A hot new album, a new singer who happens to be a grandmother, and a thrilling vision to take the inner city for Christ. Things are moving fast for the WORLD WIDE MESSAGE TRIBE. Tony Cummings reports.

World Wide Message Tribe

Every time Cross Rhythms has spoken to the World Wide Message Tribe, seemingly further quantum leaps forward have been made. In Cross Rhythms 14 (April '93) we spoke about a thrilling schools work Message To Schools and how its band the World Wide Message Tribe were using music as the perfect vehicle to proclaim the gospel (we urged our readers to buy the privately-released cassette 'Take A Long Hike (With The Chosen Few)'). In Cross Rhythms 22 (August '94) we spoke about how they were discovered by America's N-Soul Records who released their first two CDs. In Cross Rhythms 28 (August '95) we talked about their signing to Alliance, the launch of the Movation label, the Get God teaching video and the monthly Planet Life celebrations.

In Cross Rhythms 32 (April '96) we talked about 'Jumping In The House Of God II' and the exciting addition to the band of rapper extraordinaire Cameron Dante. And in Cross Rhythms 35 (October '96) we reported on the extraordinary near hit status in America of the Tribe's "The Real Thing" single. But as anyone who knows them will testify, the World Wide Message Tribe are much, much more than mere purveyors of quality CCM. As Andy Hawthorne states so passionately, "All we are interested in is communicating the buzzing good news about Jesus, in a way the kids will understand and receive."

So though they have possibly their finest ever CD 'Heatseeker', released in the marketplace in October, it's not that fact alone that brings Cross Rhythms, for the sixth time, to talk to the Tribe's Andy Hawthorne and Zarc Porter. For a vision has now gripped the band that puts in flesh and blood, life and death reality everything the band has toiled for down the years. Message To Schools' Eden is a mind boggling plan to plant dozens of Christians into Manchester's Wythenshawe Housing Estate, the biggest housing estate in Europe and start a Mega Youth Group in a place which has become a byword for social deprivation.

Demonstrating the Gospel as well as proclaiming it, these inner city missionaries, both couples and singles, will give up the trappings of middle class comfort to live in an area where violent crime, drug abuse and vandalism are rife. Andy Hawthorne takes up the story.

"The owner of the properties is the council. Bench Hill is an area of Wythenshawe where a couple of years ago the council spent 15 million quid trying to sort out its problems. Actually the houses aren't that bad though they look horrible at the moment 'cause they are all boarded up, but structurally they're okay. A couple of years ago the council knocked down the high rise parking and tried to landscape some areas. And of course the gangs just moved in. The parks became no-go areas. The gangs have really taken over, so the kids daren't go on the parks. So the council basically wasted that money. They decided last year to bulldoze part of Bench Hill, it's a big area of houses, and start again, it's just not working. Nick, the first guy who moved in to Wythenshawe, even before we had the vision, he had it in his heart to move in and he set up this little project called Open Door for the kids, training them into jobs and obviously teaching them about the Lord.

"He moved in and somehow, amazingly, God gave him the favour of the council. He's talked them out of knocking down these houses. Rather than knock them down, they are putting new kitchens in, new bathrooms, decorating these houses right the way through for our workers! In terms of what we need, they are doing all the work for us. So there are nine of these houses that were boarded up that now have Eden workers in them that are discipleship bases for Bench Hill. Now we are spreading it out. Even through having those few people, crime has gone down, the atmosphere has changed. There's a forum that Nick runs of all these inner city people. They meet and talk. They're suddenly getting pride back in Bench Hill. It's not revival but it's a taste of God, that bit of salt and light that makes so much difference that wasn't there before."

The vision for the Eden project came out of Message To Schools Trust having spent a year talking and praying with local church leaders. It is a remarkable demonstration of inter-church co-operation. The members of the World Wide Message Tribe, having been instrumental in conceiving the Eden idea, are now leading by example. "Four members of the Tribe - Sophie, two Collettes and Claire -are already living in Wythenshawe. And we've just taken Doug Walker on, he started singing last night, he's living there. And then we are taking on another three full time in the next few weeks. So there will be eight people working for Message To Schools living in Wythenshawe alongside these people."

