Gospel

Rejoice & Shout , filmmaker Don McGlynn's raucous new documentary about gospel music in America, reaches all the way back to 1902, when Virginia's Dinwiddie Colored Quartet made the first African American religious recordings, almost two decades before the first jazz and blues records. Listening in on the music that came out of black Baptist and Pentecostal churches in the century since, Rejoice & Shout focuses attention on big-name and not-so-big-name gospel greats, from Mahalia Jackson and the Staple Singers to the Golden Gate Quartet and Swan Silvertones.

Year after year, the most-sought-after concert in Philadelphia gospel figures to be "An Afternoon of Songs Composed by Carol Antrom. " People flock to Mount Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia the third Sunday in May to hear Antrom and friends debut her newest works. Antrom is that rare composer who writes less for last week than for the ages. Gospel aficionados consider her 1986 song "Sovereign" to be a classic. Her 1991 work "He's Preparing Me" won a Stellar Award - the gospel equivalent of a Grammy - for song of the year.

Producers, promoters and playwrights are seeing a rising interest in bringing the gospel and its music to the stage, and this blend of church and theater is dealing with some worldly subjects indeed - drug-pushing, adultery, prostitution, deceit and death. "Today's problems in society are appealing to the public," said Samuel L'hommedieu, a Virginia-based gospel show promoter. "The music is enjoyed and the themes are of interest to people today. " Resolutions, a gospel musical by Virginia playwright Dorothy Hughes, opens tonight at the Shubert Theater and ends Sunday.

Gospel lovers and those who'd like to know more about a musical tradition whose roots grow deep in Philadelphia will want to keep Friday nights free for a while. Starting this week, National Public Radio and the Smithsonian Institution will present a 26-part exploration of African-American sacred music and its influence on American life. It will air locally on WHYY. "Wade in the Water: African- American Sacred Music Traditions" will use music, storytelling and analysis to recount the history of African-Americans in this country.

Sing glory hallelujah! The Kentucky Fried Chicken Corp. has announced the eight finalists in its second annual Philadelphia-area gospel music competition. The finalists - two in each category - will meet Oct. 12 in a concert-style competition at the Academy of Music, where judges will name a winner in each of the four categories. More than 100 soloists, ensembles and choirs had entered the first round of competition during the summer, and this month 57 semifinalists competed in concerts at four area churches.

Somewhere in the first act of Don't Get God Started, I thought of The Gospel at Colonus and the difference between the two. Both are gospel musicals. The first is a real one. The second is a fake. The difference is mostly in an understanding of what makes a good gospel musical. Don't Get God Started, which has moved into the Walnut Street Theater for what should be a long summer's run, maintains close contact with its roots - the black Pentecostal church service. With music and lyrics by Marvin Winans and a book by Ron Milner, this new work never strays from the simple basic mission of redemptive Christian faith.

The pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph began the gospel standard "Call Him by His Name" Friday at the Theatre of Living Arts all alone. He dropped several fierce single notes, ripping out each as though tearing pages from a magazine. He didn't do anything particularly tricky; instead, he let the pure, soul-piercing sound of his instrument command the spotlight. Pretty soon conversation stopped. The room, filled to sweaty capacity, grew as quiet as a chapel. Then Randolph got busy.

Don't Get God Started adds something new and important to the standard elements of the gospel musical. In addition to the lead vocalists, the choir and the roof-raising fervor, this gospel musical draws upon the comedy and the drama of life as its audience recognizes life is lived. Sketches are acted out between gospel numbers, bringing this show closer than the theater usually gets to the spirit of the Middle Ages, when religious faith and entertainment were intermingled for a community of believers.

Just when it seemed that gospel plays had pulled themselves out of the predictable confinement of being "good gospel, bad play," along comes No Place to Lay My Head. Recent productions like The First Lady knew they could count on big voices and powerful songs alone to drawn their audience, but they didn't settle for that. Instead they delivered real plots, believable characters and quality acting between the music. No Place to Lay My Head falls back into the "good enough" attitude of too many early gospel plays.

Archibishop Wood High School will present a Thanksgiving weekend performance of The Word, a gospel rock opera by Bill Monaghan of Bucks County. The show, being produced for the third year, will be at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in the school's Friedman Auditorium at 655 York Rd., Warminster. Tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for students and older adults. For information and ticket reservations, call 215-672-5050, Ext. 17. THANKSGIVING SERVICES Woodside Presbyterian Church, at 1667 Edgewood Rd., Lower Makefield, will hold an ecumenical service at 7:30 p.m. today.

AXL ROSE does not have an appetite for induction. The Guns N' Roses co-founder announced Wednesday through his publicist that he will not attend the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony on Saturday in Cleveland, according to a letter received by the Los Angeles Times. The note was written under the greeting, "To The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Guns N' Roses Fans and Whom It May Concern. " The band, born in L.A. in 1985, was announced to join Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys and Donovan, among others, as new entrants into the hall, leading to what some hoped would be the long-awaited reunion of the 1993 lineup.

