GIFFORD — When Ká Wright belted out a Mahalia Jackson song a capella at a funeral in June, it elicited more than mourning. Wright, a pharmacy technician for 30 years, has a smoky alto voice that can soar in an instant to a rippling second soprano.
It seems to come out of nowhere, or at least nowhere on earth.
Petite and poised, Wright retains a profoundly religious bearing singing gospel music in a church service.
Those who know her well, though, have heard her sing rhythm-and-blues and standards with the slow burn of a chanteuse.
Dawn Penny-Jones, who knew Wright in childhood, aims to make the most of both styles as Wright’s first promoter. She had thought of her old school mate when she was organizing her late mother’s memorial service.
As she put it, “the spirit brought Ká to mind.”
Today their reunion may be fortuitous for a larger audience than Gifford.
Penny-Jones and Wright are both launching music ventures in middle age, Wright the gospel singer, and Penny- Jones, a gospel recording business.
“I couldn’t believe no one has noticed her outside this community,” Penny-Jones said of Wright, known to all their schoolmates as an extraordinary talent.
Penny-Jones, the program director for HIV/AIDs in four counties, and her husband Ken had been caretakers of first a grandmother and then her mother until she passed away in June.
Now, with more time for themselves, they have built a recording studio in their home to record their son Darrell, a gospel and Christian hip-hop artist who records under the name of Biggno.
By way of thanks for singing at her mother’s funeral, Penny-Jones offered to make a demo for Wright.
“We recorded the single pro bono,” she said. “It’s mixed, mastered and ready to release.”
They are now working on an album of 10 original songs to be released in 2013. Wright’s family members are helping write the songs and will sing and play backup.
In a confluence of events that both women attribute to divine intervention, in recent months, Wright voice has been heard by more and more people.
Last month, she sang at Melbourne’s Henegar Center. She then received invitation to perform at two charity events.
When she sang the national anthem at cancer benefits in Sebastian and Vero Beach, her voice moved people to tears, she says.
“People were coming up to me crying.”
Her dream, she says, is to be able to focus solely on her music, to have enough requests to perform at events, parties or concerts to make a living with song.
For years, Wright sang at Northside Church of God in Gifford. She now sings with Shiloh Worship Center, a small Pentecostal congregation led by Nathan Peterson that meets in the Vero Beach Community Center every Sunday.
Born and raised in Gifford, the daughter of a church organist, Wright began singing at age 7.
In middle school, she learned breathing and technique under Samuel Rolle, an inspirational chorus and piano teacher for many in the community.
Wright’s powerful emotion-packed voice easily accommodates a repertoire that includes not only gospel songs and traditional hymns, but jazz, R&B and standards.
Anita Baker, Etta James and Natalie Cole are favorites, as are the R&B singers Chaka Kahn and Mary J. Blige.
Penny-Jones was sitting in the audience the night Wright sang Etta James’ hit, “At Last,” at the Henegar Center.
“Everybody was in awe. People in front of me turned around and said, ‘Where has she been?’”
She sang the same tune at a Tampa audition for “America’s Got Talent.”
Apart from singing at a friend’s church conference in Las Vegas, the audition was the only time she has performed out-of-town.
“I thought it went good, but that wasn’t what God wanted me to do, so they didn’t call me,” she says. “I’m known in my community but when you come outside of the church and sing other places, people are like, ‘Where have you been?’ They can’t believe the voice is coming from someone the size I am.”
Until recently, Wright was too busy to think about a singing career.
One of seven children of Obie and Willie Belle Henry, married to Ricky Wright for the past 20 years, she has been raising five children while working full time as a buyer in hospital pharmacies, first at Indian River Medical Center and now at Sebastian River Medical Center.
Family still kept her involved in music though – three of her daughters sing and a son plays the drums. Her brothers and sisters are musical, and her father, Obie Henry, is the organist at Macedonia Baptist.
“I was a mother at a young age,” says Wright. “That kind of stopped things. My mother helped me so much with my kids. But I didn’t want to pursue a music career until my children were all adults. Now I can refocus on myself.”
“It was an awesome move from God” to bring the two together again, said Penny-Jones, whom Wright now calls her agent. “Her voice is really unique. There’s a quality to it that is like nothing else. She needs to be out there, and if she gets beyond this area, I will be happy to let her go.”
And until the word gets out about her, her music will mostly supplement the word of God.
Last Sunday, she sang at the weekly service with her sister Candace Nicholas and her cousin Tim Peterson, alternating leads and harmony in a powerful praiseful song.
The pace escalating to a furious chant, Wright’s petite frame, tightly contained in her solo, began to shift side-to-side, one arm cocked with tension, her gilt high heels coming up ever so slightly off the floor.
It took long moments before she seemed to lose herself in worship, her hallelujahs and thank you- Jesus’s finding their slots within an almost indecipherable blur of rhythm.
By the end of the 20-minute nonstop session, the singers filed down a side aisle as the organ and two drum sets slowed to a standstill.
An elegantly dressed elderly prayer leader who had vigorously danced in front of the room was gently eased back into his seat by a younger follower.
Wright was as fresh-faced as when she started, her trademark closely cropped hair slicked like an art deco statuette, as the layers of her rose-red tunic swayed back into place.
“A lot of people think you can just get up there and sing. But it’s a mind thing,” she says.
“You have to get prepared – what you’re going to wear, how you want to look. I like to meditate before I sing to have a clear mind.”
She popped a lozenge in her mouth to soothe her throat.
“With gospel, you have to love it and love what God has given you,” she says. “I take it very seriously because you want it to change people. If they’re going through something, a song should change their mindset.”
