New Partisan

Disco lights swirled across the sanctuary of Temple Jehovah Shammah at the September back-to-school bash of this Hispanic church in the South Bronx. Head of the congregation’s youth ministry and master of ceremonies, David Reyes (stage name: King David), sauntered through plumes of smoke with his Yankees cap cocked to the side. A loud reggaetón beat made the girls facing the stage sway their shoulders—but no one is grinding on the dance floor. Church is still not the place for that.

“Throw your hands up if you like this beat! The Ho-ly Spir-it is here with us!” rapped the 27-year-old Reyes in Spanish. Jehovah Shammah represents how Christian music is taking a unique shape in New York City within some sectors of the Latino community. “This is a way we can reach out to youth and make a change here,” explained the church’s reverend and founder, 41-year-old José Carlos Ortiz. “We want to let them know that they can worship God with their talent, no matter what that talent is.”

Reyes also has a group called Crossed Out, which is currently recording an album and performs once a month at a church event called X-Out Café. His scruffy voice and streetwise wardrobe might make him seem as menacing as reggaeton stars Don Omar or Daddy Yankee; but his message is different, he says. Whereas most reggaetón songs glorify sex and money, Reyes and Ortiz said they intend to use the music’s appeal within Latino youth culture but change the words to focus on an exclusively Christian message.

The church, which attracts over 600 worshipers per week, according to Ortiz, also boasts a dance troupe that performs on stage with the rappers. “We’d rather the kids sing and dance here, without drugs or alcohol, than at a club or on the street,” Ortiz asserted. He began organizing concerts at the church over two years ago. Jehovah Shammah was started in 1994 after Ortiz returned to New York City from studying Public administration in Puerto Rico.

The Jehovah Shammah clergy were influenced by a cadre of rappers from Puerto Rico, including Alex Zurdo, Rey Pirin and Manny Montes, whose song “Suena el Jíbaro” made a debút on secular radio Reggaetón 94 this year. Meanwhile, New York Christian reggaetón is also gaining recognition in some circles. According to George Díaz, a deacon at the Church of St. Matthew and St. Timothy on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, “churches have recognized that in order to retain young people in their congregation they have to use the contemporary tools that are available to them, music being one of the largest.”

A DVD was made of the Back-to-School Bash performance to broadcast in Puerto Rico—part of a surging trend in the Christian community to use all media outlets possible to proselytize. Besides a good public address system, Jehovah Shammah also has a video-editing studio to produce shows for public access and satellite television, and is constructing a sound studio for compiling CDs and radio shows. Leading up to its New Years Eve party, Jehovah Shammah produced audio demos for Crossed Out, featuring Reyes, Emanuel Gonzalez, 24, and David Estrella 25. And 15 rappers and reggaetón artists from the congregation performed over New Years weekend.

Eight months ago, Ortiz said, he was invited to speak at a church and his rappers—who were wearing sneakers and caps—were stopped at the door and almost not allowed to perform because some church attendees thought they looked like “thugs.” But Although Ortiz said he has received hundreds of complaints from other church leaders and worshipers about using music primarily associated with blatant sexuality and materialism—and about the appearance of his rappers in church— he is convinced outlets like reggaetón can help his community.

In November, when Ortiz was invited to Puerto Rico by La Senda Antigua church, Estrella appeared on stage wearing a shirt with an image of a snowman on it, the popular symbol for cocaine, in front of around 5,000 worshipers. That snowman made it hard at first to persuade the pastor that they had an honest message. Remembering the incident, Ortiz shrugged. “These kids are still from the street,” he said. “They don’t use none of that, but they still want to be down.”

And Ortiz, wearing Timberlands and a baggy shirt, can relate. He was put off by Pentacostalism because it required etiquette like shaving a mustache and wearing button-up shirts, he said. In his effort to break away from such conventions, Jehovah Shammah is non-denominational and strives to ensure that kids see the church as a safe-haven, where they will not be judged by appearance or reputation. “One of our 15 year-old kids used to be in the Bloods,” Ortiz said. “He used to be out there slicing people before he came here…We’ve gotten three guns turned in by people in the neighborhood.”

“The big thing in the Latin youth world now is reggaetón,” said Reverend Raymond Rivera, president of the Latino Pastoral Action Center in the South Bronx, which also organizes hip hop events. Christian Reggaetón, which includes numerous performers from New York, Florida, California and Puerto Rico with CDs on the market, is part of a wider trend including Christian rock and rap, Rivera said.

