Contacts & Publisher

Subscription Form

Making a joyful sound
Song producer Mark Cabrera left the popular music industry because of its vices. Now, he's back in it to spread virtue and holiness.

Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published November 3, 2006

Canton Township — Have you ever seen the music rack in your Catholic book store? The one housing tapes and CDs of a smattering of Gregorian Chants, the voiced rosary and a few classic hymns?

Mark Cabrera has seen it – and he's out to beef it up.

Photo by Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic Mark Cabrera adjusts the microphone for the family musical group Ascent: (left to right) Anna, Maria, Angela and Andrea Dougoveto. Cabrera, who formerly produced music in the secular industry, is trying to produce and promote uplifting Catholic music with a modern beat.

"There's nothing for the youth, nothing pop," says Cabrera, who – when he became serious about his Catholic faith – left the secular popular music industry a decade ago over ethical concerns. "It's mostly for meditation or contemplative music."

 A parishioner at Divine Child Parish in Dearborn, Cabrera hopes to bring modern Catholic music to those who hunger for it.

To that end, he's watching his home-based Catholic recording studio, Mediatrix Records, grow.

In his 20s and early 30s, Cabrera produced rock music for studios in New York and Los Angeles before a conversion experience led him to question the ethics of messages in modern rock. After leaving the industry and starting a family, he and his wife Rendie — now pregnant with the couple's sixth child — discerned that God would want him to use his gifts to promote love for the Lord.

Now, Cabrera works full-time with songwriters, musicians, a voice coach and an artist relations manager to make the kind of music that blends guitars, drums and glory to God.

"If people can see an artist out there who loves the Church, that it's okay to promote virtue and not vice, and that it's okay to play drums and guitar and love God – that's great," says Cabrera.

His musical journey

Cabrera was attracted to music his whole life. In the 1980s and 90s, he worked for CJ & Company producing the popular disco music of the group Devil's Gun. He also produced songs for the Detroit soul group The Spinners.

That is, until a profound experience at a shrine changed his life.

On a trip to Georgia, he was attracted to a shrine by stories about miracles.

 

Photo by Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic Rendie and Mark Cabrera had five children when Mark first started building Mediatrix Records Studio in their home. The Cabreras hold their children Gabriel Joseph (left) and Lilianna Marie.

Having taken some time in serious prayer, he and his now-wife spent the trip back from Georgia reading stories about apparitions to the Blessed Virgin.

"It changed my life," he said. "I found myself in a confessional after 20 years in downtown Pontiac, saying 'Sorry, Lord.'" With a new perspective, Cabrera re-examined his career and saw that the music he produced promoted drinking and adultery. The lifestyle surrounding it reflected those poor values, too.

He quit the business immediately and joined his brother in real estate. He got married. He joined a parish — Divine Child in Deaborn, becoming friends with its then-associate pastor Fr. John Riccardo. Then, Rendie converted to the Catholic Church, and the couple became involved in the pro-life movement, working for Right to Life - Lifespan.

The music had become buried.

"Nobody knew I was in music," he said. "They all knew me from the mortgage business. (Music) was a past thing that I loved."

But it was still in him. So much so that, as he and his wife were expecting their fifth child, they decided they'd take a big risk and build a recording studio in the basement.

"We'll just trust God. That's basically what it was," says Rendie. "It was scary to see all our money pumped into this, and babies here and babies there — but we just kept our eyes open and watched for signs that this is what we're supposed to be doing."

Trusting God, Cabrera opened the studio in December 2005, and since has seen a parade of new artists march through its doors. The operation has been so successful, he says he's looking for a place to build a larger studio in Canton.

'It's just blossomed'

Christian music    20 million people in the United States listen to Christian and Gospel music radio stations   More than 22 million people attend Christian music concerts or events each year in the United States.   U.S. Christian and Gospel music sales have increased from $381 million to more than $700 million since 1995.   U.S. Christian and Gospel music album sales represented more than 6 percent of all album sales in 2005 - that's more than Latin (5.66 percent), soundtracks (3.6 percent), Jazz (2.7 percent) and classical (2.5 percent).   Source: Gospel Music Association

"Music is one of those powerful media that reaches to the human soul," says Fr. Andrew Bloomfield, associate pastor of St. John Neumann Parish and a friend of the Cabreras. "So much of modern music tears down the truths of human nature. But we can hear beautiful, popular songs that recall to mind the truths of who we are."

