{"id":18159,"date":"2023-12-15T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=18159"},"modified":"2023-12-15T08:02:14","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T08:02:14","slug":"the-soul-of-gospel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2023\/12\/15\/the-soul-of-gospel\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SOUL OF GOSPEL"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Live Gospel Music<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teatro San Bartolome, Lanzarote<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Soul Of Gospel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

performed byJoshua Nelson Gospel Singers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

review by Norman Warwick<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joshua Nelson is Black and Jewish<\/a> and he goes by the nickname \u201cthe prince of kosher gospel,\u201d and he has called himself “the KKK<\/a>‘s worst nightmare.” His grandparents emigrated to the US from Senegal<\/a>, and he became fascinated with music when he was only eight years old, while living in Brooklyn<\/a>. His fascination lasted after he graduated from Newark<\/a>‘s Performing Arts<\/a> High School. Nelson was the high school’s official soloist for the four years he studied there. He went on to do a 2-year college and kibbutz<\/a> program in Israel studying at the Hebrew Union College<\/a> as well as at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While attending Hebrew University, he started blending Hebrew texts with gospel melodies<\/a> and arranging Jewish hymns<\/a> in gospel style, resulting in solo CDs like “Hebrew Soul” (2004) and “Mi Chamocha” (2005).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both of Mr. Nelson\u2019s parents are Jewish, and his family attended temple at a black synagogue in Brooklyn, then switched to Sharey Tefilo-Israel, in South Orange, New Jersey, a reform synagogue with a liberal reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson is both a Jewish Gospel singer in the tradition of Mahalia Jackson<\/a>, and a full-time Hebrew teacher in the Hebrew school at Sharey Tefilo-Israel, a Reform synagogue in South Orange, NJ<\/a>, when he is not on the road. He also serves as director of music at Hopewell Baptist Church<\/a> in Newark, NJ<\/a>, which is housed in the building of a former synagogue (the former B\u2019nai Jeshurun).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson has performed with musical legends including Wynton Marsalis<\/a>, (an artist we frequently refer to in my daily blog, Sidetrack And  Detours)  and Aretha Franklin<\/a> and Stephanie Mills<\/a> and Billy Preston<\/a>, as well as gospel singers Albertina Walker<\/a>, the Barrett Sisters<\/a>, Hezekiah Walker<\/a>, Kirk, Franklin<\/a>, Dottie Peoples<\/a>, Dorothy Norwood<\/a>, Vanessa Bell Armstrong<\/a>, Timothy Wright<\/a>, Carlton Pearson<\/a>, and Bobby Jones<\/a> & New Life. Nelson also performs frequently with the Jewish Klezmer<\/a> band The Klezmatics<\/a>, and performed with the late jazz greats Cab Calloway<\/a> and Dizzy Gillespie<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson sang before Swedish Prime Minister G\u00f6ran Persson<\/a> in 2001, and performed for an audience in Jerusalem<\/a> that included the then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A film was made about Nelson entitled Keep on Walking: Joshua Nelson: The Jewish Gospel Singer<\/em> (2000). It was voted Best Documentary in the Northampton<\/a> Film Festival, and won the Best Film Award (the Paul Robeson<\/a> Award) at the Newark Black Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film aired on PBS<\/a> and affiliate networks nationally in 2003 and 2004. Internationally it aired on the national networks of Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Israel, and Italy in 2003 and 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson’s TV credits include \u201cA+ for Kids\u201d on WWOR-TV<\/a>; \u201cSingSation,\u201d a Gospel program taped in Chicago<\/a> and broadcast nationally on CBS<\/a>-TV (1995\u201397, 2005); and Black Entertainment Television<\/a>‘s The Bobby Jones Gospel Hour<\/em><\/a> (1995\u20132003). Nelson also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show<\/em><\/a>, which aired October 2004 and December 2004. Alongside Jamie Fox<\/a>, Mr. Nelson was named by Oprah as \u201cThe Next Big Thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2013, Nelson performed and was interviewed in part four of the BBC<\/a> documentary The Story of the Jews<\/a>. It was broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two in September 2013, and in the United States on PBS in March and April 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year later Nelson spoke to Amy Klein for the  Hadassah magazine, and that articlke is still on-line today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aretha Franklin turned gospel music into love songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Joshua Nelson made gospel kosher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All Nelson was doing when he came up with the fusion was bringing both parts of his heritage\u2014African-American and Jewish\u2014together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all began more than two decades ago when Nelson was teaching Hebrew school in South Orange, New Jersey. He saw the students were kind of\u2026bored. He started doing a call-and-response technique they often do in yeshivas and churches. Nelson called out \u201cBarukh ata<\/em>\u201d and had the class answer, and then he responded with a melodious \u201cAaammmeen!