(no subject)
Hello everybody. I've had writer's block for awhile and didn't know what to write about here. No Japan stories. No Minneapolis stories. No Nashville stories. No hospital stories. No Texas stories. And definitely no music reviews. Instead we're going to talk about my trip to Hardeman Primitive Baptist Church this past weekend to participate in a sacred harp singing.
First off, a primer in the sacred harp for those who might not know what it is. Its a religious form of singing that originated in the 17th century in England, but its most predominant habitat is in the American South, Georgia and Alabama in particular. The music was written for people who couldn't read standard musical notation, so its pretty simple. So simple that there are only 4 notes to an octave instead of the usual 7 (do-re-mi-etc). Its one of the oldest American musics there is, but it was cast into obscurity since it violated so many tenets of traditional music theory. Because of that, and its a capella format, its unique from almost every singing chorale in existence and prompted wide eyes and a "what on earth was that???" from me the first time I had ever heard it via the wonderful releases on Dust-To-Digital Recordings (aka the label behind the 6xcd Goodbye Babylon box amongst other treasures). A much more detailed history of the music can be found here. Oh, as mentioned, sacred harp singing is a capella, so there are no harps (or any other instruments) in the music - indeed, the "sacred harp" is the voice.
Thanks to another great Dust-To-Digital release called I Belong To This Band: 85 Years Of Sacred Harp Singing, I learned that the music was still being performed today. And thanks to a sacred harp exhibit I saw at the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame in Macon, I learned that singings take place on a regular basis in the Atlanta area. I had made "Attend a sacred harp singing" a new years resolution, and S was interested too, so we made plans to go to the annual one at Hardeman Primitive Baptist Church in East Decatur, which does theirs on the 2nd Sunday of July. We got the info from a good sacred harp resource.
Sacred harp singing and Primitive Baptist churches go hand in hand. And I had no idea what a "Primitive Baptist" church was until I asked a Southern Baptist coworker. He told me that the Baptist church had one of their many splits in the early 19th century due to the Calvinesque concept of "free will" or "predestination." This is basically the concept that God has already chosen those who will go to Heaven. The Primitive Baptists believed this, whereas the others took the more evangelical (and annoying) approach that everyone out there has the potential to go to Heaven so the gospel must be shouted from every mountaintop. Of course we know what we think of when we imagine "baptists", so you know who won out. The Primitive Baptists therefore receded into obscurity, singing the sacred harp while the Evangelical Baptists embraced sentimental gospel and eventually added pianos and organs and schmaltzy muzak to get where they are today. The schedule at Hardeman was to have the sermon at 10:30, lunch onsite at noon, and singing at 1pm. We could have just done the singing, but for maximum anthropological impact we decided to be there for the whole time.
We arrived at the very small church in the traditional (i.e. poor) part of Decatur at 10:15 to see about 10 cars in the parking lot, a lot less than we had hoped. I grew up near this area as it was the closest K-Mart to us (way back in the 70s when that implied a half-hour drive) and surprisingly I saw a lot of stuff that I remembered from back then - the bright displays of an auto repair shop and street names that have apparently stuck in my subconscious over the years. The people in the church probably can say the same thing - with the exception of one guy there with his family, we were the youngest people in there by 30 years at least (something I don't say nearly as often as I used to; it used to work for expensive restaurants and Alex Chilton concerts). At a little after 10:30, a guy sitting in a pew behind us called everyone to attention and announced a hymn to sing. We then started and sang a few numbers before he asked others to name out any other songs they wanted to sing. This went on until 11, when the preaching time was to come. I liked how the leader wasn't up front at the pulpit but was just someone sitting in the pews like us. I tend to barely sing at church, partly because of that self-conscious reluctance to sing in public and mostly because I tend to never know the melodies of the songs, but I have to say it was enjoyable. I don't think I'd ever sung in church with no backing before. They were regular hymns but it gave a taste for what was to come later in the day.
As 11:00 passed, the "preacher" went up to the front to pray. He did so not at the microphone but instead with his back to the crowd (away from the mic) kneeling before two chairs at the the back of the pulpit. I should mention here that these chairs were the bare adornment on the pulpit - obviously no choir area, no baptismal waters, and perhaps most strikingly no cross. S later did research to discover that Primitive Baptists regard crosses and such as manmade graven images that should not be incorporated into the church. I guess that would actually make them an ally of those who think that public displays of the 10 commandments in courthouses are ludicrous, if admittedly for a different rationale. In any case, after the prayer the sermon was delivered, mostly on the theme of the faithful Christians as sheep to Christ's shepherd. It was told with the usual bluster that I've come to expect from Sunday sermons, but S pointed out afterwards that it was strikingly different from the usual spiel in that the preacher proclaimed the wicked to be the ones outside the church, and that the ones listening to him were among the proud and few. Whereas a typical Southern Baptist tenet is to hit us over the head with a blunt object 50 times reminding us how WE ARE NOT WORTHY over and over. True to what we understood previously, the Primitive Baptists draw clear lines between sheep and goats and declare that one can't become the other. That said, the preacher did tell us that we should always be living the holy life, even to the point that he made some potentially damning statement on the singing to take place in the church in the afternoon, that we'd better be doing it to glorify God and not just to listen to some pretty music. I figured out that we probably wouldn't see him hanging around the church once he was finished talking, and I was right.
