Religion & Rap : Musician-Turned-Minister Wants to Save Souls in a Recording Studio

The tiny room is jammed with high-tech musical paraphernalia: electronic keyboards, speakers, headsets, videocassette recorders, a huge sound-editing board covered with switches.

A tall, gaunt young man taps one of the keyboards while periodically fiddling with a computer, making sounds that gradually evolve into a strange but compelling rhythm. A few feet away two would-be rappers, barely in their teens, consult with a middle-age man.

Despite the close quarters, teen-agers, young adults and even toddlers filter in and out of the room, exchanging greetings and joking with one another. Even with a huge electric fan running at full tilt, the room is stifling.

This is clearly no ordinary recording studio. But then, nothing about this establishment is ordinary, for this is the Fallen Sparrow Ministry, founded on a shoestring a mere six months ago and run by the Rev. Bobby Brown, a former professional musician.

Located in a Hawthorne industrial and office park, the ministry also houses a worship center where he conducts Sunday services--at present just a warehouse filled with folding chairs--and a distribution center for donated clothing and canned goods. Additionally, tiny interior rooms are earmarked for administrative and counseling offices, an infant and toddler play area, and a teen study and meditation room.

Remodeling moves slowly, dependent on volunteer labor and funds from a small group of supporters.

If the setting for this operation seems incongruous, it is no more so than the background of its founder. Brown--his stage name was Robert Taylor--had a solid career in the 1960s as a singer and guitarist, performing as the opening act for such artists as Ike and Tina Turner, the Coasters, Jerry Butler and James Brown.

But Brown said he eventually became disillusioned with life on the road, and decided one day in 1969 to visit a small neighborhood church.

“On that Sunday morning the preacher was preaching and it seemed like he was just talking to me,” Brown recalled. “I made the decision then to change. I joined that church and then started bringing some of the guys from my band to play inside the church.”

Before long, he felt the call to become a minister. He quit the music business, earned a degree in theology in 1976, and for 12 years was pastor of Community Church of God in San Bernardino, now called the San Bernardino Christian Center, until he left in 1988.

A personal tragedy--he lost his 21-year-old son in a motorcycle accident in September, 1987--added to a growing sense of dissatisfaction, the sense that his mission lay elsewhere.

After a brief stint as a drug abuse prevention counselor in Watts from November, 1988, to January, 1990, Brown returned to the church, but this time with a different vision. Over the years he had collected recording equipment, with an eye to setting up his own studio. Why not combine making music with saving souls?

“I had the idea that I could take what I had been using out there in the nightclub and bring that talent to the church,” he explained. “The studio is the strongest calling card we know, through the medium of music . . . for 90% of the black kids as well as the adults.”

He enlisted the help of his wife, Willie, his younger brother Charles (Chas) Taylor, who is a recording production consultant, and two other brothers to create a family center where black teen-agers and young adults can find positive adult male role models. By last April, Fallen Sparrow Ministry was open.

Soon, his brother Charles had found their first prospective recording artists, a two-man rap team called Inner City Blues who were intrigued by the concept of a rock ‘n’ roll ministry.

“The music was the attraction, but once we got down here, they pulled us in,” said Randy (8-Ball) Walker, a former gang member and member of Inner City Blues. “I want to reach back, help somebody younger than me not to make the mistakes I made. I’ll be doing something I need, that makes me feel good about myself, if I could save at least one child.”

At the same time, Brown stressed, these young men find the role models they need to become responsible fathers to their own children.

The studio plans to produce demo tapes for its rap artist clients, then attempt to negotiate record contracts for them. If successful, the musicians must agree to reimburse the studio, and the ministry, a portion of their earnings. As each musical project is completed, a new talent will be groomed, recorded and marketed.

The single requirement is that the music convey a positive message and contain no profanity, violence or disrespect toward any person or group.

Walker and his partner are currently about halfway to completing their demo tape, which they describe as songs about “the trials and tribulations of growing up in the inner city.”

Accordingly, the next generation--two 14-year-old rappers who call themselves Playtime Posse--are working with Brown and Taylor to develop material.

Brown said the ministry gets daily calls and visits from other youngsters who have heard about the program and want to become involved. But given the center’s financial constraints, most must be turned away.

Brown hopes to attract donations of money or materials so more recording equipment can be purchased and a full-time staff can be hired.

“All the men working here are volunteering their time,” he said. “No one gets paid. They’re making an investment in these kids. That’s what’s missing in the inner city: a father that has time to invest his life in his son or daughter. We try to spend a lot of time with these boys because we believe they are an endangered species . . . their life expectancy has been cut short. We want to increase it. We’ve been to too many funerals of kids like that.”

In sessions with the young rappers, Brown, 51, alternates between the roles of production coach and father confessor.

“What does this word ‘whack’ mean,” he asks two teen-agers.

“You can use it in a lot of senses,” one answers. “Here it means, ‘Get rid of it.’ If you say ‘whack it,’ it means sorry, I messed up, not too good.”

Brown turns to a bystander and smiles. “You see how our language evolves?” To the boys he adds: “Let’s whack the crack--get it out of our neighborhood, get rid of it because it ain’t no good.”