LEAVING LITTLE TO CHANTS

By David E. Thigpen

Life for the singing monks of Santo Domingo de Silos has never been the same since they became recording stars. Last spring Chant, their Latin-language recording of medieval Gregorian sung prayer, achieved the nearest thing to a record-industry miracle: it ascended to No. 3 on the pop music charts, lodging next to hits by Snoop Doggy Dogg and Nine Inch Nails. Soon the ancient walls of their remote monastery in northern Spain were besieged by tourists and paparazzi. Even more troubling, the monks came to feel that their record company had given them a raw deal.

Though Chant sold 6 million copies worldwide and grossed more than $50 million for EMI Records (whose stars range from Sinaad O'Connor to Digable Planets), Laurentino de Buruaga, the group's choirmaster, complains that the monks have earned a paltry $40,000 from it--hardly enough to patch the leaking roof over their medieval cloister. In response, the monks have followed the example of secular recording stars from time immemorial: they've switched labels. Their new CD, The Soul of Chant, was released last month by Milan Records, a smaller classical label.

According to Buruaga, Chant was a disenchanting experience for the monks even before it soared on the charts. First, EMI blundered by putting a painting of brown-robed Franciscan friars on the CD's cover instead of black-robed Benedictine monks-the ecclesiastical equivalent of putting a Yale man on the cover of the Harvard yearbook. Then, as Chant's sales took off, an overeager EMI executive flew to Silos to talk to the monks about a follow-up album. Suspicious of the machinery of stardom--and the private helicopter whirring overhead--the monks greeted the exec through a peephole in the monastery's front door and told him to hit the road. "That made them very cross," recalls Buruaga.

But what really ruffled the monks' cowls was EMI's insistence on holding them to a contract the Benedictines had signed 30 years ago with Hispavox Records, which EMI later bought out. That agreement entitled them to only a flat $1,500 per record, though a small royalty was added later. "The monks say they were paid legally," says musicologist Alejandro Masso, who produced their new album, "but they also say they could have been paid more elegantly." "Ridiculous," responds EMI executive Steve Murphy. He asserts that the monks have received "substantial" royalties in excess of $40,000, adding that Buruaga is not privy to details of the contract. "That," Masso retorts, "is like telling a cardinal he doesn't know the business of the church." Murphy accuses Milan Records of fomenting the dispute for "publicity purposes" and says EMI will release another album of the monks' music soon.

The Soul of Chant, in any event, has risen to No. 10 on the classical charts--not a blockbuster like Chant, but enough to make Milan chairman Emmanuel Chamboredon rejoice. Signing the robed hitmakers, he says, was a "gift of God."