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Another quick cab ride deposits the visitor at New York's most ecstatic secular event: Amateur Night at the Apollo. A great seat for this slice of Harlem history costs just $12. Almost all major black entertainers played the Apollo, and many got their start at the Amateur Nights that have been held for 50 years. From the beginning, the host has been Ralph Cooper, who can still boogaloo and scooby-doo like a septuagenarian Michael Jackson.
At Amateur Night, a blend of revival meeting and The Gong Show, the Apollo audience is the true star. A favored artist -- say, the 300-lb. gent whose falsetto carries him through an all-stops-out aria from Dreamgirls -- wins whooping applause from this Colosseum of 1,500 self-appointed Caesars. Less appreciated acts -- the Whitney Houston clones and clumsy break dancers -- are pelted with catcalls until a figure known as the Executioner darts across the stage in clown garb and chases them into the wings. Usually the performers soldier on to the end, broken but unbowing. Surely, as starmaker or heartbreaker, every audience member has a fabulous time.
Two Harlem events are sacred to born-again visitors: Amateur Nights on Wednesdays and church on Sundays. Book a table for Sunday brunch at Sylvia's, Harlem's friendliest eatery. But first, for God's sake, go to the Abyssinian Baptist Church. The pioneer architect Charles W. Bolton designed the church as an amphitheater, and for good reason: its pastor was the spell-weaving Adam Clayton Powell Sr. His son won even more fame, first as a preacher there, then as Harlem's first black Congressman. The bold spirits of both men inform the place.
On Easter Sunday the church was packed. A cadre of deaconettes -- stately matrons attired in white -- ushered hundreds to their seats, while dozens more stood. The Rev. Dr. Proctor, who will retire in June after 17 years as pastor, raised spirits and rafters with a 45-minute sermon, titled "Believing the % Unbelievable," that addressed issues ranging from Jesus' Resurrection to Joel Steinberg's fall. As 17 souls were baptized in the pool behind the pulpit, the Jewel Thompson choir tore into Take Me to the Water. That joyful noise is the church's heartbeat.
The Abyssinian congregation makes every timid white sojourner feel serenely at home. At the service's end, one parishioner approached a visitor, extended his hand and said, "Thank you for joining us. Won't you come again?" It is an invitation no "foreigner" could refuse, after a trip uptown that he began in fear and skepticism and ended by believing the unbelievable. "Harlem," he says, invoking Duke Ellington, "I love you madly."