Home > Today's Christian > People of Faith > Profiles
Today's Christian, July/August 2001
Damaris's New Reason to Sing
Her passion for God was a gift that had to be reclaimed.
By Bonne Steffen
In 1988, in a small struggling church in Argentina, gospel singer Damaris Carbaugh was jealous. And she was letting God know it.
Accompanying Brooklyn Tabernacle pastor Jim Cymbala to a pastor's conference in the South American country, Damaris saw something she wanted. As she stood with the believers in worship and prayer for an hour at an evening service, the contrast was striking.
Everyone was wearing coats because it was cold in the church; the cement floor was hard. Yet though extremely poor in material things, these people were rich in Christ. Far richer than she. It made her cry.
"I don't know if it was leaving New York and being in a place so remote that my eyes and heart were able to focus, or if it was just the devotion these people had was so incredible." Damaris, now 45, remembers it as if it were yesterday. "All I know is that it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wanted what they had."
Her empty heart made her feel like an outsider. Damaris recalled Jesus' words as he looked over Jerusalem, how he longed to gather its people as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. That's what she saw happening with these Argentine Christians.
"I said, 'Okay, Lord, I don't love you like they do and I know that. But I don't feel you holding me like you're holding them.' "
Dreams wished, dreams fulfilled
From a young age, Damaris Cortese had fantasized about becoming the next big pop star. Her musical talent was nurtured in her parents' evangelistic ministry and at church. Living in New York City meant opportunities. In her teens, Damaris began doing backup jingle singing for Sprite and solo work for Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was good pay and supplemented her parents' income. And the calls kept coming.
Damaris and her mother Aimee appeared on PTL in the spring of 1978. A camera man named Rod Carbaugh noticed Damaris immediately. When he introduced himself, she gave him the cold shoulder. In the fall of 1979, when the Corteses came back again, Rod made his move. This time Damaris noticed. A year later, they were married.
That same year, in 1980, Damaris got a break. Coca-Cola asked her to solo on their newest ad campaign jingle, "Have a Coke and a smile." Pocketing $10,000 for one take, it was a phenomenal day's work. Later, Damaris would record the jingle in Spanish.
More clients came knocking: the Children's Television Workshop, creators of Sesame Street, contracted Damaris to sing for one of their animated characters, the Fruita Manzanta. To this day, Damaris still receives royalty checks when the character appears. Yet as much as she enjoyed the variety of the work, it wasn't unlocking the door to fame.
In 1983, two exciting things happened. Damaris and Rod welcomed their first child, Ashley Rose. Then Damaris's manager (who had been handling her jingle work) entered a tape of Damaris performing into the American Song Festival competition. Damaris took first prize—a record deal with CBS.
As Damaris and Rod left PTL and headed to New York, they both thought, This is it.
In 1984, Damaris's pop album was released—and went nowhere. Damaris continued her jingle work while caring for Ashley. James Christian was born in 1985. Rod worked at a television post-production facility in New York. In the early 80s, the Carbaughs helped Damaris's parents, Aimee and Joseph, open a new church, Crossroads Tabernacle, while maintaining their friendship with their former pastor Jim Cymbala and his wife Carol at Brooklyn Tabernacle.
Damaris and Rod still hoped for success in the secular world, seeing it as a means to glorify God while maintaining their Christian integrity and testimony.
A treasure in Argentina
In truth Damaris was living a double life. "I wanted people to hear me and say, 'What an incredible singer she is' " whether she was singing gospel or pop. It hadn't sunk in how far removed she was from God until she met the believers in Argentina.
Damaris describes her experience in Argentina in 1988 as comparable to the early church's devotion documented in the book of Acts. It convicted her.
"Christ was everything to those people in Argentina. They loved him with all their heart, mind, and soul. Nothing mattered to them but Christ."
Damaris heard the Lord's voice: "Damaris, draw near to me. I'm not far. You are far."
"In an instant, God made it clear that I needed to take that first step and he'd be running toward me with arms open wide."
When Damaris got back to New York, she told Rod how wrong she had been, trying to make a name for herself in the world. From now on, her future plans were in God's hands. In many ways, it was a relief to both of them.
When the Carbaughs' accountant looked at their finances, he encouraged Rod to think about quitting his job to travel full-time with Damaris.
"Damaris would be more effective with you at her side," he said. In 1995, Rod acted on the advice.
The evangelist and the singer
It's no surprise that Damaris went into full-time ministry, drawing on her musical and evangelistic gifts. That scene of a small church with people being held by a loving God had been played—and replayed—throughout Damaris's life. What was unusual is the fact that in the Cortese family, Damaris's mother, Aimee, was the evangelist and her father, Joseph, was the singer. Damaris inherited the fervor of both of them.
Her mother, Aimee Garcia, felt called to preach as a teenager in New York. Giving her life to God in a storefront church in the Bronx, she asked her pastor if she could preach. At first he ignored her. When Aimee persisted, the pastor sent her out to the street corner—"to shut me up!" she said.
The pastor's plan backfired. Aimee loved it, even though her first attempt at evangelism was a dismal failure. The only verse she could think of was John 3:16 which she repeated over and over until she admitted, through tears, "I have so much to tell you, but I don't know how." She promised the crowd she'd study, return one day, and tell them everything. Her work as an evangelist had begun.
During one trip to Puerto Rico, Aimee met Joseph Cortese, a new believer in Christ. Having never heard a woman evangelist before, let alone one from his hometown of New York City, Joseph had come out of curiosity.
Joseph's mother Marietta, an opera singer, had ended her musical career because of her husband's disapproval. She agreed to stop pursuing her dreams on one condition: they leave New York and move to Puerto Rico. Joseph inherited his mother's and grandmother's musical affinity, becoming an accomplished classical pianist and a singer who sang from the heart.
