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Awake, My Soul
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Awake my Soul and Sacred
Harp singing
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Another one from the vaults . . . on sacred harp singing
This is my favorite of all the Copper Press
articles that will never see the light of day, about
a weirdly persistent, unbelievably moving musical
art form called Sacred Harp singing. It was the
subject of a documentary called Awake My Soul -- and
of a two disc CD, the first disc traditional
interpretations, the second contemporary covers of
these songs. I hope you enjoy the article.
Extracted from a blog entitled '30 Seconds
Over', which was published by Jennifer P Kelly on Thursday,
9 July, 2009. This blog no longer exists.
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Make a joyful noise:
The revival of sacred harp singing
The film Awake My Soul begins on a narrow, rutted country road,
the camera viewpoint winding its way through stands of trees as the
sound of singing becomes louder and louder. Finally, a small wooden
building emerges from around a bend. It is Shoals Creek Church, located
deep in the Talledega National Forest in rural Georgia. And yet, despite
its inaccessibility, the clearing is full of cars. The church is full of
people, all singing at the top of their lungs, executing complicated
melodies and countermelodies, unaccompanied by any sort of instrument.
In a way, this opening encapsulates the central paradox of sacred harp
singing, an art form that is nearly as old as America. Sacred harp
singers form a thriving community in the most isolated of places. They
practice a wholly participatory art, one that is seldom recorded and
never performed for audiences. They sing out of books of songs that may
be hundreds of years old, yet which continually incorporate new music
composed in the sacred harp style.
What exactly is sacred harp singing? In its simplest terms, it is a
four-part, unaccompanied vocal art form that originated in Colonial
America. Its hymns are written out in a four-figured notation, using a
different shape for each of its notes, fa, sol, la and mi. (It is
sometimes called shape note singing because of the notation.)
Sacred Harp singing is a participatory art, rather than a performance.
Singers gather for all day sings, starting at nine or ten in the
morning, breaking for lunch and returning to sing late into the
afternoon. In a one day gathering, singers may work through 90 to 100
songs, the first time through singing only the notes ('fa', 'sol', 'la'
and 'mi'),
the second time using the words. Four groups of singers - soprano, alto,
tenor and bass - are arranged facing inward, towards the 'hollow
square' so created, the best place to experience sacred harp singing. Singers take
turns as leader, beating out the time in this hollow square,
Music for Singers
Still unlike many traditional art forms, sacred harp singing has never
really been commercialized and so remains remarkably uncorrupted by the
modern world. Matt Hinton, who with his wife created Awake My Soul,
speculates that sacred harp music may have survived intact at least
partly because of its communal, participatory nature. 'It is not music
just for listening to. It is music primarily for singing,' says Hinton.
'I do not just mean that there is a priority placed on participating,
which there is, but what I mean is just the very way that songs are
written, it is just not that suitable for listening to,' he adds.
'Though some people enjoy listening to it and I certainly do.'
Hinton goes on to explain that when the uninitiated first hear sacred
harp music, typically from the back of a church, what they perceive is a
mishmash of four distinctly different parts. 'If they had to hum a tune,
the melody would probably be the first couple of notes of the tenor line
and then a couple of notes of the treble line and a couple of notes of
the alto line and put them all together,' Hinton says. And that assumes new listeners can even pick a central melodic line out of
a complex tapestry of counterpoints. 'Sometimes there really is no main
melody. That is, there is not a melody [line] that other parts are
supporting, but rather each part is generally written as something
interesting and important all by itself. ... ... ... That�s why bass
singers, in particular, and tenors for that matter, really love singing
it. Ordinarily they get stuck with these really boring parts in
choruses. Which purely serve to be a foundation upon which the sopranos
get to sing the melody.'
That complexity, in itself, has helped protect the art form. �There�s
not anybody who could walk into a Sacred Harp singing, not really
knowing anything about it, and take it over,� says Hinton. �Even if
you�re a professional musician and know how to read music and so on, you
still have to learn how to do it. At which point you begin to learn some
of its priorities and to understand it.�
'On the one hand, it is very open and embracing. Everybody is welcome to
come, and welcome indeed, to come up and lead a song,' he says. 'But on
the other hand, if you come in, if you walk into the room, a lot of
people [will have their] backs turned to you. We�re all facing the center and it
is sort of a closed off thing. That sort of gives off a feeling of
being�being a community on one hand, but also having its back turned on
the outside world.'
Help me to sing
Sacred harp singing is a tradition that has been handed down, generation
after generation in the south. Many of today�s singers come from
families that have sung these songs for as long as anyone can remember.
Elderly singers talk of playing outside while their parents sang, or
hearing these songs from their own grandparents. Yet it is a tradition
that is always in danger of dying out if new singers are not brought in.
So, while deeply rooted in personal and community history, while
physically and metaphorically inward-looking, the sacred harp art form
is also remarkably inclusive.
