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Shape-note singing
Published September 15, 2009
Corinth Baptist Church in Fyffe played host Saturday and Sunday to the 106th Annual United Sacred Harp Musical Association Convention.
“This year’s convention is the second time in 50 years it has been held at the Corinth Church,” said Jack Stiefel, whose father, Andrew Stiefel, a well-known livestock dealer in Fyffe, was instrumental in organizing the first one in 1959. Lemon Brown was chairman that year.
Dennis George, this year’s chairman said, “The USHMA coming here 50 years ago was the furthest west it had ever been held from Atlanta. It was a big deal back then. In fact, having a brick church on Sand Mountain was a big deal 50 years ago, too.”
James L. White and Joe S. James, following a series of large 1904 singings connected with tent revivals in the Atlanta area, founded the United Sacred Harp Musical Association in Atlanta in 1905. The convention was based in that city for most of its early history.
More than 300 people attended and/or participated in the two-day event.
Individual and group Sacred Harp singers, not only from Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida were in attendance, but singers from Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, California, Oregon and England participated.
In his best-selling book, Stars Fell on Alabama, Carl Carmer described an early 1930s Sacred Harp singing in north Alabama: “The church was full now. People stood along the walls and the doorway was packed. Crowds were huddled outside each window singing lustily ... There were surely more than two thousand people ... Hard blows of sound beat upon the walls and rafters with inexorable regularity. All in a moment the constant beat took hold. There was a swift crescendo. Muscles were tensing, eyes brightening.”
Sacred Harp singing (also called fasola singing or shape-note singing) is making a major resurgence in cities and campuses throughout North America.
Following a family tradition, George has been involved in Sacred Harp singing since his “granddaddy,” Leon Wilson, whose parents were harp singers, taught him how as a young child.
George, who said, “I enjoy the old book singing,” further noted, “Traditionally, since its infancy, there have been, and are, more Sacred Harp singers living in Alabama than any other state.”
This year’s convention was held at Corinth Church after George said, “I got it here because I went to the locating committee at the Pleasant Hill Church, Fayette County, where it was held last year and partitioned to have it here this year. For next year somebody will partition our locating committee — that’s the tradition.”
Sacred Harp singing is a non-denominational community musical event emphasizing participation, not performance. Singers sit facing inward in a hollow square. Each individual is invited to take a turn “leading,” i.e. standing in the center, selecting a song, and beating time with the hand. The singing is not accompanied by harps or any other instrument. The group sings from The Sacred Harp, an oblong songbook first published in 1844 by B. F. White and E. J. King. The music is printed in “patent notes,” wherein the shape of the note head indicates the syllables FA, SOL, LA, and MI.
The repertory includes psalm tunes, fuging tunes, odes and anthems by the first American composers (1770-1810), and settings of folk songs and revival hymns (1810-1860). The current 1991 Edition contains many songs in these styles by living composers.
This style of singing stems from singing schools in the colonial period. Preserved in the rural South, Sacred Harp singing (also called fasola singing or shape-note singing) is making a major resurgence in cities and campuses throughout North America. North Mississippi is fortunate to have traditional all-day singings within easy driving distance. Most singings last from about ten in the morning till three in the afternoon, with an hour break at noon for dinner on the grounds.
George said, as a youngster, “I liked going to the all-day singings with dinner on the grounds.”
Almost all the local singing groups are open to the public and to new members.
The Sacred Harp Publishing Co., in Carrollton, Ga., is the non-profit publisher of the current and future editions of The Sacred Harp (1991 Denson edition) used by those meeting in Fyffe this past weekend.
It also acts as caretaker of the Sacred Harp Museum in Carrollton, Ga.
According to the Smithsonian Institute: “The shape-note method of singing from written music first appeared in a book called The Easy Instructor, printed in 1801 … Before the Civil War, southern publishers sold hundreds of thousands of shape note songbooks, the most enduring of which was The Sacred Harp, first printed in 1844. Revised editions are still used today in pockets of the South where “Sacred Harp singings” an unbroken tradition, and by people across the country who have come to the tradition in the last couple of decades … By 1815, the shape-note locus had shifted to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The composers there favored a widely spaced harmony, with intervals of fourths and fifths rather than thirds, which one singer likens to “a picket fence with a few of the boards missing … The distribution of the songbooks followed the general movement of the Scots Irish—the Protestants of Northern Ireland—most of whom came first to southeastern Pennsylvania and then settled in the Appalachians.”
George said, “When Sand Mountain was settled by people migrating from west Georgia and east Alabama, from the 1880s all the way up to the 1930s, they brought their song books and singing with them.”
