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Today's Christian, September/October 2001
Fernando Ortega's Deep Simplicity
Keen-eyed songs of life
By Louis R. Carlozo
As Fernando Ortega takes the stage at Trinity University in suburban Chicago, the crowd's enthusiasm quiets in rapt attention and then wonder as Ortega sings the haunting opening lines of the old spiritual "Give Me Jesus." It is this song, from his album Home, that preacher Anne Graham Lotz has called her "absolute favorite," one that comforted her when her own son Jonathan was battling cancer. It is also the composition that forged a personal and professional relationship between the two starting in 1998, when Lotz first invited Ortega to lead some worship seminars at the Billy Graham Training Center in North Carolina. Since then, Ortega has been the guest musician for every "Just Give Me Jesus" revival that Lotz's AnGeL Ministries has sponsored.
On this bare university stage, Ortega gently sings: "In the morning when I rise. … in the morning when I rise. … in the morning when I rise. … give me Jesus."
Ortega's gift for weaving majesty from such a simple refrain, or crafting songs that unfold their magic like movies in the listener's mind, speaks volumes about the range of his talents. It also goes a long way toward explaining why Home was named Inspirational Album of the Year at April's 2001 Dove Awards. The honor, in fact, is only hours old at this concert; Ortega had just won the night before. Not that he brags about it—not even close.
He tells the audience about his last Dove, in 1998, for Bluegrass Recording of the Year ("Children of the Living God").
"I had no business winning that Dove Award," Ortega insists. "I'm nominated against the greats of bluegrass—Alison Krauss, Ralph Stanley, and Bill Monroe—and they give it to a Mexican piano player."
There's no stopping a storyteller as Ortega shares a gaffe from this year's Dove telecast. "They announce the nominees, then on 'Fernando Ortega' the cameras get the wrong person, two rows back. He has a toupee on. And the poor guy, he was sweating, wondering why all those cameras were on him. And my wife, she tries to help the camera guys, pointing, saying, 'No, he's here, he's here!'"
Ortega grins impishly. Upstanding musician or standup comic? So far, it's a tossup.
Grandpa's ghost stories
Ortega, 44, has spent the better part of his adulthood trying to deepen and broaden his faith, but not without disappointment and disillusionment. As an artist, he finds himself secure and successful in Christian music, yet yearning to broaden his audience. The day after winning two Doves (the second for Male Inspirational Vocal on the song "This Good Day"), he boils his faith, career, and personal walks into one humble declaration.
"It has been an incredible journey," he says. "Wow."
That journey began in New Mexico. His family roots can be traced back there several hundred years and are deeply steeped in two traditions. One is storytelling; Ortega's paternal grandfather, Juan Melquiades Ortega, would regale Fernando with ghost stories he dreamed up while plowing his fields by moonlight.
"My grandpa lived all his life (102 years) in Chimayo, New Mexico, near Santa Fe," Ortega says. "He was a weaver and farmer. A couple of his weavings hang in the Smithsonian Institution. And he was a true storyteller, one of his greatest influences on me. When he told a story, he was very good at setting it up so that you could picture the setting and the characters. Many of his stories were folkloric. He used to tell us about 'El Cocomar,' that's our boogie man."
Ortega did not grow up speaking Spanish but learned it at age 11, when his family moved briefly to Ecuador for two years.
"It was strictly a survival thing, but it was fantastic to finally be able to communicate in Spanish with my grandfather when we moved back to the States in 1970," Ortega says. "In my family, I am probably the most acculturated to Anglo society—but I don't want to lose touch with the things that have shaped me. My grandfather was a steward of the land in a biblical sense; nurturing it, caring for it, taking from it without destroying it."
The second tradition was also thanks to Grandpa Ortega: worship in the Presbyterian church. "Grandpa, though brought up Catholic, converted to the Presbyterian church when he was very young," Ortega says. "He lived out his Christianity very quietly, but no one ever doubted his devotion."
Looking back, Ortega sees how those seeds of faith sown by his grandfather blossomed in his parents' lives. "My parents' church was predominantly Hispanic. That's where I learned community," Ortega says. "The pastor really cared for the individual members of the congregation. When my mother had a mild heart attack, every meal was provided by the church. There was such a presence [of God] there."
Yet a young Ortega didn't find the Christian faith of his parents satisfying; God, it seemed, wasn't big enough for Fernando, and he desperately wanted more. So as a teen, he explored Eastern mysticism and the teachings of Gandhi.
"At 13, I read Gandhi's autobiography, and it had a profound effect on me," he recalls. "But instead of embodying his philosophy, I took a wrong turn and started considering him an elevated being. I began praying to him."
For Ortega, there was other experimentation going on, too. "This was all mixed up with healthy doses of marijuana. I think I got the same thing out of Gandhi that I got out of pot—it felt like I was being carried to some other place."
Church cave-in
It was that need for a dramatic experience, Ortega says, that led him to join a Pentecostal church in Albuquerque at age 15. "I met a young girl, we used to party a lot, and now she was a born-again Christian," Ortega says.
"This was 1972, the Jesus movement was popular, [at the time when] Calvary Chapel was baptizing thousands of people on the California beaches at Corona Del Mar."