Andy feels a mixture of emotions about the Eden project. "I feel incredibly excited but incredibly vulnerable about the whole thing. But there is this sense of God about the whole thing and the sense that there is a universal language these kids understand - it's called love. Sophie Woodward goes in there, who in one sense can't relate to Wythenshawe teenagers 'cause she hasn't had the same experiences, but she goes in, and I've seen her and Beth and Collette from the Tribe discipling a group of the worst, roughest Wythenshawe teenagers with the most atrocious backgrounds. Beth went around to one of these girls' houses for lunch - the mum's an alcoholic, a heroin user, the brother's a heroin user, he was jacking up in the bedroom while she was there, the sister's an alcoholic, the house is a complete shed. In the middle of this home is this girl shining for Jesus - really witnessing for Christ. When we went around there to ask, 'Do you mind if your daughter gets baptised?', the mum said, 'I don't understand it but something dramatic has happened to this girl!'.

The thrust of the Eden vision, taking the inner cities for Christ, is one that's catching. "We've had dozens of people applying to move in and work with us on Eden. But we've also had some guys go back to a big, big church in Sunderland, saying, 'What are we going to do about our inner cities?. We've got to start moving people in.' That really gets me excited. It's infectious. A large part of the Church says, 'If we give so much we'll get so much back.' Actually, what we should be saying is, 'If we give this much, Jesus will get so much back.' We need to teach kids to lay down their lives. We're not teaching from a platform, we're trying to model it."

Now an exciting new dimension to the World Wide Message Tribe/Message To Schools ministry has opened up with the band forming an ongoing relationship with Britain's most significant youth culture event, Soul Survivor. In the year 2000 Soul Survivor will cancel its annual festivals at Shepton Mallet and instead go to Manchester, taking with them 20,000 young people to get involved in hands-on evangelism.

"We could actually be on the verge of a movement, a really exciting movement where people come out of university, or people just getting married, before they make their big life decisions about what kind of lifestyle they are going to have, they join these inner city projects. Christians working in the power of the Holy Spirit alongside the poor, alongside the lost. This is why the Soul Survivor connection is so awesomely God because they are the people who have connection with these young people who are fired up for God and are at that age where they haven't yet been gripped by materialism, and had materialism squeeze all the faith and vision out of them."

The World Wide Message Tribe have undergone major personnel changes recently. The new additions are rapper Tim Owen (formerly of re:fresh) replacing Tribe founder member Mark Pennells who is still working closely with Message To Schools but has now begun Kik-Start with the intention of birthing schools ministry initiatives in other parts of the country (Milton Keynes and Watford having already been targeted), and Doronda K Lewis replacing vocalist Beth Vickers. The Tribe's much-publicised Search For A Singer has gained them a superlative vocalist but not in anyone's wildest dreams would they have thought that joining the Tribe would be a Tulsa-born grandmother!

"Yes, only God could have put that one together," laughs Andy. "Since she's come in, she's made a big, big difference. She's got an awesome voice, she's got all this singing experience (Doronda once sang with Al Green) and she's got all this Bible knowledge. God's brought together this group, people from the house church, Anglicans, Methodist, Salvation Army, Baptist and now we've got a black gospel diva! We're really thrilled with her, she's mothering the band like nobody's business, it's wonderful really. There are a couple of our girl dancers who are exactly the same, they're like magnets for teenagers. There's something about Doronda, she's so full of Jesus, so full of love, the kids see it. At the end of a lesson all the kids are just drawn to Doronda and she just ministers to them. She talks to them about Jesus, it's fantastic. The cultural thing in a way is good 'cause she's really interesting and exciting, this big black woman."

The World Wide Message Tribe and the American band Raze, whom they've taken under their wing to do schools missions and festivals while in the UK, share not only the same producer, Zarc Porter, but another connection as well. "Doronda is the mother of Donny from Raze, that's how we found Doronda," explains Andy. "Doronda went completely wild while still at school and had a baby who is Donny. Donny has a very similar testimony, it's so weird, so Doronda is actually a grandmother, believe it or not. So they both had this thing about going off the rails and having babies and now they are both back and on fire for Jesus."