'At many of these sings, there�s a memorial afterwards where we
commemorate singers who we�ve sung with and who have died in the
previous year,' says Hinton. 'Every so often, someone will get up and
say, well, I�d like to sing this for Uncle so and so, who I used to hear
in the 1940s and 1950s sing. So some of the elderly people who sing this
kind of music, they�re not going to be with us forever. And so they have
to be replaced by somebody. So there�s always a real strong motivation
to get more people there.'
The documentary, Awake My Soul, traces the history of sacred
harp singing from its beginnings in New England during the Great
Awakening through its heyday in the 19th century through its current
revival. Yet alongside this history, the film captures the art form in
its current, living state, with extensive footage of sacred harp
singing, interviews with leading singers and songwriters.
Matt Hinton, who made the documentary with his wife Erica, says that he
stumbled across Sacred Harp singing as a teenager. He was at a concert
featuring North Carolina ballad singer Betty Smith when someone handed
him a flyer for an upcoming sacred harp singing. 'I went out to the
singing and it was in this old brick church, maybe 35 or 40 minutes
outside of Atlanta, and couldn�t really believe what it was I was
hearing. It was a relatively small group of people there -- maybe 40 or
so people -- but it sounded like there were hundreds. You could hear
them before you got to the door of the place,' he remembers. 'At the
time I thought that these were the last people in the world who were
doing this. I thought it was a lost musical tribe.'
From that point on, Hinton went to two or three sings a year, always
sitting in the back and reluctant to participate. Erica, who would later
become his wife, came with him on one of these expeditions; she later
learned that her grandmother had been a sacred harp singer. Both were
students at Georgia State University when they met. Erica took a
documentary film class and decided to make her assigned 10-minute film
on sacred harp singing.
'So we went to a couple of singings one weekend and she edited that and
made a ten-minute film, which she called �Awake My Soul,' ' he said. '
But ten minutes is just not enough, obviously, to cover the entire
history of the Sacred Harp singing. We kept bringing the camera and sort
of never considered that project to be finished.'
Contemporary interpretations
That ten-minute
film has since evolved into a full-length documentary, plus a two CD
set, with one CD (Awake My Soul) comprised of traditional
sacred harp singing, the other (Help Me to Sing) of covers of
sacred harp hymns interpreted by contemporary artists.
One of the biggest names on this second disc is John Paul Jones, the
former Led Zeppelin bass player who has long had a fascination for
traditional American music. Hinton, a self-described Zeppelin fanatic,
says that he ran into Jones at Merle Fest in North Carolina (where
Awake My Soul was screening) and asked for an autograph. 'Any kind
of notion of coolness that you have?' he says. 'completely goes out the
window when you�re with John Paul Jones.'
As it happened, the only paper he had to offer was a copy of the sacred
harp songbook. The two had a brief conversation and Hinton gave Jones a
copy of his album, at that time, comprised only of authentic, choral
versions of sacred harp songs. (The covers came later.) The next day,
Hinton ran into Jones again and the two had a long conversation about
sacred harp singing. ' I was in the surreal position of actually being
able to tell John Paul Jones anything about music, you know what I
mean?' recalls Hinton. 'Which was strange because I had learned how to
play guitar based on listening to his recordings.'
Jones had recently produced an album by the string band Uncle Earl, and
Hinton had already been in contact with the band�s fiddler, Raina
Gellert , about contributing a sacred harp recording. �So we were
emailing back and forth, and I said, by the way, Raina Gellert and John
Paul Jones sure has a nice ring to it,� Hinton recalls. The two of them
ended up recording 'Blooming Youth,' their two voices intertwining in
one of the starkest, most haunting cuts on the album.
Other singers came to the project through deep personal connections with
sacred harp music. Sam Amidon, who sings 'Kedron' on the covers disc,
says he was first introduced to sacred harp singing by his mom and dad.
'My parents got deeply involved with shape-note singing when, in the
midst of the folk revival, they joined the Word of Mouth
Chorus, led by Larry Gordon in the '70s, before they were married - they were in their
mid-20s,' he says. 'They toured with Larry & Bread & Puppet
before settling in Brattleboro, Vermont. From the time I was born there
were monthly sings in our town and often in our house, so this is some
of the first music I ever heard or participated in.'
Stephen Nichols of the Good Players, who covers 'David� s Lamentations'
also had an early introduction to the sacred harp tradition. 'My father
is a Southern Baptist music minister. I remember academic discussions
about shape note/Sacred Harp music,' he explains. 'The church pianist
led a workshop on shape note singing when I was too young to appreciate
it.'
Nichols says that, like many people, he didn�t fully appreciate the
music until he attended a sing. 'The curious methodology of shaped notes
is irrelevant when you're surrounded by over 100 people singing with
conviction at the top of their lungs in the middle of nowhere,' he says.
Moreover, the artists on the disc maintain that sacred harp singing is
not a historical oddity, but rather a living, breathing influence on
their own work. Amidon says that sacred harp harmonies and counterpoints
have been a large part of his personal musical DNA -- and that they
continue to influence his recorded output. 'The style of singing has
been hugely influential for me, it was the main kind of singing I did in
high school; the open harmonies of the songs are really powerful &
always inspiring,' he explains. 'I sing a lot of re-worked shape-note
pieces on my solo records.'
