Music: Old-fashioned Passion

In February CBS broadcast the 38th annual Grammy Awards, allowing people the world over to witness the sorry state of American pop music. From the dizzyingly incoherent variety of live performances to the inarticulate acceptance speeches of unkempt rockers for whom simply saying "thanks" is a lost art, the three-hour spectacle did little but confirm that the culture war is as much about order and manners as it is about values.

The gospel medley, however, made sense. Beginning with a powerful performance of "I Surrender All" by Cece Winans, who would later win a Grammy herself, and continuing with rousing cameos by Whitney Houston and the gospel veteran Shirley Caesar, it served as the only portion of the show during which the star-studded crowd seemed to enjoy itself. And when Miss Winans later accepted her award by urging her peers to believe that Jesus is real and coming again, she launched a preemptive strike against those who would dismiss the sincerity of her music as just one more sociocultural phenomenon associated with our country's legacy of racial conflict.

Those who missed her performance can begin making amends with Great Women of Gospel, Sparrow Records' new collection of first-rate performances from its roster of gospel-singing ladies. In addition to featuring the studio version of Miss Winans's "I Surrender All," the album lifts strong tracks from recent albums by Tramaine Hawkins, Deniece Williams, Mom Winans, the Clark Sisters, and Sandra Crouch.

The titles tend toward the traditional-"His Eye Is on the Sparrow" and "Amazing Grace" join "I Surrender All" in comprising one third of the disc-and only Sandra Crouch's "God Is Moving" approaches the abandon that makes black gospel unique in the history of church music. But a strength emerges from the composure, proving once again that sophistication is no enemy of heart-felt expression and that authentic Christianity is no enemy of the arts.

Taxpayer-funded arts are, of course, another matter. Perhaps conservatives should consider it a sign of their effectiveness that this year's Grammies featured not one but two pleas-one from actor Richard Dreyfuss-for the American public not to allow Congress to wean the National Endowment for the Arts from the mother's milk of the taxpayer.

It's a pleasing fact that, with no help whatsoever from the NEA, the latest albums by Hezekiah Walker's Love Fellowship Crusade Choir (who supplied backup for the gospel medley) and the 1996 Grammy nominee Yolanda Adams have spent months at or near the top of Billboard's gospel chart. Shakin' the House-Live in L.A., the new album on which both Mr. Walker and Miss Adams appear, will probably do even better and further belie the notion that only redistributed wealth can keep good music afloat.

Shakin' the House-also available as a 90-minute videocassette-begins with four songs from Fred Hammond and his Radical for Christ Choir. And although two of them, "Unconditional Love" and "Blessed," are as stirring as anything else on the album, the task of shifting the album into high gear falls to Miss Adams, who for three songs demonstrates what makes her unique: the power of her voice, but also the cleverness of her singing. Stretching and compressing lyrics like a jazz singer until they establish her intended mood, she finds new ways of tapping into old-fashioned passion.

After Miss Adams's free-form solo excursions, Hezekiah Walker's exuberant choral arrangements sound both tighter and louder than they otherwise might. Certainly Mr. Walker's preaching stokes the flames. And a light-hearted detour into "I'll Fly Away," replete with a false-ending routine that finds Mr. Walker playing call-and-response with his choir, solves the problem of pacing. Ultimately, however, Shakin' the House succeeds not so much as one album but as three 25-minute mini-albums that, taken together, provide plenty of bang for the buck.

An equally sound investment is the album that's currently sitting atop the jazz charts, Van Morrison's How Long Has This Been Going On? Although Mr. Morrison has made many "jazzy" recordings, How Long represents his first headlong plunge into jazz itself. Officially credited to "Van Morrison with Georgie Fame and Friends," the album bears only fleeting testimony to the Irish singer's rock-and-roll youth, focusing instead on songs written by or for Lester Young, Louis Jordan, George and Ira Gershwin, Mose Allison, and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.

The cover songs, in fact, bring the album to life, which is to say they swing more naturally than Mr. Morrison's own compositions. The exception is the new version of "Moondance," the singer's 26-year-old FM radio staple. Always jazzy, it's gotten jazzier over the years, finally sounding like a jazz standard itself. And if Mr. Morrison's bluesy tenor voice doesn't quite fit the traditional jazz profile, the limber playing of his band-guitar-less for the first time-grounds How Long in a venerable tradition.

A Cappella Gershwin, the first album of pop standards by the Christian vocal quintet Glad, finds its roots in that same tradition. According to Ed Nalle, the group's lead singer, the reputation of Gershwin's music among Christians may have improved with age.

"It was probably considered scandalous at the time because of its roots in Broadway," he told WORLD. "I would imagine there were even preachers who railed against that. But now it's become part of our culture."

Hearing such staples of the pre-rock soundscape as "I Got Rhythm," "But Not for Me," and "They Can't Take That Away from Me" done a cappella, one notices not only the melodies and witty lyrics but the also the artful way in which the Gershwins wove the two together. By contrast, many of the songs that won Grammies this year seem to take pains to stress every inherent structural incongruity.

"I watched the Grammies," said Mr. Nalle. "I was horrified. It was the lowest common denominator."

Mr. Nalle believes people want a higher common denominator, and he sees the 20,000 copies that A Cappella Gershwin has sold since it was released last fall to the secular market as confirmation of his optimism.

"We've been getting e-mail from people who know about us already, but others are asking, 'Who are you?' We've actually had people come to our concerts and bring friends who like Gershwin. It's a point of contact."

And since Gershwin fans who attend Glad's shows also hear plenty of gospel music, the Gershwin connection becomes a point of light, as well.