The new Tribe album 'Heatseeker' extends even further the band's ability to cover all bases in the multifarious dance genres. Producer Zarc Porter, the non-playing member of WWMT, has long recognised that for the band to be effective in schools mission they need to reflect as many of the styles and rhythms of contemporary dance as possible. So alongside their classic house anthems 'Heatseeker' offers garage grooves showing off the slinky soul voice of Doronda ("Tell The World"), and pumped up raps. There's even a heaving rock-tinged "Hypocrite" with hints of Prodigy. Says Zarc about 'Heatseeker', "We really felt the need to do something a bit different on this album. The charts are now dominated by either guitar bands (Oasis, Cast etc) and pure pop (Spice Girls, 9 11 etc) so we have had to look at new ways of appealing to the school kids in this current climate whilst still hopefully sounding like the Tribe."

'Heatseeker' succeeds magnificently and with EMI set to put mainstream distribution behind the Tribe, the album seems likely to extend yet further a ministry which in the words of Zarc "has already gone way past our wildest dreams."

But in all the excitement, Andy Hawthorne remains passionate that the band don't deviate from their call. "All this stuff can become religion. I said to our guys this week, we could so easily become religious, trying to be funky, trying to be on the edge, trying to push the boundaries and that becomes the focus. We're putting together a whole new show at the moment. We're trying to get new haircuts, new clothes, new videos, trying to make the presentation better. But if that becomes an end in itself it's completely naff and it's just as bad as somebody singing the same songs for 400 years. It's whether Jesus is at the centre of it and that's what we constantly need to be asking ourselves."

Zarc Porter talks us through the tracks on 'Heatseeker'.

"MESSIAH"
A worship track exclaiming some of the many different names of God. It features loads of guitar which our regular guitar man (and member of Bliss) Max recorded in his home studio while we were away in the States.

"TELL THE WORLD"
Doronda came in to sing another song we'd written which we didn't feel was happening so we decided to try to write a new one from scratch instead which quickly started to work. She sang a rough guide vocal which I then built the whole track around, treating it like a remix. That original vocal take was so good that we just kept it in the final version.

"HYPOCRITE"
Cam came in and shouted the hook line "What a hypocrite I am" and we built the whole track up around that. There's lots of (chopped up) real guitar and even real bass on that track (played by Max) - a first for the Tribe.

"EVERYTHING I NEED"
A disco pastiche - in the Daft Punk vibe. The whole band including the dancers sang on the chorus of this one which was really nice to do.

"CUCKOOLAND"
We wrote this track for a Tear Fund project we're involved in. It highlights the contrast between the poverty of the third world and the wealth of the West and the fact that the world's gone mad. The track actually features several recordings of outside sounds including a sample of our local duck pond pitched down by about two octaves (you can hear it exposed right at the end of the track). The lead vocal on this is sung by Collette who is one of the dancers but also a great singer.

"MAKE A CHANGE"
Perhaps the one track that sounds most like the old Tribe, a pure rap track which features all three of the Tribe's rappers Cam, Andy and Tim who do a verse each. It's basically a call to prayer which we have touched on before with "We Talk To The Lord".

"LOVE"
Justin (ex-HOG) came over and started this one off but we couldn't seem to get a chorus hook for it. Then as soon as we returned from the States, the idea came to do this slightly psychedelic sounding melody, then myself and Mark wrote another song at the piano which we ended up using as a middle section for this song so it's made up of three different parts.

"PRECIOUS ANGEL"
Although not a Bob Dylan fan by any stretch of the imagination, I bought 'Slow Train Coming' when it came out and I absolutely loved this song. I always thought one day we should have a go at covering it and Doronda absolutely cleaned up on it! The backing was influenced by a Detroit techno track that Cam played me when we did the Radio One special. It was really simple but had this really extreme swing feel to it which I loved.

"HEATSEEKER"
This is basically a mad thrash at 160 BPM with Cam and Time taking the lead together.

"WHEN THE DAY IS OVER"
This song was written while Mark and I were still studying music together in Huddesfield. We just thought it was time to redo it and in fact Mark makes a return appearance to the Tribe to sing the lead vocal on it.