Gospel on the Menu

Sunday in Harlem. The pianist warms up with a forceful touch on the keys. Then, with a pleasant smile, the Rev. Andrea Vereen takes the mike and swings into the morning’s songs. First up, “This Little Light of Mine.” Her contralto is strong, with a warm vibrato, as well suited to rousing Pentecostal interpretations as to the softer style of “Amazing Grace” and Billie Holiday’s jazzy “God Bless the Child.”

In between songs, she calls out in praise and prayer: “I know everything’s gonna be all right! Woooo! Oh! Woooo! Oh! Somebody put their hands together for me now!” And she lights into “Gonna Be All Right”--”Just say . . . all right . . . wheeee! Be all right! Thank you, Jesus!”

When she winds up with the anthem, “Amen,” we all know we have been told, as the expression goes in the gospel world.

But this isn’t a church service, though many of us feel joyously moved. It is Sunday brunch at Copeland’s, a restaurant in Harlem, where for $15.95 the customer is fed body and soul--a Bloody Mary included.

The gospel brunch was born 13 years ago when a midtown Manhattan restaurant, Lola’s, hired singers from Pentecostal and Baptist churches in Queens and Brooklyn to entertain at Sunday brunch. It was such a hit that Lola’s had to expand the brunch to accommodate three seatings.

A few years later, the gospel brunch surfaced in Harlem, where it has become an entertaining postscript to serious Sunday morning churchgoing.

While people of all races and faiths enjoy gospel brunches, European and Japanese fans of American music, especially jazz, seem to predominate among the tourists. For New Yorkers, the music definitely provides a respite from the intense pace of life on weekdays. The catchy hymns and spirituals give people a chance to let their hair down and dance, pray, cry and laugh all at the same time.

Word of mouth helped spread Lola’s reputation. “Be sure to go to Lola’s on Sundays,” tourists returning home have told their friends setting out for vacations in New York.

Lately, the shine on New York’s image as a cleaner, safer tourist destination than before has given Harlem a similar boost.

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Bus tours of historic Harlem have been popular for a long time, taking tourists to such sites as Duke Ellington’s home on Sugar Hill, Alexander Hamilton’s house and the Jumel Mansion, where George Washington briefly had a headquarters. A high point, especially for African American tourists, is the First Abyssinian Baptist Church and its world-famous choir.

(Abyssinian Baptist is not on the Sunday bus tours of Harlem churches; tourist groups posed a crowding problem. Also, some churches want to avoid the interruption of large groups coming and going for just the music portions of worship services that can last for several hours.)

When the restaurants began offering Sunday gospel brunches, several bus tours added them to their itineraries.

“Sunday in Harlem is very hot with the tourists,” says Larcelia Kebe, who founded Harlem Your Way, which has been offering bus and walking tours since 1982. “It’s great for the churches,” Kebe says. “And those customers who feel they haven’t had enough of church” seek out the gospel brunches afterward.

However, white New Yorkers seldom go on these tours unless they are playing host to someone from out of town, says Peggy Taylor, a multilingual African American who is a guide for Harlem Spirituals tours.

Gospel’s new trendiness seems to reflect a growing interest in African American culture, although jazz fans around the world have always made Harlem a must stop on U.S. visits. Europeans were the first to take jazz seriously as an art form. The gospel brunches and Harlem church tours show that religious music is both father and mother of jazz, blues, R&B; and rock ‘n’ roll.

Gospel music--the highly charged, creative, exalting, often physical expression of faith in song--developed in African American churches. For a long time most of them rejected the embellishments of their Pentecostal brethren’s music, with its liberal use of drums, tambourines and other instruments. Blues singers adapted gospel music, giving it secular lyrics. The blues tonality and song form, with its call and response traditions taken from the churches, became a basis for jazz.

It all comes full circle in the repertoire of gospel brunch singers such as Andrea Vereen, who moves easily from “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” to “When the Saints Come Marching In.” The music expresses her talent as a professional performer as well as her religious commitment; raised in her father’s Episcopal church in Brooklyn, she has her own Pentecostal mission church in Queens.

