Norfolk girl raps tonight at famed New York theater

NORFOLK

One night last fall, Keturah Hendricks had a dream. She was on a famous stage, performing her Christian rap to a big audience. The crowd applauded, her mother smiled, and then the fifth-grader body surfed across the sea of eager fans.

That dream becomes reality - except for the body surfing - tonight when the Camp Allen Elementary School student belts out her rap on the stage of New York City's renowned Apollo Theater in Harlem.

The Apollo is famous as the career-launching venue for many black stars, including Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, James Brown and Lauryn Hill.

Long before "American Idol," the Apollo's Amateur Night focused the limelight on talented wanna be s eager to be judged as a jewel in the rough.

Keturah, 11, has been crooning since the womb.

"While I was in my mom's stomach, she rapped, did oratoricals and talent shows," Keturah said, and she believes it rubbed off.

She sang as a tot, first to her mother, Kezia Hendricks-MaGee, then to her 11 aunts and uncles, and later in talent shows. In 2008, her father's Navy transfer brought Keturah's family from Dallas to Norfolk.

Pint-size with straight hair brushing her shoulders, Keturah said her favorite audience is the membership at her church, One Touch Ministries in Virginia Beach. Performing at the church's weekly open-mic sessions primed her stage presence and her talent, she said.

But it was her mother, a music technology student at Norfolk State University, who went to the Apollo's Web site and learned how Keturah could try out her skills before a larger audience.

On Oct. 17, mother and daughter hopped in the car for the night ride up Interstate 95. They arrived in Harlem at 6 a.m., grabbed an hour's shut-eye at the home of a friend's relative, then headed for West 125th Street.

So did a couple hundred other starry-eyed contenders who lined up outside the Apollo for their turn to try out for Amateur Night.

"We were No. 129," Hendricks-MaGee said.

"It was cold," Keturah recalled.

After four hours outdoors, the pair got inside - then waited 90 minutes more for the soundman to get back from lunch.

Finally, Keturah gave her name, quelled the anxious "bumbley-bees" in her stomach, and tuned out the eyes of the small audience.

She performed "Secondh and Smoke," a rap her mother composed about evil words' insidious power to hurt.

Sixty seconds later, the Amateur Night director had heard enough. "He was like, 'Wow!' " Hendricks-Ma Gee recalled. One of the three judges even gave Keturah a standing ovation.

Apollo staff members took her picture and registered her for a future performance. Then Keturah and her mother roamed Harlem, sight seeing and eating lunch at a Jamaican restaurant before driving home to Norfolk.

At Camp Allen Elementary, where Keturah prefers math and science classes, the school let everyone know during morning announcements about her Amateur Night performance.

"First I was like, 'Uhhh!' " Keturah said, but she concedes she was pleased. "Some of my friends were like, 'You going to be famous.' "

In truth, she wouldn't mind becoming as big a hit as Hannah Montana or Demi Lovato. Or she might become an engineer.

For now, she's content to stand on the Apollo's venerable stage, rapping about living positively:

"It's poison to my mind, like tobacco to my lungs,

Yelling, screaming, cursing, evil words falling off your tongue,

I beg you to watch your ways and keep your tongue from sin,

Put a muzzle on your mouth in the presence of wickedness.

Second hand smoke - second hand smoke- second hand smoke.

Your words are like second hand smoke.

You can't see it, but it affects me, yes, your words affect me.

They affect me, 'cuz your words are like second hand smoke."

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com