All That & Jazz

 By Vincent F.A. Golphin

The first few notes stretch out smooth and mellow, a saxophone sound. One is reminded of 1950s late-night-session recordings of jazz giants, such as the late Charlie Parker. The plaintive melody seduces as quickly as a glimpse at the musician on the CD album cover. Then, the listener realizes something is very different about both.

The song is "Love Lifted Me," an old hymn, polished, primped and prepped for jazz fans. All 15 tunes on solo saxophonist Angélla Christie's latest album, Hymn & I, are gospel standards. The passionate energy beneath the finely executed riffs shows she's pretty into God herself. Without looking at a biography or reading the liner notes, anyone with an ear for jazz can grasp the sensuous fervor in the all-instrumental versions of "Solid Rock" and "Great is Thy Faithfulness" or "I Surrender All." The difference is she calls it gospel, not jazz.

Since the 1930s, when Chicago bluesman Thomas A. Dorsey brought the sounds of the streets into the temple, gospel music has kept pace with popular musical trends. The Rev. Charles Albert Tindley, father of gospel music, shaped the expressive form as a blend of the spirituals, European hymns and black themes around the turn of the century. Yet, can jazz really be gospel music?

Is gospel music jazz?

Experts say many musical styles fit under the jazz and gospel umbrellas. That might be so, but where's the line?

"The purpose of this album was to let everyone know that I'm unequivocally very concerned and love gospel music," Christie said in a telephone interview from the Decatur, Georgia, office of Angélla Christie Sound Ministries. Best known in church circles, the up-and-coming sax player has racked up a reputation for excellence and Christian devotion, sharing stages with Kirk Franklin, Shirley Caesar, BeBe & CeCe Winans, Ron Kenoly and Helen Baylor and pop jazz saxman Najee.

"There's a gray area for some people," she said, referring to those who question where to place her sultry instrumental sound. Christie puts it squarely in the pews.

"Jazz has been a part of gospel about as long as jazz has been a part of this culture," said Henry Panion III, chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham music department and a producer for the recently established University of Alabama at Birmingham Entertainment, a production company. One of UABE's latest releases is a mixed bag of sacred and secular instrumentals by Tekneek, a local jazz fusion sextet.

"I'm saying you'll find the structure of jazz harmonies and improvisation in gospel. Most musicians who do jazz well got their early experience playing in churches," says the professor of music theory. Yet, when pressed to label Tekneek's new album, Point of View gospel or jazz, Panion puts the CD squarely in the realm of jazz.

"We were not necessarily trying to put out a contemporary Christian product. However, I am a Christian and have had experience working with contemporary Christian artists, classical and pop artists," said Panion, who worked as executive producer with jazz gospel instrumentalist Ben Tankard on Point of View. Tankard, who heads his own Ben-Jamin' Music label, produced and arranged the 10-song instrumental collection of original secular tunes, such as Point of View and Intimate Strings and better-known hits such as Stevie Wonder's Superstition, BeBe & CeCe Winans' Heaven and Tomorrow by The Winans.

"It's almost like what Kirk Franklin has done," Panion said. "People like jazz. As opposed to doing a remake of your favorite pop artists or a popular love tune, I wanted to do a remake of a popular Christian tune. Christians like jazz, too."

Those who purchase the album will see clearly in the liner notes that four of the six members of Tekneek are openly Christian. Keyboardist Kelvin Benion, bassist Maurice Jones, drummer Jeff Perry, and guitarist, composer and preacher's son Anthony Howze, declare their love and gratitude toward God for the project's successful completion. Panion said that is to be expected. The best training ground for jazz is the church. As an example, he mentioned a young pianist he discovered during his doctoral studies at Ohio State University.

Panion noticed the young man's playing during a music workshop in New York City. "I couldn't believe it," he said. He told the head of OSU's jazz program, "You owe it to yourself to hear this kid play." The young man came to the Columbus campus on a visit and was offered a full scholarship in the jazz program on the spot.

"I had on some Oscar Peterson," Panion explained. "Upstairs I had a piano. He went upstairs and began to play what he was just hearing on the album."

Panion, who teaches music theory, said playing in black churches, particularly Pentecostal, trains the ear and fosters the ability to play whatever people sing. "Those are the improvisational skills that people get that you don't get anywhere else."

Dwight Andrews, an Emory University jazz studies teacher and artistic director for Atlanta's National Black Arts Festival, said African Americans don't have any sacred performance forms that are different from our secular forms. "The same way Aretha would shout in church, she would shout on an R&B tune," he explained.

