Joined: 30th Mar, 2008 Posts: 8019 Location: Cardiff
Ahoy there! Yet more slightly self-induglent tl,dr blathery words from me. I'm going to post this on my bloggery, thought you might like a read of something tremendously obscure. If you do fancy reading it could you let me know if it reads like the ramblings of a man-mental, me repeating myself or if there's any howling mistakes? I'd check it again myself but my eyes are boggling and I've had a few drinks now...
Walking past a community hall, you hear a great sound washing over you - a great singing and chanting of echoing voices massing into one great overwhelming sound. You can't make out the words, but its like nothing you've ever heard before. It sounds like the world's biggest family singing out of pure joy. A river of voice rushing right over you, sheer volume and passion knocking your feet out from under you. Time to be baptised in that wonderfully new, gloriously old sound...
They call it Sacred Harp singing. They call it Shape Note singing. Sometimes even Fasola.
They sing from a book that dates back to 1840. The book is called the Sacred Harp, though the music within is entirely a capella - for the 'sacred harp' somewhat poetically refers to the human voice - the God-given instrument you are born with. The musical notation uses note-heads in four distinct shapes - square, circle, triangle and diamond. These notes do not direct pitch but rather cover the full musical scale. Sacred Harp music prides itself on being completely unrehearsed and sung by untutored singers. These singers sit in a hollow square formation with one voice part on each side, all facing inwards forsaking clarity and technique for passion and energy. It is a communal craft. The sound can range from a babbling brook to a raging river for Sacred Harp congregations can number from a handful to - once upon a time - thousands.
The songs start sluggishly but like an engine warming up momentum builds and the entire ragged sound tightens and gathers apace. What begins with the discordant clamour of wordless syllables tightens into words as the singers run through the shapes, aiding newcomers by helping them to fix the notes to the sound, before shaping those sounds into words. How does it sound? Ragged, gloriously ragged but full of character and warmth and volume. There are no microphones but the wall rattling sound can be heard half a mile away. I can't really describe it without inflicting yet more purple prose upon you, so here's an extract from a soundtrack that helped bring a once dying tradition back to life. Yes, the movie Cold Mountain may have been unremarkable, but the soundtrack remains O Brother Where Art Thou's other half.
Like it? Hope so. It takes a while to grow on you. I've found that I'm pretty hooked on the stuff. Not only the sound, but the spirit behind it - and I'm not talking about the Holy Spirit.
Sacred Harp is American in origin and remains a very democratic form of music. Beginning in New England in the late 18th century it spread through the states with the migration down to the rural south. The origins of most of the songs are actually secular; these were folk songs rejigged and given religious lyrics. But it only acquired a name and definite form when the Sacred Harp Book was created by a Benjamin Franklin White and an Elish J. King in 1844. Sacred Harp became all the rage up and until the US Civil War, where it began a gradual decline soon after. Yet it was never music for the church, though it could be performed within one. Performances more frequently took place in meeting halls an homes and fields than in chapels. It was a religious sound, but motivation was equally communal and to be part of an overwhelming sound sung from the heart.
But until the last decade it looked as if Sacred Harp music was dying out. From the fifties to the nineties congregations were increasingly composed of increasingly frail members who passed on leaving empty seats. Music had passed from the communal gathering to radio and from there to television and was now seen as the sole preserve of talented vocally-trained media exposed stars. By the time the DIY ethos of punk came along Sacred Harp was barely remembered outside of history class. It was dying out as the turn of the century generation slowly passed on.
Happily now the form is enjoying something of a revival. This is partly thanks to the internet, which has helped an expanding community to grow out of once isolated fans. And as word has spread so too have voices more musically famous learnt of shape note singing and been moved to speak out. Quoth Jack White in a reply to a question posed by a California paper regarding his current fixations:
"Shape note singing. It’s an old singing style in America, where they would help illiterate people learn more about music by supplementing shapes like squares and triangles in place of musical notation and getting people to sing in choirs. They used this book called The Sacred Harp, of older religious songs and choir type songs. Really powerful — some of the most powerful music I’ve ever heard in my life. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it before. I’ve been getting more into that." (1)
It goes without saying that alt-country folks such as Jim Lauderdale and Alison Kraus are fans, but Sacred Harp has also been increasingly well regarded by the new bright young things who are looking further than the Beatles and Velvet Underground for inspiration.
