s, scores of singers who grew up in the church and started their careers singing gospel scored crossover hits, sometimes with only minimal changes in the lyrics; it was a short jump from “Save me, Jesus” to “Soothe me, baby.”

Strikes Chord With Crowds

The lead singer of the Mighty Sons of Glory looks deep into the House of Blues crowd and invites the audience to climb aboard the new musical express.

“Are ya ready to hop onto the gospel train?” he calls. “Let me hear ya say ‘Whoooo! Whoooo!’ ” he says as a dozen young girls rush the stage, clapping their hands, heeding the call.

“Whoooo! Whoooo!” they cry.

“Tell me people, if you’re a child of God, let me hear you say, ‘Yeah!’ ”

The crowd, which started the show unsure of the music, is now on its feet, thundering: “Yeah!”

Gasps one clapping woman: “This is fantastic. I want to do this every Sunday. My hands hurt.”

Another audience member, Toronto filmmaker Jim Borecki, recalled shooting a film about a 13-year-old gospel organist in New Orleans not long ago when the music suddenly took over his body.

“I put my camera down to concentrate on the music and was suddenly overcome with emotion,” he recalled. “Within a few minutes, I was crying. I’ve never been so overwhelmed by music before. Gospel does that.”

At Crunch Gym, Ange Buckingham has both men and women working up a spiritual sweat. As her husband plays drums, Buckingham sings along and invites students to do the same.

Gym officials approached Buckingham last year with the idea of putting aerobics to gospel. Knowing her background as a church singer, they asked her to give it a try.

“I thought, ‘Now how am I gonna do aerobics to gospel?’ ” she said. “I grew up in the church and I knew gospel was soothing, but it was never anything that made me want to get up and exercise.”

She talked to her musician husband, Chris. “And he said ‘Oh, that’s easy. Just change the beat,’ ” she said. “Now the music moves along. It’s such an uplifting rhythm to work out to.”

There are no actual prayers said during Gospel Moves, and the class has no specific religious component, but Buckingham says people weary of the old Donna Summer exercise routine standbys are particularly moved by the new music.

Says a breathless actress, Sara Leese, as she moves her feet to the gospel beat: “Really, I’m not religious about anything. But I’m religious about this.”