It started in 1957 on the second floor of the Manhattan Christian Reform Church, when an addict walked into the office of Rev. Really nice to meet you."įor the first time in the conversation, maybe for the first time in a long while, Alec's face broke into a smile that just beamed.ĪRC is the oldest drug-treatment group in New York. So I decided I would give people as many chances as God allows me." He paused and smiled.
All my life, I wish I hadn't messed that job up. I wish I'd had somebody give me some second chances. "You know," Allen told him, "I messed up 33 years of my life. "I've learned I can't break my habit by myself.
"Who told you that?" Allen asked, surprised. "It ain't a punishment," Alec replied glumly, "it's a learning experience." Alec, who's been at the center for four months, broke the rule against missing two roll calls.Īllen spoke to him gently, and asked if he knew why he was being punished.
They're kept separate from the others, and for 45 days they're awakened at 4 a.m. Violators are those who have broken the rules. Walking the halls of the center, Allen came across a 20-year old named Alec, reading computer magazines in one of the rooms where "violators" stay. The thing we teach is no different from the thing any good mama or papa teaches you - grow up. Plus, we give you genuine, unreserved love. "Our philosophy," Allen said, sitting in his office, as several of his 140 staff members called him on the phone or came in with memos or reports, "is this: Accept the responsibility for your own actions. One of the recitations they learn before graduating goes like this: "What is a pastrami? A pastrami is a red three-legged, sexy animal. Allen, as everyone in Harlem seems to call him, has a 132-page book of rules and regulations, called The Purpose, which all those coming into the program must follow to a T. They go cold turkey and revive themselves spiritually, which means, initially, putting their lives in the hands of the center's founder and director, a short, trim, jovial but strict 72 year-old ex-heroin addict named James Allen. Since ARC was started 40 years ago, more than 20,000 drug addicts have passed through its gates. More than half the singers are in the program still, and live around the corner in one of two ARC residences where, at any one time, 400 addicts are seeking a cure. But to the 32 singers in the choir, who perform about 200 times a year here and abroad, it's the core of what keeps them alive.ĪRC stands for Addicts Rehabilitation Center, and everybody in the ARC Choir is a former drug user who has been through the center's program. New York - Every Wednesday at 11 a.m., a hundred or so travelers from distant lands file into the Mount Moriah Baptist Church - in the heart of Harlem - and join local parishioners to watch the ARC Gospel Choir sing and sway and shout and stomp to the glory of Jesus.įor the foreigners, the Hour of Power, as the weekly concert is called, marks another exotic stop on a Harlem bus tour. Stereophile’s Larry Archibald says this is his Record To Die For: “Imagine 32 people singing in your living room…a sensational job of delivering the music…”ġ. The Choir’s power will wrench your soul, then get your feet moving and your hands clapping-and might just blow you off the sofa. They sing to praise the Lord that they’ve lived to tell others. Every singer will tell you proudly that the Center pulled them up out of the gutter, out of the fires of hell. Thirty-two voices strong, the Addicts Rehabilitation Center Choir is burning-with-faith gospel from Harlem. Simply put, ARC is most powerful and moving a capella choir we’ve ever heard. The great Harlem a capella choir featured on Kanye West's Grammy winning hit "Jesus Walks".
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