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McDonald’s Gospelfest comes to Prudential Saturday May 7

MUSIC

WHAT: McDonald’s Gospelfest: Honor Thy Mother

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HOLLIDAYMcCLURKIN

WHEN: 4 p.m. (contest) 6:30 p.m. (concert) Saturday

WHERE: Prudential Center, 25 Lafayette St., Newark. 973-643-6262 or ticketmaster.com.

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 ADAMSCAESARGILBERT

HOW MUCH: $35 to $125.

People normally look to the Bible for inspiration, consolation, instruction – anything but humor.

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The same could be said for McDonald’s Gospelfest, now in its 33rd year. Most of the acts on the bill at Newark’s Prudential Center on Saturday, including Yolanda Adams, Tamela Mann, Donnie McClurkin, Bishop Hezekiah Walker & LFC, Shirley Caesar and Jennifer Holliday (“Dreamgirls”), are clearly aiming to lift the spirits, not raise a giggle.

Yet the Bible has its less solemn side. The Old Testament has an occasional laugh line: “A beautiful woman who lacks discretion is like a gold ring in a pig’s snout.” (Proverbs 11:22) And there are those who insist on seeing The Book of Job as an early example of black comedy.

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“As a part of our spirituality, we should be using our funnybone,” says A. Curtis Farrow, executive producer and director of McDonald’s Gospelfest.

That’s why, starting in 2011, he put comedy into the mix at the yearly gospel celebration, which is actually a two-part event.

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At 4 p.m. is the competition: 93 individuals and groups will be vying in categories ranging from choir and solo singer to praise dancing, rapping, and yes, humor. Starting at 6:30 p.m. is the concert, featuring all the big star names.

“We are the preeminent gospel concert in the country,” Farrow says. “There’s no other place you can see all of these artists on one stage. We’re the only gospel concert in the country that sells an arena out.”

McDonald’s Gospelfest has played some of the biggest: Madison Square Garden, Westbury Music Fair, and – for the ninth year in a row – Newark’s Prudential Center. Created in 1983 by the National Black McDonald’s Operators Association, a group of franchise owners looking for a way to give back to the community, Gospelfest has become, among other things, a powerful fundraising engine.

This year, $280,000 in scholarship money will be awarded through the Ronald McDonald House Charities African American Future Achievers scholarship. There are also individual cash prizes given to the winners in each of Gospelfest’s ever-expanding range of competitive categories.

“I think God is such a great creator,” Farrow says. “If we are made in his image, we should always be creating. And be open to the different forms of creativity.”

That includes gospel comedy. Which is actually – for the uninitiated – A Thing.

“I’m not a singer, so I got to start somewhere else,” says Bill “Billionaire” Gilbert, a standup comic from Teaneck who has performed at Caroline’s, Gotham Comedy Club, Broadway Comedy Club, and The Comic Strip.

But he’s also a devout churchgoer (Community Baptist Church, Englewood) who has found a fulfilling sideline – as a number of other comedians have done – as a performer at church functions.

“I think laughter is one of the best medicines for people,” Gilbert says. “Everybody loves to laugh. They can be going through the worst things in the world. Depression, divorce, a lot of things happen in people’s lives. But I think laughter is a cure for some of those things. Definitely when it comes to the church, people go there seeking that help, from God. And humor is part of that. God laughs too.”

Gilbert, competing with four other comedians at Gospelfest, will be performing in front of the largest audience he’s ever had – something like 18,000 people, he’s been told (his biggest audience prior to this has been around 500). He will also be joined with several other North Jersey performers in the competition — two Paterson groups (LEG4CY and Undefined) and two junior singers (TyJon Norris of Paterson and Kayla Williford-Jones of Teaneck).

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a couple of years,” Gilbert says.

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