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI realized they were learning this way, and that\u2019s how kosher gospel music was born,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An amalgamation of jewish prayers and songs set to standard gospel tunes, kosher gospel has revitalized the Jewish soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI felt the music was lacking in the prayers in the Reform movement. That\u2019s where I took the soul music and put it to Hebrew.\u201d Soul, he says, \u201cbrings people closer to Hashem<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson, 41, doesn\u2019t teach Hebrew school anymore because he has been too busy performing around the world, for the likes of Oprah Winfrey, President Bill Clinton and the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. His album, Mi Chamocha<\/em>, is sung with stars from Aretha Franklin to the Klezmatics, and he\u2019s the subject of the documentary Keep on Walking: Joshua Nelson, The Jewish Gospel Singer<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To imagine what kosher gospel is, sing \u201cWhen the Saints Go Marching In\u201d mashed up with \u201cHinei Matov<\/em>.\u201d But it pales in comparison to experiencing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picture a stage with four African- American singers crooning into the microphones. The audience of some 300\u2014mostly older Jews\u2014is clapping along on a cold Christmas day at The Museum of Jewish Heritage\u2013A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York. Offstage we hear a beautiful tenor singing \u201cAdon Olam<\/em>\u201d to a jaunty, upbeat tune. From behind the curtain emerges Nelson, an olive-skinned man with hazel eyes and muttonchops, wearing a burgundy bejeweled kippa<\/em> and a floor-length, cream-colored A-line tunic, also decorated with jewels, reminiscent of a hazzan<\/em>\u2014or a prince. Which is Nelson\u2019s moniker: The Prince of Kosher Gospel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson\u2019s whole mission is to do good in the world, to bring the soul into Judaism. Not that it hadn\u2019t been there. The \u201cA-a-a-a-ni Ma\u2019a-a-amin<\/em>\u201d\u2014he trills the plaintive melody, often sung in times of Jewish troubles\u2014\u201care all minor chords,\u201d he says. \u201cI saw the similarities [to gospel] right off the bat when I would read the prayers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson, the third of six kids, was born to a Jewish mother of Romanian descent who was given up for adoption in the 1950s because she was half-black. Nelson\u2019s African-American grandparents, who trace their roots to Senegal, raised his mother and her six children as Jewish. \u201cI learned more about Judaism from my grandmother taking care of my mother than anything else,\u201d Nelson says. He grew up in East Orange, New Jersey, in his grandparents\u2019 house, with his mother, stepfather and siblings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy grandparents raised us in a home that didn\u2019t give us many boundaries,\u201d he says. \u201cThey let us explore and come to our own being\u2014it was a very heavy Jewish identity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson describes his childhood Judaism as \u201cvery dedicated,\u201d getting up every morning to go to different shul<\/em>s, from Orthodox to Reform to Chabad to Sefardic and Black Hebrew. \u201cI wanted to know all the synagogues in my community, to be able to pray in every one of them.\u201d He was very forthcoming about his Judaism as a kid, wore a kippa<\/em> every day, looking like a \u201cChabad kid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGrowing up as a Jew I knew I was black, but we were really more Jewish,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWe infused African-American culture with our Judaism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he was 8 years old, Nelson found an album by Mahalia Jackson, the Queen of Gospel, in his grandparents\u2019 basement. He fell in love with her singing and spirit. \u201cMahalia Jackson had a Jewish soul,\u201d he says. He took it upon himself to preserve her music. (\u201cShe was the queen and I\u2019m the prince.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He first went to Israel with his synagogue on a high school trip and had a very spiritual experience at the Western Wall. He spent two years in Israel on a college kibbutz program through Temple University and Hebrew Union College, studying political science and Hebrew. One day, when he heard the choir at The Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, he thought they sounded like Jackson. He suddenly understood he could integrate both parts of his black and Jewish identity. He took Jewish liturgy and set it to his favorite sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some liken Nelson to another musical Jewish innovator, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. \u201cRabbi Carlebach himself spent a lot of time in Harlem with black musicians,\u201d says Rabbi Perry Berkowitz of the East Side Synagogue in New York, \u201cand he utilized a lot of what he was, how lively the music was, how it reaches inside the soul and has the ability to lift the spirit.\u201d Berkowitz shares the pulpit with his sister, Rabbi Leah Berkowitz, at their Upper East Side synagogue, where Nelson leads a kosher gospel service on the High Holidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI always tell the congregation,\u201d Perry Berkowitz says, \u201cthat when Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel went to the synagogues of all the different denominations and he found that all of them\u2026lacked the fervor, the warmth and the intensity of the synagogues he knew from his childhood in Warsaw. When he started to travel with Martin Luther King to Baptist churches and elsewhere, he was taken with the music, and that was the power he was looking for.