Panion concurs: "I've come across so many singers-like Daryll Coley or Vanessa Bell Armstrong. When you hear people like that sing, they can sing any day of the week. I promise you, if that is not jazz, I don't know what is."

Linda F. Williams, an ethnomusicologist and jazz saxophonist who teaches at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, said, "The line between what makes music sacred and the other genres secular has to do with differences in their functional requirements."

Andrews describes those as context and text. "The words that are said and the context are the primary criteria because the actual performance factors, the keyboards or the riffs a saxophonist might play, are not that different in terms of gospel versus jazz or gospel versus R&B," he explained. "In a sense, gospel music has its roots in the same place as jazz. There has always been a very uncomfortable alliance between the two. It has to do with the fact that the music-what people are playing-is virtually the same."

"The roots of the two are so much the same, you see the same personnel in the beginning," Williams continues. "Thomas Dorsey, of course, had his roots in the popular music of the day. That's one of the reasons people (in the church) had a hard time accepting him because they knew his relationship with the classic blues singers of the '20s. That tension has been throughout gospel because gospel has always been at the heart of what was going on in terms of popular music practice. It's made more complicated now because the context has become more complicated by the various technological means of presenting it. If you watch any of these big religious shows now, there's a whole band, not just a gospel choir. There are very, very skilled musicians who can play virtually any style you put in front of them."

Panion said it's a new trend. "As far as separating instrumentals, in using instrumentals that are classified as jazz arrangements," he said. "Not only that, but taking tunes that are familiar to the Christian community and making instrumental arrangements of them with improvisation is a new thing, especially to the point where entire albums are put out in mass with that done. What I'm saying is that this is more of an evolution."

Christie said sacred or secular excellence is the goal. "When I came up, there was a distinction between what was sacred and what was secular," said the daughter of two Church of God in Christ missionaries. "Everything that is secular is not necessarily negative. It's just not sacred." She sees the defining element as the music's aim to "glorify God." That's her avowed mission.

The Rev. Walrick Christie, pastor of Abilene, Texas' Bethel Church of God in Christ, and his wife, Catherine, probably marvel at the deeply religious sentiments of their middle child. Angélla was the third of five siblings. By her own admission, during the early teen years, she gave her folks a tough time. At 12, she spent a year in the church-related Rebecca Home for Girls near Corpus Christi.

"I wasn't in Rebecca for criminal activity or drugs," she said. "It was simply for having a mind of my own." That strength of will led her to dedicate her life to Christ.

Christie said she was at a Christian youth gathering in Los Angeles with several teenagers from different denominations. They began to debate which church was best. "It was then that I made up my mind," she said. "I exxed denominationalism, but I raised Christ in my life and in my mind. I gave my life to the Lord completely at 17."

More than a decade later, Christie, who holds degrees in music and social work from Houston Baptist University, is a 12-year veteran, engaged in a global music ministry.

"What do you do when God calls and the record companies don't?" she asked. "I really didn't know anything about establishing a ministry, recording an album or booking dates, but I knew I couldn't negate the calling or wait for a record company to confirm it."

Christie has one goal: To tell everyone about Jesus.

"As far as skill, I wanted to be a good saxophonist, comparable to the secular musicians," she recalled. "I believe talent often opens the door and listening ear."

Working with her older brother, Girvin, Christie took her musical gifts to a wide range of churches. She has been featured at national gatherings for the Church of God in Christ, the Full Gospel Baptist Church, the North American Baptist Women's Union and the Women of Promise. The alto sax player has headlined even secular gatherings, such as the National Black Family Reunion, the National Association of Black Journalists convention and the Urban League's annual benefit. The highlights of her career included an appearance at the National Baptist Convention USA convocation, where she performed for President Clinton and the 1997 Woman Thou Art Loosed Conference of Bishop T. D. Jakes.

Hymn & I, released in August, is Christie's second national release on the Atlanta International Records label. The first, Eternity (1996), was her fourth recorded collection, also on AIR. Her discography also includes independent productions, Walk With Me (1991), It Is Well (1987), Rejoice (1986) and Because He Lives (1985).

Christie said she has turned down several offers to "crossover" to the more lucrative secular jazz world. That's not unique. BeBe & CeCe Winans and other top gospel artists have dipped a toe into the deeper waters of mainstream music. Likewise, pop diva Whitney Houston showed she could rock God's house in "The Preacher's Wife." That's the true beauty of music - the only barriers faced by those who make it are in their hearts.