If the monthly Gospel Brunch at Johnny Brenda's is like a hipster church, then its minister is David April, a/k/a DJ DNA. April has hosted the brunch since Easter Sunday 2010; he's also hosted "Roots of Rhythm & Blues" and "The Gospel Train" for 20 years on Hatboro's WRDV-FM. To celebrate that anniversary, he'll preach musical truth Saturday with a live gospel show at the venue. The "Gospel, Soul & Rhythm-'n'-Blues Review" will feature performances by the York Street Hustle, a Philadelphia-based, nine-piece ensemble that plays '60s soul; Philadelphia's gospel-based God's Grace, which typically performs at local churches; and Carlton Lewis III, a member of the famed gospel group the Dixie Hummingbirds who has since embarked on a solo soul career.

By Maria Archangelo I had my first glimmer of hope when I saw my sometimes self-conscious 14-year-old son play air drums with Max Weinberg to "Jackson Cage. " But it was when he sang "Thunder Road" with 20,000 of the faithful that I knew I had him. I had taken my son to the church of Bruce Springsteen, and he came out a believer. Amen. Going to see Springsteen with my son was a thrilling prospect, but I grew anxious as the day approached. My son is a musician, so I knew he would be impressed by the mighty talent of the E Street Band.

On the other end of the phone line, Joshua Nelson is breaking into a traditional cantorial rendition of "Adon Olom , " the Hebrew prayer that ends most Shabbat morning services. In an instant, your whole childhood sitting in synagogue emerges vividly in deep, operatic vibrato. There's no doubt that Nelson - an African American Jew who traces his Jewish roots to Senegal and Romania - can do 15th-century traditional singing. But then he ramps into his own version of "Adon Olom , " in a style he calls "kosher gospel" - drawn from his devotion to both old-fashioned Mahalia Jackson-style gospel and traditional Jewish worship - and a whole new world of spiritual reckoning comes into being.

Philip Barrett of Philadelphia works two jobs, but he doesn't want that to be his life. In February, battling stress, he withdrew from Towson University in Maryland, but he hopes to return to college. Marcy Allen of Salem, N.J., graduated from college in 2010 with degrees in theater and French, but the only employment she could find was as a part-time mail carrier - the job she held the summer after her freshman year at Rider University. The two, both in their 20s and navigating unexpected bumps in life, have found solace and strength in a Wednesday night Bible study group in Camden led by a man whose own youthful charisma, they say, is part of the attraction.

NEWARK, N.J. - Whitney Houston's funeral will be held Saturday in the church where she first showcased her singing talents as a child, her family choosing to remember her in a private service rather than in a large event at an arena. The owner of the Whigham Funeral Home said Tuesday that the funeral would be at noon at Newark's New Hope Baptist Church, which seats up to 1,500. Gospel singer Marvin Winans, a Grammy Award winner and longtime family friend, had been chosen to give the eulogy, his son said.

At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, seeking theological underpinning for his drive to raise taxes on the rich, President Obama invoked the highest possible authority. His policy, he testified "as a Christian," "coincides with Jesus' teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.' " Now, I'm no theologian, but I'm fairly certain that neither Jesus nor his rabbinic forebears, when speaking of giving, meant some obligation to the state. You tithe the priest, not the tax man. The Judeo-Christian tradition commands personal generosity, as represented, for example, by the biblical injunction against retrieving any sheaf left behind while harvesting one's own field.

By Craig Fehrman Rick Santorum's near-miss in Iowa provided a reminder that, for many Republican voters (and not a few candidates), religion and politics overlap. If you need another reminder, though, consider this: The Smithsonian has restored and put on display a weird and fantastic 19th-century book known as the "Jefferson Bible. " That's Jefferson as in Thomas, and this private, personal document offers a useful case study in how politics and Christianity have mixed it up in American history, right up to today.

OYFUL NOISE," sort of a "Glee!"-meets-gospel-music choral-competition musical, makes a pleasant-enough racket. A cheerful, not-quite-off-color crowd-pleaser that rarely breaks formula, it's the big-screen equivalent of a sloppy smooch from your overaffectionate aunt over the holidays. You grimace. You stand there and take it. And you don't let anybody see you grin afterward. Writer-director Todd Graff, who specializes in this sort of cheerful, campy musical ("Bandslam," "Camp")

Brian Ott shivered or sweltered during services, depending on the season, when Hope Christian Fellowship, the church led by his brother Mark, shared a 1962 Woodbury synagogue building owned by Beth Israel Congregation. Ott, a mechanical engineer, said it reminded him of his youth, when he attended school in an old building that was once part of a missile-defense complex. "We went to Gloucester County Christian School, and that was built on an old Nike site in Pitman. No one in the 1960s worried about efficiency, and the buildings were impossible to heat or cool correctly," said Brian Ott. "But now we live in different times.