\u201d The Berkowitzes see that in Nelson\u2019s kosher gospel. They had met Nelson when he was just starting out in his late teens. \u201cWe were there in the very beginning, when he was unknown, and as soon as we heard him, we said, \u2018He\u2019s got the spirit,\u2019\u201d recalls Berkowitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson is far from unknown these days. In 2004, he performed on Winfrey\u2019s show and, that year, she dubbed him \u201cThe Next Big Thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, he tells the audience, he and his band recently performed for her again, in her \u201cbackyard\u201d (\u201cA football field!\u201d he jokes) to honor civil rights activists. (The performance will air on Oprah\u2019s OWN network on June 18.) \u201cYou know, Hannah Senesh was a civil rights activist,\u201d he says from the stage, referring to the hero who was sent during World War II to Yugoslavia from Mandatory Palestine to help save Hungarian Jews about to be deported to Auschwitz; arrested, tortured and executed, Senesh never revealed the mission. \u201cWe don\u2019t call her that, but that\u2019s what she was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is nelson\u2019s charm\u2014not just his mellifluous voice, but his storytelling, too. For example, he connects the words \u201cHinei Matov U\u2019manayim Shevet Ahim Gam Yahad<\/em>\u201d to Shabbat. \u201cShevet<\/em> is Shabbat. You have harmony, peace, you can sit down and rest.\u201d Then he segues into the difference between work and rest, how the bumblebees work, the humming birds work and the African slaves worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For him, that\u2019s what gospel music is about. Although one of the definitions of gospel is Christian teaching, he is quick to point out that gospel music predates Christianity and, for that matter, religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s African, it\u2019s not Christian at all\u2014the Christianity came later,\u201d he explains. The slaves, he says, sang spirituals as work songs. When they learned Bible from their slave masters, they used the symbolism from there. It was also the way they communicated. \u201cDown by the Riverside,\u201d for example (\u201cGonna lay down my sword and shield\/Down by the riverside\u201d), could have meant, \u201cwe\u2019re meeting by the riverside to escape.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Nelson, who is single, still lives in New Jersey, where he and his sister cared for their grandmother until she passed away two years ago. The rest of the family live in Virginia, but they all gather on Passover for a big celebration\u2014Passover being an important holiday for black Jews, celebrating freedom from slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson\u2019s levity and humor are all in service of his deeper message. \u201cI think it\u2019s about taking every piece of who you are and recognizing it,\u201d he says. On Shabbat, for example, he has cornbread instead of halla and fried chicken in place of roasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He recounts how Heschel marched with King in the 1960s. \u201cRabbi Heschel saw what was going on in Germany was similar to what was going on with African-Americans,\u201d he says. \u201cCivil rights are about everyone\u2019s <\/em>rights. I try to build those bridges to help each other learn from each other. The more friends we have the more family we have. Although the black and Jewish communities are not as intimately tied as they once were, they have the same values.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why he has all his singers visit Auschwitz. \u201cYou can\u2019t understand African oppression unless you understand Jewish oppression,\u201d he says. \u201cAs a child, I had to accept myself as a black Jew or I wouldn\u2019t be able to do what I\u2019m doing now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Nelson, of course, it\u2019s all a part of him: his African-American and Jewish cultural heritage, Jewish history, civil rights, \u201cAdon Olam<\/em>\u201d and \u201cDown by the Riverside.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome black Jews disassociate themselves from their Africanism\u2014they take on an identity that\u2019s just Jewish and don\u2019t keep the flavor [of their heritage],\u201d he says. But there\u2019s nothing wrong with being both. \u201cYou can still be you and be Jewish\u2014you don\u2019t have to change yourself, you don\u2019t have to get rid of your soul.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now, in another period of tension for his country, Joshua Nelson is here to with a much-loved gospel show.