After the Civil War, the books passed into the hands of African Americans, who made the music equally their own.
The first collection of African American compositions was The Colored Sacred Harp, published in 1934 by Judge Jackson, a farmer and businessman in the wiregrass country of southeastern Alabama.
Sacred Harp songs were never accompanied by harps.”
According to fasola.org: "Technically, our style of singing is “shape note singing” because the musical notation uses note heads in 4 distinct shapes to aid in sight-reading, but it is often called “Sacred Harp” singing because the books that most singers use today are called “The Sacred Harp,” with the most prominent of these being the 1991 Denson edition. The term “sacred harp” refers to the human voice — that is, the musical instrument you were given at birth.”
Sacred Harp singing is a very deliberate tradition. Groups meet at a set time once a month, or as often as once a week, and attend annual regional singing conventions, where they observe businesslike rules of order. A chair presides; calling each member up to lead, and a secretary records the selections of songs. Just before the break for the meal, there is a “memorial lesson,” a time to honor singers who are ill or have died since the last gathering.
Like a constitution, these formalities preserve a democratic idea. As seen in the inward-facing arrangement of the vocal parts, the gatherings are not performances. They are meant for the singers themselves, and no one is excluded from joining in. At their most generous, the best singers will say that another’s lack of talent does not diminish the experience.
“I’d go a thousand miles to sing this music,” said a veteran from northern Georgia. “I wouldn’t cross the street to hear it.”
Most groups adhere to one of two twentieth-century versions of the 1844 book. The B. F. White Sacred Harp, also known as the Cooper revision, has a wide distribution in the lowland South, from Texas to northern Florida. The Sacred Harp, also known as the Denson revision, has a smaller traditional territory—the upland northern parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi—and is a somewhat more traditional book. New editions include new compositions, but the publishers have held firm against modern harmonies.
The seven-shape tradition, an evolution from the four shapes, is evolving still. Throughout the South, there are seven-shape “new book” conventions at which groups sing thoroughly modern gospel songs with the accompaniment of instruments. Some numbers feature quartets and solos. Just about all that remains of the old music is the shape notation.
But it’s the archaic Denson Sacred Harp that has become the most popular book nationwide.
It’s the one used at urban singings, where there might be foccacia bread and San Pellegrino water at the dinner on the grounds, alongside chicken and dumplings and buttermilk pie made from recipes on a shape-note Web page.
Its success is due in large part to the work of Hugh McGraw, chairman of the nonprofit publishing company, who has taught singing schools and organized conventions in 23 states.
New singers will say, though, that it would have been their preference anyway—the oldest tunes are exactly what attracted them.”
While not certain what attracted him, the youngest singer at the weekend event, three-year-old Joshua Scott, from Sylvania, said without hesitating, his favorite form of harp singing is, “Fasola.”
Any resemblance to country music is probably not coincidental. The Carter Family, the Louvin Brothers (born in Section), and a number of other early artists got their training from singing-school teachers. The Victor Company’s historic first recordings of “hillbilly” music, made in 1927 in Bristol, Tennessee, included a quartet singing from a shape-note book.
“This is living history,” said Stephen McMaster of Richmond, Va. “When we sing the Stephen Jenks song ‘Mount Vernon,’ we’re singing a funeral dirge written for George Washington. It’s all right there before you, and it’s astonishing. You realize why we won the Revolution … It’s such gutsy music.”
George said, “The Sacred Harp tradition is being kept alive on Sand Mountain by a lot of families, two of the biggest on the mountain are the Wooten’s and the Ivey’s.”
Helping perpetuate the tradition at the convention for future generations along with Joshua, were Alex Craig, 15, and her brother Zach, 14. They formed a singing group of eight youngsters from Sylvania, including Rian, Gavin, Isaac, Anzlea, and Avelee Maxwell.
With three years attending singings Alex, the most experienced of the octet, expressed the feelings of the rest — “I love it.”
Someone once said, “If one earthly theme runs through The Sacred Harp, it is the joy of fellowship so keen that there is always an awareness of its obverse — the heartache of separation.”
There are many annual and local singings scattered across the U.S., most heavily concentrated in the rural south in Alabama and Georgia, and there are singings in England and Canada.
For those interested in learning Sacred Harp singing, Camp Fasola, is an annual weeklong singing school summer camp, begun in 2003, for both youth and adults, beginners and experienced singers, devoted to teaching Sacred Harp singing, history, and traditions, is located in Anniston.
For more information, contact Dennis George (256) 996-6916.
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