But he insisted that Christian Reggaetón is important to his community because it is uniquely Hispanic. “This revolution of music and liturgy in the church has social and political implications besides being religious,” Rivera said, describing how the genre allows young followers to express their identity and pride. There is ultimately a sense of salvation or forgiveness.

“This is for my people,” Reyes sings in “Salmo 150,” a popular gospel song that his group remixed with a reggaetón beat. And then, as a salsa overlay creeps into this version of the song, Reyes begins to call out his lyrics:

No tienes que ir al mundo y compartir con sus placeres (You don’t have to go to the world and take part in its pleasures)
El sexo, dinero, las drogas ni mujeres (The sex, the money, the drugs and the women)
Porque el mundo no da gozo (Because the world can’t give you joy)
Como la da mi Cristo (Like Jesus Christ can give joy)
Yo antes estuve muerto pero con Cristo yo vivo (I once was without life, but in Christ I have life)
Y es por eso que ahora a Cristo te presento (That is my reason for presenting Jesus Christ to you)

“Right now we’re hitting up reggaetón a little bit more because it’s very popular,” Reyes said, describing his start in hip hop. “We might rap about how to deal with a loss, or just everyday problems. We love when kids come up and talk to us afterwards,” he added, emphasizing that they try to offer guidance to younger people who might identify with their music.

However, most Spanish churchgoers are not kids, and older congregations still prefer contemporary forms of gospel songs to reggaeton. “An older crowd will probably not want to see a rock band but a gospel band. And they want to see someone singing Aretha Franklin style,” explained Deacon George Díaz, adding that his church uses more traditional organ music.

“The music in a lot of the Spanish churches has remained traditional, though now there’s been more contemporary style adopted, “ said Julio Vazquez, also known as DJ Who, a Christian DJ who specializes in salsa. “But in terms of salsa, merengue, hip hop—that’s really done at the fellowship levels, youth events. It’s very highly accepted; but there are still a lot of people from older generations, who are leading the churches. There is a generational gap.”

Díaz said he sees reggaetón not just as a descendant of hip hop, but also of salsa and merengue, which were integrated into Spanish Christian settings decades ago. “You go to a very small storefront Pentecostal church with 100 people in it and guaranteed there’ll be an American drum set in there, an electric guitar, tambourines and somebody wailing in the microphone,” Díaz said.

During the 1970s and 1980s, salsa singers like the famous musical duo Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz, had born-again experiences and they made Christian-oriented salsa popular. While Christian reggaetón gains momentum in Puerto Rico, with famous rappers like Rey Pirin (who converted to Christianity after losing a daughter), it is more difficult for reggaetón artists in New York to get the same attention, Reyes said.

One reason for this is that, even though Crossed Out has done concerts for up to 3,000 people in special outreach services, there are not many Christian radio stations - let alone secular ones - that are willing to play reggaetón. “We have one big radio station in New Jersey, called Radio Vision (Radio Vision Cristiana, in Patterson), but it’s stuck in the old ways,” Reyes said. He added, though, that last year, his group was the first Christian rap group to play on the station, so it might be changing.

Reyes began making Christian hip hop about six years ago, he said, after growing up attending church. But he remembered being frustrated when he went to churches that were not open to having rap in a religious setting. However, there are various large churches throughout the city that organize rap shows, including Urban Ministries in Brooklyn and Crossroads Tabernacle in the Bronx, whose large congregation of over 1,000 members includes a hip hop group called The Storytellas.

But in a conscious effort to appeal to young adults who are not religious, not all songs the group writes are explicitly about Christianity. Some simply convey what they see as good values. “Perdóname,” for example, is primarily the story of a breakup between a young man and woman. Throughout the song, the young man continuously asks his girlfriend for forgiveness for having cheated on her.

To cross into secular standing, Reyes sent the popular secular musicians Angel y Khriz a demo of one of Crossed Out’s songs that was not explicitly about Christianity. He said he was invited to perform with them, but was cancelled on when producers found out that Crossed Out was a Christian band. Though Crossed Out’s aspirations are high, it will likely be a long road before they can break into major airwaves, Christian or secular.

Enclosure