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Soul of Gospel is not only a musical show, but is also an experience that leaves no one indifferent. The Soul of Gospel is rooted in the best African-American musical traditions and represents a community culture where free expression and beauty go hand in hand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We met our two anonymous friends at a location that we can\u00b4t divulge, and they drove us to the venue, via Teguise so we could enjoy a meal. Because the kitchen had closed at our favourite El Recoveco,\u00a0 the management re-opened for us but it all became a little bit Fawlty Towers in terms of service, and the waiter and owner returned to our table several times to say that what we had just ordered was no longer available, it ended up pretty much a luck of the draw as to what we were going to eat. Two of us\u00a0had lamb, one had a mushroom risotto kind of thing and the other had a vegan hamburger, which seemed a tasty contradiction in terms. The service though, was always smiley, and we noticed that having re-opened the kitchen, they were being inundated\u00a0 by new orders from those who had been drinking outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever impression the paragraph above might create I ought to tell you that there were around forty people at the outside tables drinking wine and laughing and chatting, and twenty yards from our table there was a beautiful Christmas grotto, an authentic Father Christmas and a children\u00b4s carousel, with softly played Christmas music and the square was exquisitely lit by colourful lighting. It was magical and peaceful and felt like we had gone back to a gentler time. It was definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was then a slight mix up over the bill at El Recoveco de NarA, that was amicably resolved and we set off down the road to St Bartolome in plenty of time to park up and walk to the Teatro..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The walk from the car to the theatre was glorious, with the long trunks of the palm tress beautifully adorned by Christmas lights as was the theatre entrance  and the main town square, accommodating this year\u00b4s Belen was dream-like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside, as we took our seats, we realised the theatre was already very nearly full, and by the time tonight\u00b4s guests took to the stage, we were only a few seats short of a full house. We have enjoyed a few gospel events in the eight years we have been here and were fans particularly, of the Lanzarote Gospel Choir, which was a bundle of energy, musicality and merriment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonight\u00b4s act from America took all this to another level. Before the lights went down we had noticed there were four chairs and a piano situated on stage, and these were then filled by Joshua Nelson on the piano stool and three female singers and one male on the four chairs. Not that they sat for long. After two soulful numbers had opened the programme it became a swaying and sashaying show, and to keep the alliteration going, a sincere outpouring of religious and joyous emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joshua himself is a force of nature, at times a Jerry Lee Lewis figure, all vamp and musical stomp and at others as if an old jazz man gently tickling the ivories. In looks and attire, however, he cut a Stevie Wonder character and in fact as I write that I realise that is who his rich and raspy vocal style most reminded me of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Walls Of Jericho Came Tumbling Down, The Saints Went Marching In and When Jesus Washed Our Sins Away it was indeed a Happy Day and as I looked around me at an audience that was on its feet clapping along, and swaying as if enraptured to the music, I wondered, not for the first time about Lanzarote\u00b4s relationship with gospel music. Everybody here seemed to know the songs and to understand the ambience of the event, whether they were grandparents, mums and dads, young couples or pre-teen children with their parents..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joshua Nelson told us between songs that he and his singers had played on Lanzarote before, even though they are based in America, and the extended encore of a medley of popular Gospel songs saw him running up and down the aisles of the theatre singing out in his attractively gravelly voice and beseeching we in the audience to ever more fervent call and response sets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As Joshua Nelson and his singers finally left the stage I asked a young family in front of us, mum, dad, and a little lady of about six or seven perhaps, whether there is a gospel church on the island. When they replied that they didn\u00b4t know of any I asked where, then had they learned all this music and these moves and where and how had they acquired such joy and obvious love of a music that can surely hardly ever hear on the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The couple, and young daughter too, just smiled beatifically and said we don\u00b4t know where it comes from,\u2026but we just love this music ! It feels right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the audience exited the theatre, chatting animatedly, many of them headed off through the steeply-stepped town square to admire the newly installed Belen, (a crib installation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I\u00b4ve had a couple of tumbles already on an island where there is literally no soft place to fall, I took the risky assumption that after I had been so vibrantly singing His praises for the last couple of hours, The Good Lord, might guide my way down and through a gorgeous panoply of Christmas lights and images. He guided me down the steps, and then as if by a miracle turned this Christmas into truly a Wonderful Life<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joshua Nelson is Black and\u00a0Jewish\u00a0and he goes by the nickname \u201cthe prince of kosher gospel,\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,45,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-and-tradition","category-music","category-performing-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18159"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18285,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18159\/revisions\/18285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}