In fact a decent part of the church left when the sermon was over (most of the freaky looking people, it must be said). Even the call for a free lunch was not enough to entice them. Perhaps because those darned sacred harp people had started to show up. We had always planned on attending the whole ceremony, but we didn't know if it was possible to skip the service and just show up to sing. It didn't dawn on us that others might do that since they had their own church obligations to attend to, but now we know. In any case, it was lunchtime for the few who stayed and those who were arriving.
Lunch is a traditional accompaniment to Sacred Harp, traditional "covered dish" affairs where people bring stuff from home to share. If you know me, you should know that I would gladly take on a marathon of preachers condemning me to eternal damnation before I accept a typical Southern lunch. I dreaded the prospects of it so much that we actually had to stop at a gas station on the way to church so I could fortify myself with pretzels and sunflower seeds if necessary. And the lunch itself was bad, but it could have been worse. There was some good macaroni & cheese, and there were a few fruit selections of cherries, grapes, and watermelon. S went to get me a chocolate brownie for dessert later, and reported back that one of the latecomers had actually brought some good-looking tabbouleh! Tabbouleh, of all things! And it was sitting there unloved...but alas I found out too late.
While having "lunch", an older gentleman came over to sit at our table. He asked our names and then wanted to know our life stories before enquiring why we were here. He had been into sacred harp for about 3 years, although he had been aware of it since his childhood in Northeast Georgia. We asked him some questions about the singing, and he told us the following which summed up what we knew and gave us some additional info about the style of singing the music.
There are 4 singing voices in sacred harp: treble, tenor, alto, and bass, from high to low. Each section sits together in their own group. Imagine an invisible square, with each style of singing sitting just on the outside of each side. The invisible square is where the leader of each song conducts, for lack of a better word. The leader will walk up, call out the song to be sung, and everyone will turn to that page in the book (books were provided). The leader will then sing out the key of the song by intoning "fa-sol-la" and the singers will get into tune. The song then begins, with everyone singing not the words to the song but instead singing the notes of their respective parts ("fa-sol-sol-sol-sol-la-la-fa-la-fa" for example), and upon singing the whole song in this manner, they'll then go back and sing it again, this time with the words instead of the notes. There is no de facto "leader" of sacred harp singing; everybody gets a chance to lead typically, and a singing session will generally go on until everyone has had a chance to lead. The guy was curious to know what style we were going to sing, which reflected the sacred harp mind that there is no audience, only performers. S suggested treble, thinking that we would be able to sing the same melody as such which would help me out. Unlike S, I have no ability to read music so she wanted to make it easy for me even if treble is not at all my style. And of course I would never dream of being separated from her at this function - I was quite terrified of the singing prospect but I really wanted to listen.
Just before the singing started, S and I went to use the restroom at the back of the church. She got out before I did, and had been approached by a very experienced treble who decided that she would look after us both. She even sat between the two of us which made me feel a little weird but I understood her logic. And it helped that she was EXTREMELY LOUD. Part of my desire for wanting to attend a singing was to get knocked out with sheer volume, and she more than compensated for it. Thank goodness she was sitting next to my good ear or else it would have been Atari Teenage Riot all over again [reference to the concert that knocked my left ear permanently out of wack for those of you who don't know me].
As for the singing...its funny, I have this huge lead-in to this and I have relatively little to write about the singing itself. Because what can you say really? It was exactly as I expected it to sound. Maybe not as Dionysian as I had hoped, but that could only be done by having a larger crowd. But the singing itself was beautiful, particularly when they sang the dirges which sound very medieval and contain all of those devil-inducing harmonies that made the European scholars wince. Some songs in the Sacred Harp songbook are well-known in other guises, such as "America" (S was shocked to discover that we stole "God Save The Queen"'s melody) and "Amazing Grace" (known as "New Britain"; a lot of sacred harp songs have cities or states in the title, I guess reflecting where they're from). We also sang an apparent classic of the sacred harp, "Wondrous Love", which I actually knew because my beloved DQE covered it years ago. Indeed, everyone led, including S and I who got up with our mentor when it was her turn. On the recommended DVD documentary Awake My Soul, they talk about how the sound inside the "invisible square" is the only place you feel the true power of the music, but honestly anywhere on the premises is nice (as S learned when she had to step out for a moment & encouraged me to do the same). After 2.5 hours we were done, and our slow ear recovery process began.
