“Hallelujah! Can I hear Hallelujah?” Allen Bailey stares out expectably across the darkened room With a fervor of a Pentecostal minister, he clasps the microphone in one hand while the other hand fans the air in upward strokes to elicit a response from the crowd.
Audience members halt in mid-sentence or mid-bite, lay down their knives and forks and applaud enthusiastically. It’s the cue for eight singers from the Harlem Gospel Choir to take their positions on the stage at BB. King’s blues Club in Manhattan. Already warming up in background are a drummer, bassist and keyboardist, playing the opening strains of “This is the day.” The upbeat tune is inspiring enough to elicit pockets of applause, while the singers move about energetically in their black attire, kente-cloth vests and wide-brimmed collars.
Suddenly, the buffet table-offering a feast of Southern fried chicken and catfish, home fries, grits dotted a with globs of butter, crumbly cornbread, salads and traditional breakfast fare (eggs, bacon, and sausage)- assumes background status.
For the next 60 minutes, the 150 or so audience members clap and sway, stopping just short of dancing down the long banquet-like table aisles.
Considering the sincerity of their spiritual commitment, the performers can’t resist sharing a brief personal anecdote or two. Sister Tamike, briefly recounts her brush with homelessness and her encounter with Jesus Christ, while introducing “”I know a Man from Galilee.”
The Tears trickling down the cheeks of tourist Roberta Foster prove that these messages strike responsive chords. An actress/singer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, visiting Manhattan with her boyfriend, had asked but one question of her travel agent: “Where can we hear real gospel music?” His response had led her to B.B. King’s. “It is so moving and beautiful,” Foster said in hushed tones.
Designed to satisfy both churchgoers and secular patrons, the Harlem Gospel Choir’s repertoire includes a sizeable portion of gospel-lite tunes, such as “I Can Fly,” “Oh Happy Day,” and Kool and the Gang’s signature anthem, “Celebration.”
“It was great,” Julie Adams of Houston, Texas, said afterward. “In Texas, we have a lot of these gospel brunches, but I’ve never been to one before.”
Sunday’s at B.B. King’s has been a regular for the Harlem Gospel Choir for more than two years, according to the enterprising Bailey, who has served as a promotional director and advance man for such artists as Lionel Richie, Prince, Michael Jackson and Isaac Hayes.
Logging nearly 250,000 touring miles a year, the Choir performed for the 2003 “Hope After HIV” tour with “Magic” Johnson, and was a featured act at the 57th Eisteddfor International Music Festival in Wales. The year culminated with a performance before Pope John Paul II during the Vatican’s Christmas Concert in Sala Nervi.