See, most of the existing recordings of Sacred Harp Music were cut in the twenties and thirties by Alan Lomax and Harry Smith and others, who scoured the land in a noble quest to preserve American folk music before it died out. These recordings have come to the public eye again thanks to publishers such as the critically lauded Dust to Digital who provide miraculous remasters of the old folk and blues and gospel sounds of rural America. Sold in finely packaged box sets packed with historical notes and photographic arcana, these darker, magical works have been seized upon by a new generation of song-writers who, like increasing numbers of the general public, hunger for a sound remote from the current long-and-short-term memory-loss that is chart music today. Some of these old songs are truer, more painful songs of a harsher time of frequent ruination and despair. But others - and especially Sacred Harp - are transporting and purely joyous songs both unironic and unashamed. Dust to Digital and its ilk are a new wellspring sunk to a new sound once thought buried in time. But the strange and wonderful difference of Sacred Harp is that it isn't something that an existing band or singer could release, no matter how much they wanted to. There is no identity in Sacred Harp singing. There are no 'super-groups'. Since it requires that mass enthusiasm of volume I firmly believe it is impossible for a singer-songwriter to front a group for an album without looking a damn fool. It is a sound for existing artists to take inspiration from, but not to release themselves. It remains purely of the people. And so those who have made a name for themselves in music and who, like myself, love Sacred Harp remain content to cry out its wonders, encourage participation and point out the odd record that is released through old recordings remastered or by new and existing community congregations out there.
Like the modern practitioners of American folk, Sacred Harp is increasingly a form dominated by the young - congregations now seemingly shared between the very old and a generation weaned on the internet. Ironically, despite the religious nature of the music and its rural origins, Sacred Harp is growing faster in the cities of America than it is out in its traditional heartland. The music is coming back home to its birthplace of the North and is now voiced and spread by young, frequently atheist or at least agnostic urbanites who admire its independent, lo-fi and resolutely uncommercial ethos. Sacred Harp is not about the singer, it is purely about the song. If Simon Cowell were faced by the rough, untutored voice of a sacred harp singer both himself and his panel would bombard them with disdainful mockery. The knowledge that this smug faced charlatan and his moon-faced and harridan cronies can be counted as mortal enemies to the sacred harp tradition surely adds appeal to those who want to be counted out from the TV Nation of talent contests. But its not a choice of fashion victims. It's not the preserve of Apple mac chin-stroking enthusiasts desperate to appear hip and counter-cutural. Fans of Sacred Harp also consist of people entirely unaware of Jack White or The Handsome Family. Some go because of a family tradition that has resurfaced during this revival, grand-daughters and grandsons expressing interest in the sound of their great grand-parents. Others have fallen in love through the increasing number of music teachers out there keen on spreading the word. And yet others have become hooked on the sound merely by passing outside a Sacred Harp meeting and hearing that sound roaring out the windows.
It is a democratic sound that has no demographic. There's no egotism in joining Sacred Harp, no desire to ride any sort of wave or be at the forefront of a movement. Since because everybody's voice becomes lost in a greater sound, Sacred Harp is an egoless yet personally overwhelming experience for the singer. There are no names to drop or techniques to master. It is as far from the clinical, over-rehearsed sound of prog-rock as it is as possible to go without transforming into Brian Blessed.
And I'm also happy to say that this revival is not one of the slow death of zealous puritanical curatorship, but instead is an evolving format. Yep, out there new songs are being composed in shape note form and added to spangly new editions of the Sacred Harp book. You may even be able to hear Sacred Harp first hand. Most American states have a whole bunch of regular congregations in various parts, even the UK has a bunch. In fact, to my great surprise in researching this article I found out that there's one that will be playing in my home village -the sleepy old Holmfirth, where creaky-limbed pensioner slapstick comedy Last of the Summer Wine was once filmed. An odd if scenic venue for a sound so youthful.
I may be making this all sound bigger than it is. In fact I am - Sacred Harp is enjoyed by a very, very small number of people. But whilst it was once dying it is now to my joy growing in popularity. Now currently there aren't really any new Sacred Harp recordings commercially available, but this may and probably will change soon. Until then look to Dust to Digital and Amazon for old recordings. You can also find some free streaming performances online.
If you'd like to know more, here are some websites with words on them which you can read, pictures which you can look at and perhaps even sounds that you can hear with your sensory organs and brain.
The obligatory hideously and frighteningly detailed wikipedia entry:
The stupendous Dust to Digital. Here's their catalogue, scroll down to 'I Belong to This Band', their Pitchfork Media recommended Sacred Harp compilation:
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