Fr. Bloomfield, a musician himself who blessed the Mediatrix Records studio when it first opened, said one of his favorite groups is Ascent.

Four young ladies – all sisters, all school teachers in the Canton area – sing about giving glory to the Father as one of them strums a guitar. Cabrera adjusts the microphone to capture their melody at the studio.

This is Ascent, siblings from Michigan's Upper Peninsula: Andrea, Angela, Maria and Anna Dougoveto. And it's a prime example of what Mediatrix Records is all about.

"We actually went to Nashville to find someone to try to help us record a CD," said Andrea Dougoveto. "We thought it would be great to find someone who was a Christian – but we decided that we really needed to find someone who was a Catholic. So to find somebody like Mark was amazing for us."

The sisters, all having earned degrees at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, had been singing together from a young age and had even produced an album — which sold a couple thousand copies. Gifted with passion to sing, and talent to do so well together, they didn't feel exactly at home in the contemporary Christian music environment. Working with Cabrera — in a studio with pictures of the pope and saints on the wall — they could be themselves.

"It's just a blessing to be able to sing and use our own lyrics," says Andrea Dougoveto.

Ascent is one of five groups Cabrera currently is recording. He met them after Rendie heard them at a concert in Steubenville. They became Mediatrix Records' first recording artists.

Since, he's welcomed a priest into the studio, a gifted seminarian from Chicago who performed once for Pope John Paul II, and two young talents from parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit – Gracie Denton and Brian Walker.

So far, Cabrera's produced a version of the Hail Mary that has been popular on Michigan Catholic Radio WCAR (1090 AM), and even radio commercials for the Miles Christi religious order in South Lyon.

"It's just blossomed," said Cabrera of his recording business. "We've got people here all day and all night."

The marketing challenge

Though his studio is rife with recording artists, Cabrera says, the big challenge to come will be with marketing. And – as his vision of a studio has grown from an idea into a full-time job in less than a year – he's confident that, with the Lord's help plus his experience in the industry, his marketing plan will be just as fruitful.

"I spent a lot of time in the music business, and we're going to go through European distribution and probably Latin American as well," says Cabrera, who's already arranged Spanish-language versions of songs.

His plan in the United States primarily involves advertisements on radio stations, concerts via the Internet, and concerts involving well-known Catholic speakers who can draw large audiences. The market Cabrera is trying to break into is commonly known in the music industry as contemporary Christian. If you combine the popular, adult contemporary, rock, and praise & worship categories of the music, it makes up about half of the $700 million-a-year Christian music industry in the United States, according to the Gospel Music Association. The other half of the industry is made up of black and southern Gospel music, children's music, country and Rhythm and Blues.

Though the contemporary Christian genre is strong and growing each year, it takes hard work for an individual producer or artist to break into, says John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association. Still, he says, small studios such as Cabrera's can find success by discovering good talents and marketing them well through networking.

"There are many more people who start small or on their own than with the big houses," Styll says. "There's more opportunity there. The big music companies are few…Most people have to start small."

Styll adds that a story like Cabrera's – where a person leaves work in the secular field and rediscovers it in the Christian genre – is a reoccurring theme in the Christian music industry.

It's not uncommon either, he says, to find artists and producers of various denominations in the industry – though most music produced doesn't key on elements of a various denomination.

"It's really not about denominations," Styll says. "That is not the emphasis of artists. It's very difficult to discern what type of church an artist in this field belongs to. Most of them believe in doing music and art, and expressing their faith and values in it."

The question remains whether songs about the Blessed Mother, saints and Divine Mercy – aspects that don't find the spotlight in Protestant-produced music – can reach a Christian audience.

But if Cabrera has his way, those music racks at the family-owned Catholic book and supply stores might look a little more robust and appealing to young folks.

And judging from the talent in his studio, Cabrara doesn't think he's the only one with that desire.

"It's just growing out of our hands," he says. "I think the Lord wants it."