Gospel With a Special 'K'

With sheet music at the ready, and a dream job to draw on, Joshua Nelson is not just black and blues: He's also Jewish.

An Orthodox background and an unorthodox backstory is what Nelson admirably navigates in a career that is at once holy roller and holy rugelach.

The gospel according to Nelson is one with a Jewish jive; but the singer is not a one-man band of bonhomie: He's joining the Grammy Award-winning Klezmatics -- the kind of "K" he can connect to -- in a special concert of "Brother Moses Smote the Water."

Jump right in; the water's fine as the concert comes to New York's Town Hall this Sunday for a 4 p.m. freilach.

Nothing new about this native of Newark, N.J. -- except for the ongoing praise and plaudits that greet his concerts of hallelujah choruses alongside the biggest names in the business.

But then, for a kid who attended services in a black Jewish temple -- and is now a music director at Hopewell Baptist Church in Newark, a converted synagogue just a juicy toss away from South Orange, where he's a Hebrew-school teacher -- Nelson is a happy hybrid of Hebrew and hosannas, a union of the spiritual and ritual. And the former student at Hebrew Union College and Hebrew University -- which Nelson attended in tandem with a kibbutz program in Israel -- is gussied up for his Jewish gospel gig this Sunday.

Of ebony and tickling the ivories, Nelson has long been influenced by gospel great Mahalia Jackson, whose album he first discovered at age 8. His career has been tied to the tumultuous tornadic voice of that great late singer ever since as his own voice has been compared to her timbre of triumph that rocked the rafters of so many churches.

Rock for the Ages
Over the years, the next sound you hear at a Nelson concert may just be a rock of ages for all ages.

"It's catching on more," says the singer of his kosher concerts. "It's not a novelty anymore."

A novel could be written about his background, in which Nelson had to face down anti-Semitism and face up to racial rejection. As Sammy Davis Jr. once said about finding the right neighborhood that could be home to his own Jewish Bojangles: "Man, I can't live anywhere."

But Nelson has found a great living mixing metiers, a soul man in the image of Sam and Dave ... and Izzy.

"There's a definite acceptance now by the Jewish community," he says of the initially somewhat startled segment unaccustomed to hearing "Oh, yeah" with its "Oy vey!"

But that's the way it is now as Nelson is much in demand from the "Our Crowd" crowd -- and their's too.

If there's a change, Nelson's noticed it has permeated his inner self as well: "By discovering this music, I have found out the essence of Judaism itself. There are really no boundaries when expressing oneself within halachah."

The hallowed hallways of revelation are filled with revealing mirrors, allows Nelson, reflecting on how "the struggles of Africans and Jews are in many ways the same."

Reactions are not the same old, same old, however. He has found acceptance solely for the soul music he presents -- and not prejudice based on pigmentation. "This should never be about race," he says of living the free life and the social security needed to accept one and all.

But sometimes, the race card is not always aces. The Wright brothers and sisters -- those who argue over the flight of reason taken by Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in those much quoted sound bites and gasps -- may be missing the essence of what he's about. So much "is overblown by the media," allows Nelson.

Indeed, the medium -- the black church -- is the message in this mess of misunderstanding, he notes.

"There's a particular styling that's very popular in black churches," says Nelson of "a moaning/ groaning when you speak," which speaks to the slave heritage.

As for caustic comments of Wright's that caused such a damning reaction and claims of anti-Americanism, "all he was doing was showing the injustices that America has done, in a clever sermon. It looks like he's damning America; what he's actually saying is that there are atrocities that we have damned ourselves with. He's not asking God to damn America; he's asking us to look at ourselves."

A good look is what Nelson gave to the impact of Wright's rite of political passage. "When I first heard it, I chuckled," he recalled at recognizing the Wright fire-and-brimstone staccato that stuck in the minds of many.

As for the pastor's pastoral picture that he painted of lightning rod Louis Farrakhan, whom Wright's congregation lauded with a lifetime achievement award, Nelson says that he can understand both sides of the trophy treatment.

"In the black community, there aren't so many leaders," which is why Farrakhan may be hailed as one, because "he has helped the black community. At the same time, being Jewish, I recognize the problem" of Farrakhan feted as a pillar of society rather than a pillar of salt.

Which brings up which role he rolls with. Is Nelson an African-American Jew, or Jewish African-American?

"I'm just a Jewish American," he says. "I take race out of the picture," switching the frame of reference.

Indeed, he heads the race to change the hurdles facing so many. "Black people have got it wrong," he says of the slave self-image that can shackle their progress. "We should be going forward, not backwards. If you succumb to a slave mentality, the end result" is an endgame with harsh rules and hell to pay. It is harder for forever victims to be future victors, he reasons.

It is all there on the page -- the sheet music from which notes play nomads, drifting through air to ears of those who can benefit.

"Through music, I educate," says the erudite music man.

It is a talent others have taken note of, too. Getting the big picture are those making a movie due out later this year in which Nelson has a significant role.

Casey at the bat -- or bimah? It's a Jewish film "in which a baseball player redeems himself at a Purim carnival."

If Sunday's concert provides a cornucopia of klezmer and connected sounds, it's not the first time Nelson's been involved in such an endeavor.

"My first was when I was 15 and [legendary promoter] George Wien put me in a concert at Lincoln Center," which also starred Cab Calloway making his way in a "Jewish Jazz Connection."

Hallelujah and heidi ho: And now, nearly 20 years later, half of Nelson pins down the gospel sound, the other the klezmer chords in tours that take him and the Klezmatics all over the nation and the world.

It all blends so blissfully, concedes Nelson of what, ultimately, he acknowledges is the quintessential soul sound that comes with what he hails as "harmonic convergence."