Ortega found membership in his Pentecostal church to be a sweeping experience—literally. "I really poured my life into that church," he says of his volunteer experience. "I swept floors, I cleaned bathrooms, I answered phones. I was there every spare second until my early 20s."
When the leadership caved in at the church, Ortega was heartbroken. "The [Pentecostal] pastor ran off with a young girl; there was adultery, embezzlement. You can imagine my disappointment," Ortega says. "It was probably on its way to being a cult, if it hadn't caved in."
Meanwhile, he graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1980 with a music education degree and a piano concentration. "I taught high school choir, supplementing my income by teaching piano and working as a lifeguard," he says. "I also worked as a church pianist and assistant conductor."
From there, Ortega joined the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ in 1984, relocating to California. He eventually settled in what he calls "a seeker-driven church." There, he became a music minister.
The making of a musician
Music, Ortega says, has been a constant in his life. "I started to play piano when I was six or seven," he says. "I enjoyed playing until it required discipline. Not until I was a teenager did I embrace the idea of practicing. We all enjoyed music growing up—singing and harmonizing in the car, stuff like that."
Throughout his early years, Ortega sang in the choir and played piano. In his teens, he started doing solos for the offertory or special events—weddings, funerals. After a time, the musician started getting invited to sing at other churches.
The big break came when Ortega was with Campus Crusade. "I performed at a Christmas conference for college students," he says. "There was a record guy also performing who asked me to come sing on a project. During that recording, he offered me a contract. My first record, In a Welcome Field, was the result."
About that same time, Ortega discovered reading again, thanks to his brother Armando, who passed on a short story by Flannery O'Connor called "The Turkey." The story details Ruller, the main character, whose rough-and-tumble awakening moves him from the rubrics of religion to a desire to love and serve God.
"That just got me back to loving to read again," he says, "and trying to understand how modern evangelicals got the way they are."
Accolades and awards touch Ortega, but he remains far from complacent as he considers his musical trajectory.
"I love singing hymns, I love singing about transcendence, I love singing about the homeless woman who lives down the street from us," he says. "But I'd also look forward, without changing the content of those songs, to playing for a wider audience—the same audience that goes to see Lyle Lovett and Emmylou Harris. Emmylou sings some of those old hymns, and people love that stuff. That's because good music is good music."
Good music, for Ortega, boils down to an unflinching examination of life's truths, both simple and complex, and giving them voice through words, melodies, and instruments.
"The most successful songs, Christian or not, are those that rely on the human condition," he says. "The challenge is to make keen-eye observations about life and say them in a way people can resonate with."
Such is the case with "Old Girl," one of the most haunting songs on the Home recording. Ortega introduces it by telling the Trinity crowd about a homeless woman in his hometown of Laguna Beach, California, whom he spotted picking through trash at a local restaurant.
"I was going to buy her breakfast; I tried to approach her and she got mad and walked away," he says. "I was scared to go up to her again."
Other than the Spanish-language album Camino Largo, Ortega hasn't had a new release since Home came out in February 2000 (his 1991 debut, In a Welcome Field, was just re-released on Discovery House Music). Now roughly halfway through a new, untitled album, Ortega has recorded five songs; he hopes to have the disc ready by February 2002.
Marine mechanic Margee
Much of the peace he has found in his personal life he attributes to his wife of eight years, Margee. "I met her when I was a music minister at South Coast Community Church in Irvine," Ortega says. "She used to sit in the front row. I schemed to get to know her through mutual friends."
They were opposites in many ways. "She is much more organized, mechanical, and analytical," Ortega says. "She was a diesel mechanic in the Marine Corps for four years. Her whole family is in the auto industry, and I don't know beans about cars. When she left the Marines, she went into architecture and did that for 10 years or so.
"Recently, a carpenter came to the house to bid on some work. After a while, he realized I was completely inarticulate regarding things structural, so he directed most of his questions to Margee while I stood by in a daze. This is typical for us."
Then he adds: "Margee and I are both extremely sensitive, though she is much more emotional. I hardly ever cry, but she can get choked up watching a commercial. Margee finds and exposes my rough edges. She immediately recognizes when I am being insincere and points it out."
Lately, the couple is looking for a new home church—one featuring liturgical worship.
In the closing moments of his Trinity concert, Ortega sings "Mi Abuelito," a song about Grandpa Ortega's life as a farmer. Singing in Spanish, the song takes on a lyrical lilt—until Ortega stops the band cold.
"Oops!" he exclaims. "I blew it! I'll start again in Spanish, and if I mess up, I'll sing it in English." The interruption makes the band members laugh.
This time, it's a smooth ride. The song is so vivid in its soundscape of accordion, cello, and piano that it seems to stir up desert dust and moonlit dreams. It courses towards its tag in a celebratory gallop, lifting up the old man's life to the audience and God, like an offering. The crowd returns a shower of applause. Ortega wipes the sweat from his brow. The shy grin returns.
"I made a few mistakes in Spanish," he confesses. "But if you don't speak Spanish, you don't care."
Fernando's Discography
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
Click here for reprint information.
September/October 2001, Vol. 39, No. 5, Page 20
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