The moment he saw Aimee, music wasn't his only love. The romantic Italian/Puerto Rican who sang beautifully in Spanish married the passionate Puerto Rican evangelist who couldn't carry a note.
Beginning in the 1950s, the Corteses began traveling regularly between Puerto Rico and New York. Soon Aimee's engagements took them across the United States and to Mexico, Cuba, Central and South America, anywhere a Spanish-speaking church called them.
They started a family. First Debbie was born, then Damaris, Joanne, and Joseph Henry. The first time Damaris went to Cuba, she was six months old. The Corteses stayed in a house three blocks away from the army barracks where Castro's raiders were wreaking havoc. Cuba would soon be off limits.
As the family grew in number, Aimee made arrangements for the children to stay in New York, especially when she left for summer-long evangelistic trips. Damaris, 10, longed to go. Her mother replied, "You can come when you have something to offer."
A visit to Carnegie Hall
What Damaris had to offer was her voice.
When Aimee married Joseph, she prayed, "Lord, give us a musical family." God honored that request as each of the children either sang, played an instrument, or composed.
In 1960, when Debbie was six and Damaris was five years of age, a friend of Aimee's arrived in New York from Mexico. Ruth Orozco wanted to study music with Dr. Emilia Del Terzo, a renowned classical teacher, whose suites were on the eighth floor of Carnegie Hall.
Aimee accompanied Ruth to the interview, all the while imagining her two daughters in the practice rooms. The price of lessons alone—$25 to $35 a half hour—was prohibitive. But never one to miss an opportunity, Aimee couldn't leave without asking.
"I wish my daughters could study here," she said to the music teacher. "But since we're barely making ends meet, I guess it will have to be a future dream."
Dr. Del Terzo's intense gaze embarrassed Aimee. "Bring them next Saturday and you can pay me $10 a lesson." Aimee burst into tears.
Debbie started piano lessons immediately, winning second place in Dr. Del Terzo's annual competition at the end of the year. Because of her age, Damaris would have to wait for lessons.
The Corteses moved to Puerto Rico for three years to minister. There, Joseph started a children's choir and little Damaris fell in love with music. She couldn't stop singing.
When they returned to New York, 11-year-old Damaris started taking voice lessons with Dr. Del Terzo, continuing for the next six years.
Almost twenty years later, Damaris would find the audience God had prepared for her.
A ministry grows in Brooklyn
In 1990, when Brian Felten, director of The Discovery Singers with the Radio Bible Class (RBC), was looking for a new female singer, he called his friend in the business Dan Smith. Dan suggested one name—Damaris Carbaugh. She had done outstanding work for him on a Hosanna/Integrity Music project. A year later, RBC released "Never Alone."
Today, nine CDs and one video project later, Damaris is the marquee singer for Discovery House Music, which also features Calvin Hunt and Matthew Ward. Felten calls himself "Damaris behind the scenes," culling the stack of 200 songs down to a possible 20 for Damaris to choose from. There are two major requirements for a song to make it: high lyrical content and high musical art.
"Damaris will not sing fluff. And she has to have chords to move her," Felten said.
The Carbaughs take 30-some new weekend bookings each year, filling in with Damaris's appearances with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Singers and The Discovery Singers. With few exceptions, they are back every Sunday afternoon for their home church's worship service at Manhattan Grace Tabernacle, where Debbie's husband, Luis Rivera, is pastor.
The size of the host church where Damaris sings isn't as much concern to the Carbaughs as what the pastor and his leadership want to see God do if they come.
"Traveling with my parents, my mom noticed the disappointment on our faces when the crowd was small," Damaris recalls. "She'd say, 'If the size of the crowd gets too important to you, you've lost the heart of Jesus.' "
Rod Carbaugh, working the sound console for every concert, admits that a lot of times his eyes tear up when he hears Damaris sing.
"I'll think, This group has never heard the gospel presented quite like this before. It's up to us to be the conduit for what God's trying to say."
Damaris considers music an incredible tool. "The music is my excuse to work my way into someone's heart to tell them how wonderful the Lord is. Music softens the heart so the Word of God can go in. When it's all said and done, and we're in heaven, it will be music forever. There won't be any more preaching, but there will never cease to be singing and adoration."
Visit www.damariscarbaugh.com for more information on Damaris Carbaugh's ministry or contact Discovery House Music at 1-800-653-8333.
|
God's Signature was on This Song
The story behind "He's Been Faithful"
The song most associated with Damaris Carbaugh is "He's Been Faithful" written by Carol Cymbala, choir director at Brooklyn Tabernacle, and wife of senior pastor Jim Cymbala.
In the late 1980s, the Cymbalas' daughter Chrissy turned her back on God, eventually leaving home. It broke both parents' hearts. At the same time, Carol learned she had second stage cancer. The burdens were getting heavier.
While recuperating in the hospital after successful surgery, the chorus to "He's Been Faithful" came to Carol's mind. A few weeks later, she completed the song.
When Damaris heard "He's Been Faithful" at choir rehearsal, she said in jest, "I want to sing that song." Even though Carol had not written it specifically for Damaris, she says that now she knows that was God's plan all along.
|
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader). Click here for reprint information.
July/August 2001, Vol. 39, No. 4, Page 20
Browse More Today's Christian
Home | People of Faith | Stories of Hope | Today's Culture
Build Your Faith | Laughing Matters | Archives | Contact Us
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Try Today's Christian Woman Free!
|
 |
|
No credit card required. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only.
If you decide you want to keep Today's Christian Woman coming, honor your invoice for just $17.95 and receive five more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The trial issue is yours to keep, regardless.
Give Today's Christian Woman as a gift
Order a gift subscription!
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