The power of incorrectness
The covers are very fine, yet you cannot help returning to the disc of
originals, recorded in churches with amateur singers, in a style that
is fierce and forceful and utterly transporting. Even well-known
melodies like 'New Britain' (also known as 'Amazing Grace') take on
unfamiliar heft and complexity in these arrangements, as well as a
volume that is nearly shocking.
Asked if he has a favorite among the traditional songs, Hinton first
demurs, then points to 'Eternal Day.' 'If somebody asked me to play them
one Sacred Harp song which would completely illustrate what Sacred Harp
singing is about, that has all the elements that are distinctive about
Sacred Harp singing, that�s the song that I would choose,' he says. The
song was written in the 1800s by a traveling pastor named J.P. Reese,
and incorporates all the �incorrectness� of traditional sacred harp music,
the two-note chords and parallel fifths. It is a fuguing tune, with the
four sections singing the same motif at staggered intervals, for a
dazzling sense of motion and pursuit. And it is sung imperfectly, by
ordinary people, pushing their voices to their very limits. You can hear
a baby crying in the background. Yet for all this wrong-ness, there is
no denying the power of the song. 'It�s crazy what a heavy song that
is,' he adds. 'I�d put that up against any Black Sabbath song in the
world in terms of sheer heaviness.'
Amidon also sees parallels between sacred harp and rock music. 'I have
always heard a lot of the intensity of shape note music in the singing
of Kurt Cobain, and [also in] his guitar playing too,' he says. ' I think that's what the
great Tim Eriksen was picking up on in his work with the band Cordelia's
Dad in the nineties, when they sang shape note songs - I think they even
opened for Nirvana at one point. I also feel like there is an
interesting connection between the harmonies and textures of sacred harp
singing, and the drone minimalism of the seventies of LaMonte Young and
Tony Conrad.'
Hinton says that he and Tim Eriksen have talked at length about the
parallels between punk rock and sacred harp. 'Who knows what the
relationship is?� he says, �but when you think about it, parallel fifths
and two-note chords, that�s just power chords on the guitar. They sound
really freaky when you�ve got people singing power chords, rather than a
guitar. And counterintuitive as it may seem, it�s possible to draw a
direct line of succession between sacred harp singing and rock and roll.'
Hinton starts with the Louvin Brothers, natives of sacred harp
stronghold Henniker, Alabama. The Louvin Brothers inspired the Everly
Brothers, particularly influencing their use of harmonies. And the
Everly Brothers inspired the Beatles. �' It may not be too much of a
stretch to say that if there was no Sacred Harp there would be no
Beatles,' says Hinton.
Diversity and inclusion
Rock borrows heavily from African-American traditions, too -- like blues,
jazz and gospel. All of which brings up an interesting question: is
Sacred Harp singing an all-white tradition? Hinton says no.
' Black people certainly sang Sacred Harp plenty much, ' he explains. 'In
fact, we sing with a guy here now in Atlanta whose great grandfather, or
maybe even grandfather, was a slave. He wound up [in] a chapel after he
was freed specifically designed for singing Sacred Harp. And this guy
remembers singing in that and being raised in it when he was a kid.'
But when gospel music appeared in the early 20th century, black churches
turned to it even more than white churches, with the result that there
are very few black sacred harp communities now in the American south.
However, there are some, including the Wiregrass family in Ozark,
Alabama. This family descends from a sacred harp compiler named Judge
Jackson, who in 1935 produced a book called The Colored Sacred Harp.
One of the Wiregrass family, Dewey Williams, took an early leadership
role in the national sacred harp organization and members of the family
still participate in its conventions. Yet, as the film Awake My Soul
makes clear, there are very few black faces at southern sacred harp
sings�and very few young people either.
' As the world became more modern, people became less interested in that
old time-y stuff. Even in the 1800s there are these newspaper articles
that we�ve seen that talk about this old time-y music. There�s almost
never been a time when Sacred Harp wasn�t old-fashioned. If it�s
old-time-y in the 1800s, what is it now? '
Yet though the authentic southern singing groups chronicled in the
documentary may be aging rapidly, Hinton says that younger people have
been joining up in droves in the east and Midwest. A thriving community
in Northampton, Massachusetts, for instance, draws upwards of 400 people
to the Western Mass Sacred Harp Convention, many of them under 35.
That�s maybe because people of all ages and backgrounds are beginning to
see sacred harp music as an antidote to the isolation and wall-to-wall
consumerism of modern life. ' Sacred Harp singing and communal singing in
general reminds us that we're part of a whole, ' says Nichols. ' It's an
intimate exchange of ideas and emotions without judgment or pretense.
Anyone is welcome regardless of ability or religious affiliation. In a
time of increasing personal insulation and lives lived in front of
screens, group singing is an alternative to constant consumption. You
participate. You make the music. ' |
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