Sacred Harp Singing/Shape Note Singing TV Show

I just watched a really good documentary on PBS called Awake My Soul. (And don’t click on that link unless you want your speakers to flood with music!)

It’s all about shape note singing, which people doing it apparently call “Sacred Harp” after the famous songbook. It is really good stuff, and educational too. You get to hear a good sampling of the typical sounds of the style, meet people of various ages and backgrounds who sing, and learn the typical way that ‘all day singings’ are set up: how song leading is done and who does it, where the parts sit and how they’re divvied up, and what individual singers are supposed to do.

The thing which struck me was how much the Sacred Harp singers, as a tradition, shared things in common with the people I know who maintain other small musical traditions. The wholehearted love of the style that comes upon one, the eager determination to learn everything, the unexpectedly strong and detailed memories of long-ago events — and the admission that for some, life was planned around the singing, not the singing around life! Naturally, this extended to the documentary. It was apparently done by folks who were either in the tradition or rapidly were being sucked in. So at certain points, it became a Sacred Harp recruiting video. I feel this is entirely proper, and I’m just sad that we don’t have anything like this for filk. Or Gregorian chant, for that matter.

The things I found very tempting:

1.) emphasis on teaching sightsinging. Geez, I cannot tell you how tired I am of _not_ being able to sightsing fluently. Reducing seven notes to four shapes would make this sooooooo much easier to learn.

2) sing real loud! A wall of vocals sounds darned good to me. I don’t mind working hard at dynamics in choir, or learning to listen to others and blend. But it would be so freeing just to sing as comes naturally to me. Also, given the large number of elderly singers on this show, it’s obviously good for vocal health!

3) interesting harmonic sound. Holy cow, is that sound odd and neat! There’s a lot of similarities to certain of the English folk hymns and to early music (and I wonder if certain of the early American folksongs I know are using shape note tunes — “Logan’s Lament” sure sounds like it would fit in). But it’s definitely out there doing its own thing. Also, the lyrics sound pretty cool. (Although I’m sure there’s quite a few with theology that I’d disagree with, as a Catholic!) Also, it’s a continuing songwriting tradition, which I was very glad to learn. A tradition with no source of new songs (new to you, anyway) is counting down to death.

4) pretty much everybody learns to lead (direct) and gets a chance to do it — even the little kids. They take it in turns.

5) no accompaniment. (In your face, instrumentalists! Mwahahaha!)

6) good spirit of singing and fellowship.

(It also turns out that Justin Morgan, of Morgan horse fame, taught Sacred Harp among his other schoolmaster skillz. And now that I see it written, I do seem to remember dimly something like that from Justin Morgan Had a Horse.)

If you’re interested, the show website points us to http://fasola.org, a hub of info on Sacred Harp and the singings people hold. It turns out — there’s a three-hour singing every month only a couple of miles from me! Mwahahaha!

You can fill your mp3 player with free recordings at Voices of America.

Anyway, the whole thing was very enjoyable and interesting, and you should watch the show if you get a chance. Also, Time apparently has an article scheduled to come out next week, so keep an eye out.