Israel and New Breed Bring the “Experience” to Chicago

The multi-talented and multi-award winning Israel (Houghton) and New Breed were in the Windy City Tuesday night, September 4, entertaining a packed auditorium in the DuSable Museum of African American History to promote their new live project, A Deeper Level, released that morning.

Israel must have been tickled by the electricity in the room, because from the moment he walked out on the stage, accompanied by the sound of his music pounding over the speakers, many of the more than 400 in attendance popped up and sang along hungrily like a well-rehearsed mass choir. Spontaneous sing-alongs occurred several times during the course of the program.

The first portion of the evening featured Dedry Jones interviewing Israel about his childhood: born in Waterloo, Iowa to a black father and white mother (whose parents disowned her); growing up in a single parent household and moving with his mother to Arizona where she remarried; being “the only black kid in a white family and a Hispanic church.” But Israel got hooked on Andrae Crouch at the age of five after seeing him perform live (“I knew that’s what I wanted to do”), learned to play the drums, and in 2000 formed New Breed as a chance to bridge racial and cultural gaps through music.

Israel explained that he prefers recording live projects such as A Deeper Level to studio albums because he wants listeners to “feel like they are in the eighth row.” He noted that his first book, A Deeper Level, was released concurrently with the CD. The book gives readers greater insight into Israel’s personal spirituality and also serves as a workbook for getting more out of life.

The performance segment was an intimate acoustic set during which Israel and New Breed played samples from A Deeper Level. The songs all had Israel’s musical imprint: anthemic Christian melodies with the energy of gospel and a Latin-infused beat. While Israel performed the more meditative songs from the new CD, with the crowd pleaser being his George Benson-esque scatting on “You Are Not Forgotten,” the album’s first single, “Say So,” is 100 percent Christian power ballad in the mold of “Turn it Around.”

In years to come, music historians may well consider Israel as much of an innovator in African American sacred folk music as were Andrae and Edwin in their day. And that’s not bad company in which to be.