The one odd note in a gospel brunch is hearing church music where liquor is served. The queen of gospel song, Mahalia Jackson, surely would have objected; she never sang in nightclubs. But drinkers aren’t the backbone of the gospel brunch business; the allure is the music, and the opportunity to join hands with strangers to celebrate it.

Gospel brunch prices range from modest to middling. At Lola’s, one price, $29.75, covers the show and the food, sumptuous portions of fried chicken or trendier menu items in an airy, pastel-colored room with a back wall made up entirely of windows.

In Harlem, the fare is primarily soul food.

At Copeland’s, on West 145th Street, $15.95 buys a taste of everything--refills, too--from a big, long buffet table piled with old favorites such as baked ham, hush puppies, fried catfish, salmon croquettes, scrambled eggs, potato salad and a real novelty, chicken wings with corn bread stuffing, with a complimentary Bloody Mary or mimosa cocktail.

At the Cotton Club on West 125th, the fare is classic, as befits the latest incarnation of the legendary nightspot. For $25, you can’t go wrong with the hearty, even hefty, brunch of fried chicken, ribs, black-eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, yams and collard greens seasoned with pork.

Sylvia’s, over on the former Lenox Avenue (now Malcolm X Boulevard), cooks its very tasty collard greens with smoked turkey wings. But the smothered chicken gets my vote. Prices on the open menu range from $8.95 to $18.

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Each restaurant has its own concept of the proper ambience for gospel music. Lola’s is elegant, Copeland’s is sedate, Sylvia’s is trendy. At the Cotton Club, the walls are lined with photos of old-time headliners such as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and many others.

It’s safe for couples and small groups to travel on their own to these Harlem clubs, especially during daytime. In general, yellow taxis, which service midtown Manhattan, don’t often pick up fares in Harlem, where car services and gypsy cabs take care of business. The restaurants will call car services for customers. Prices of car services, gypsy cabs and yellow taxis are about the same. A ride from Sylvia’s to Times Square costs about $13 including tip.

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GUIDEBOOK

New York for a Song

Brunches: Lola’s, 30 W. 22nd St., Manhattan; telephone (212) 675-6700. Sunday seatings at 9:30 and 11:30 a.m., 1:45 p.m. Price: $29.75.

Copeland’s, 547 W. 145th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, Harlem; tel. (212) 234-2356. Sunday seatings at noon, 2 p.m. Show and buffet $19.66 per person, includes tax and cocktail.

Cotton Club, 656 W. 125th St., between Broadway and Riverside Drive, Harlem; tel. (212) 663-7980, fax (212) 663-6879. Gospel brunches Saturdays and Sundays, noon, 2:30 and 6 p.m. Price: $25.

Sylvia’s, 328 Malcolm X Blvd. between 126th and 127th streets, Harlem; tel. (212) 996-0660. Sunday gospel brunch, 12:30-3 p.m.; evening open-mike gospel performances, 7:30-10:30 p.m. Brunch, open menu, $8.95-$18.

Tour companies: Harlem Spirituals (690 8th Ave., between 43rd and 44th streets, Manhattan; tel. [212] 391-0900). Offers multilingual tours. Wednesday and Sunday morning tours visit churches for gospel services, then Sylvia’s restaurant on Wednesdays (lunch only; no live music), and the Cotton Club on Sundays for gospel brunch. Tour with brunch, $60, adults; without brunch, $33. Credit cards accepted only with advance payment. Reservations advised.

Harlem Your Way (129 W. 130th St., Harlem; tel. [212] 690-1687, fax [212] 866-7133) conducts tours of Harlem daily, including historic neighborhoods, churches and Sunday gospel brunches. Rates: $35, Sunday church and neighborhood bus tour; $32, walking tour; lower rates for seniors, children, college students; tour plus brunch: $55-$60, depending on restaurant. Reservations necessary.

Grey Line Tours (Port Authority Bus Terminal, 8th Avenue at 42nd Street, Manhattan; tel. [212] 397-2600, [212] 695-0001). Sunday tours of Harlem neighborhoods and one church service start at terminal at 9 a.m. (multilingual at 8:30) and return at noon; will drop off passengers who want to attend a gospel brunch on their own. No reservations needed. Tours in English, $33 for adults, $24 for children under 12; multilingual, $1 more.