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I thought for a minute that Donnie McClurkin, current big man on the soul gospel campus, was going to rip us off. Here he was, headlining this show for a child development (synonym for "day care"?) center and committed to be in the music business only until he starts pastoring his church full time in '07, and the guy goes on about "our brief time" left in what could be his final performance in a city that's given him favor since his days in The New Jersey Mass Choir? For shame, Rev. McClurkin!

Thankfully, that "brief" time surpassed an hour on a night of music that crossed borders of ethnicity and genre. McClurkin was a tease, but more on that later. Drawing from all four of his solo long players, McClurkin led a nearly full house (numbering at least a couple of thousand) of mostly African- and Latino-Ameicans through a repertoire that bridged lyrical and musical styles, even languages.

Talk about being all things to all people! His set included a medley of praise & worship choruses and hymns sung in Japanese, Dutch, a sub-Saharan dialect (Swahili?) and Spanish.
 
McClurkin let members of his six-piece band be themselves, too. His guitarist got in a flange-filled solo during "I Love To Praise Him," and the showman-pastor-singer urged the audience to get their dance on during a rousing run through "Victory Chant." Going from that to "Give Up The Praise," it's no coincidence that he let his secular funk roots show their sanctification in a cover of Sly Stone's "Thank You For Lettin' Me Be Myself Again." McClurkin's four distaff background-sangin' lovlies were each allowed quick flourishes, too. 

His rootedness in neo-pentecostalism showed as well as he spoke in tongues in the midst of a sermonette about the Incarnation. Understanding the scriptural mandate to not let publicly-spoken glossolalia go untranslated in public, he apologized for his zeal. His explanation of God using masculine seed (he apologized for first saying sperm, too) might be contentious-ditto his endorsement of  word of faith modalist T.D. Jakes in interviews-but that was the extent of doctrinal controversy from the evening's headliner.

Musical controversy is another thing. Though a cover of Bob Carlisle's "We Fall Down" as an extended P&W chorus was touching enough to be McClurkin's general market R&B radio breakthrough, I still find myself longing for the good reverend to sing its storytelling verses.  

The other nit to pick involves that aforementioned tease. Just after McClurkin gave an altar call, of sorts, and benediction, he began his breakthrough solo hit, "Stand" (not Sly Stone's) acapella, and ended it just before the first chorus! Chalk it up to the artistic idiosyncrasy a brilliant interpreter is allowed. Not that the rest of the night was wanting for music.

Jaci Velasquez, ostensibly the second biggest act on the bill, seemed a mite phoned-in but gained energy as her seven songs wore on. She forgot the first verse of one tune from her latest album, the clumsily titled _Beauty Has Grace_, but, oddly enough, that's where her fire picked up. So much so that she shook her married, chastely skirted bon bon a gry during one of the two numbers she sung from her general market Spanish work.  

Velasquez's musical breadth stretched from the gentle Latin-American pop that extended back to her first set a decade ago ("Un Lugar Celestial") to the rockier, '80s-inspired sounds she's currently embracing ("Beautiful," not Bethany Dillon's, Christina Aguilera's nor Adam Ant's). The more her songs were tied to her Mexican heritage, the more the audience appreciated her. They were gracious about that lyrical snafu as well. 

Israel Houghton, a one-man multi-culti coalition whose presence would have exemplified the evening's theme of racial harmony, gave a videotaped introduction to Donald Lawrence & The Tri-City Singers. Houghton and his choir, New Breed, were supposed to be there, but a personal emergency prevented it. Lawrence, recently relocated from Southern California to Chicago, and his crew, took up the slack with grandly harmonized odes largely based on the Jabez Prayer's tenets of God's ability to bless and enlarge a saint's territory. A bit much in more than one way, but Lawrence and his Tri-Citizens sure know how to work holy heartstrings. 

Salvador had already blown me away playing top of the bill at a smaller hall. As openers on this occasion, they gave McClurkin a run for the spotlights. Their bilingual mélange of  brassy tropicalia and Mexican folksiness was more than warmly received. Though their cover of Los Lonely Boys' "Heaven" sounds merely obligatory on the radio, they infused it with enough personality to make it a fitting way to top off a set long as Velasquez's and at least twice as fiery. 

The local pastor-of-ceremonies and song leader merit kudos for helping to make an elegantly enormous venue homey and intimate as the kind of inner city church McClurkin might have played at the inception of his solo career. It may have been the same place where I've seen everyone from Jerry Seinfeld to LeAnn Rimes, but we were having church. It's a thrill to think of what McClurkin would do in his home pulpit!

Jamie Lee Rake