Catholic artists struggle as Christian music draws fans - only non-Catholic musicians were available to perform at the Catholic Youth Conferences in Kansas City, MO, Nov 20-23, 1997 - Cover Story

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 12, 1997 by John L. Allen

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Here's some vocabulary you're not likely to encounter at most gatherings of adult Catholics: "mosh pit," "crowd surfing,n and "Dude, that last band was the bomb!n

But at the Nov. 20-23 National Catholic Youth Conference, such argot was the rule of the day, as the 14,000 teens assembled for the nation's largest meeting of Catholic youth were rocked by an all-star lineup of Christian bands. The experience brought into focus the explosive growth in the Christian music industry -- and the relatively slower development of its Catholic sub-genre.

For those whose notion of Christian music comes from watching syrupy 1970s-era Sunday morning TV, it's a new world out there. Today, Christian bands occupy every niche under the musical sun -- there's Christian rap, Christian metal, Christian grunge and Christian country.

Moreover, Christian music sells. The last album by the Christian rock band Petra, "Petra Praise: The Rock Cries Out," went gold, selling at least 500,000 copies. Artists such as Caedmon's Call are huge on the college circuit, and mainstays such as Amy Grant can pack stadiums and arenas on a regular basis.

Christian music has also begun to enjoy crossover success. Jars of Clay went double-platinum -- at least 2 million sold -- last year with their debut album, largely on the strength of the single "Flood" and its accompanying video. Much of their sales came from mainstream buyers attracted by the band's alternative sound. There are probably millions of teens in America who still don't know that "Flood" is a Christian song.

Bob Carlisle's bittersweet "Butterfly Kisses" single debuted on the Christian charts, and then went to number one in the adult contemporary format. Christian music now has its own award (the "Dove"), and the renowned William Morris agency has a division devoted to representing Christian acts.

Nighttime at the National Catholic Youth Conference was like a celebration of this boom in Christian music. Friday night especially was a three-hour miniature Christian Woodstock, minus the mud. First up was Grits, a Christian rap group. As the band pounded out tunes such as "Hopes and Dreams," several conference delegates began crowd-surfing, meaning that they dove off the stage, or ascended from the "mosh pit" -- the area directly in front of the stage where people crowd around and slam into one another -- and were passed along overhead by members of the crowd until they tumbled to the floor. If it sounds dangerous, it can be -- at least one teen sustained a minor leg injury, while conference organizers scrambled to exercise tighter control. But most concert-goers think crowd surfing is "the bomb" -- meaning that it's good -- and the audience responded enthusiastically.

Miss Angie, a 22-year-old singer from Springfield, Mo., followed Grits with a hard rock/alternative format. Her sound was virtually indistinguishable from mainstream grunge bands such as Nirvana, but her lyrics were explicitly Christian. Kelli Williams struck a more traditionally gospel-sounding note, while Sixpence None the Richer had a folk-rock sound. The headliner, Anointed, ended the night with the soul/hip-hop/R&B style that earned the band a Grammy nomination last year.

So, how much evangelizing is going on here, and how much of this is just standard commercial music and concert-going behavior under a thin Christian veneer? "It's a mix, of course," said Bruce Deaton, a Catholic musician and dramatist who performed at the conference. "But we believe the kids respond to the message as well as the music."

Despite the warm embrace of these Christian artists from the crowd, one irony is that none of the featured acts on the Friday lineup was Catholic. In part, that's because no Catholic music group has yet achieved the prominence of bands whose background is Protestant and usually evangelical.

"There has not been a Catholic wave [of musical success]," Deaton said. Deaton appears on the new album "Come and See," featuring tracks from five American Catholic artists who performed at the Paris World Youth Day celebration.

"If I would try and visualize it for you, the Catholic wave is somewhere out in the Pacific, forming, and we have not seen it roll toward shore," Deaton said. "Whereas the Protestant evangelical wave has crested and is pounding on the shore. To a certain extent, those of us who are Catholic artists have to ride that tide."

Deaton said that Catholic artists have few marketing or distribution networks, and hence have to piggyback to some extent on the success of Protestant acts. "Catholic artists don't have a central booking agent like William Morris, as the Christian artists do," he said. "Right now, Catholics have to go into Christian bookstores if they want music by Catholic artists ... and often they don't find it."

Still, Deaton envisions a day when Catholic musicians will enjoy the same megastar status as some of their Protestant peers. "When you start thinking about the U.S. Catholic population, there's a lot of us," he said. "We all listen to radio, we all buy records, we all watch television, and we all make economic choices. I do see a day when a Bruce Deaton or a David Kaufman or a Steve Angrisano would be a natural choice for someone if they were going to go into a store and pick up music either for themselves or their children."