It was really quite a wonderful way to spend the day, all things considered. I'd even like to learn how to sing the music, which says something since I usually hate to sing around others and enjoy the mystic arts of listening more than participating anyway. But such is the way of the sacred harp. It certainly appears addictive, maybe even obsessive when you see personalized license plates on the cars in the parking lot saying "fasola". And when there's something musical and obsessive, chances are you'll find me lurching
around.
So there it is. I was gone from this portal for so long that a few of you wondered if you'd ever hear from me again. And after this, you're probably thinking "when will he ever go away again?" How about now, temporarily? But before I go, mention must be made for 2 of my most beloved LJ posters of all who will only show up with lines through their names here, ikahana and hedorah. This place just isn't the same without either one of you here. I'm conducting a sacred harp rendition of
silence for you right now...
First off, a primer in the sacred harp for those who might not know what it is. Its a religious form of singing that originated in the 17th century in England, but its most predominant habitat is in the American South, Georgia and Alabama in particular. The music was written for people who couldn't read standard musical notation, so its pretty simple. So simple that there are only 4 notes to an octave instead of the usual 7 (do-re-mi-etc). Its one of the oldest American musics there is, but it was cast into obscurity since it violated so many tenets of traditional music theory. Because of that, and its a capella format, its unique from almost every singing chorale in existence and prompted wide eyes and a "what on earth was that???" from me the first time I had ever heard it via the wonderful releases on Dust-To-Digital Recordings (aka the label behind the 6xcd Goodbye Babylon box amongst other treasures). A much more detailed history of the music can be found here. Oh, as mentioned, sacred harp singing is a capella, so there are no harps (or any other instruments) in the music - indeed, the "sacred harp" is the voice.
Thanks to another great Dust-To-Digital release called I Belong To This Band: 85 Years Of Sacred Harp Singing, I learned that the music was still being performed today. And thanks to a sacred harp exhibit I saw at the Georgia Music Hall Of Fame in Macon, I learned that singings take place on a regular basis in the Atlanta area. I had made "Attend a sacred harp singing" a new years resolution, and S was interested too, so we made plans to go to the annual one at Hardeman Primitive Baptist Church in East Decatur, which does theirs on the 2nd Sunday of July. We got the info from a good sacred harp resource.
Sacred harp singing and Primitive Baptist churches go hand in hand. And I had no idea what a "Primitive Baptist" church was until I asked a Southern Baptist coworker. He told me that the Baptist church had one of their many splits in the early 19th century due to the Calvinesque concept of "free will" or "predestination." This is basically the concept that God has already chosen those who will go to Heaven. The Primitive Baptists believed this, whereas the others took the more evangelical (and annoying) approach that everyone out there has the potential to go to Heaven so the gospel must be shouted from every mountaintop. Of course we know what we think of when we imagine "baptists", so you know who won out. The Primitive Baptists therefore receded into obscurity, singing the sacred harp while the Evangelical Baptists embraced sentimental gospel and eventually added pianos and organs and schmaltzy muzak to get where they are today. The schedule at Hardeman was to have the sermon at 10:30, lunch onsite at noon, and singing at 1pm. We could have just done the singing, but for maximum anthropological impact we decided to be there for the whole time.
We arrived at the very small church in the traditional (i.e. poor) part of Decatur at 10:15 to see about 10 cars in the parking lot, a lot less than we had hoped. I grew up near this area as it was the closest K-Mart to us (way back in the 70s when that implied a half-hour drive) and surprisingly I saw a lot of stuff that I remembered from back then - the bright displays of an auto repair shop and street names that have apparently stuck in my subconscious over the years. The people in the church probably can say the same thing - with the exception of one guy there with his family, we were the youngest people in there by 30 years at least (something I don't say nearly as often as I used to; it used to work for expensive restaurants and Alex Chilton concerts). At a little after 10:30, a guy sitting in a pew behind us called everyone to attention and announced a hymn to sing. We then started and sang a few numbers before he asked others to name out any other songs they wanted to sing. This went on until 11, when the preaching time was to come. I liked how the leader wasn't up front at the pulpit but was just someone sitting in the pews like us. I tend to barely sing at church, partly because of that self-conscious reluctance to sing in public and mostly because I tend to never know the melodies of the songs, but I have to say it was enjoyable. I don't think I'd ever sung in church with no backing before. They were regular hymns but it gave a taste for what was to come later in the day.
As 11:00 passed, the "preacher" went up to the front to pray. He did so not at the microphone but instead with his back to the crowd (away from the mic) kneeling before two chairs at the the back of the pulpit. I should mention here that these chairs were the bare adornment on the pulpit - obviously no choir area, no baptismal waters, and perhaps most strikingly no cross. S later did research to discover that Primitive Baptists regard crosses and such as manmade graven images that should not be incorporated into the church. I guess that would actually make them an ally of those who think that public displays of the 10 commandments in courthouses are ludicrous, if admittedly for a different rationale. In any case, after the prayer the sermon was delivered, mostly on the theme of the faithful Christians as sheep to Christ's shepherd. It was told with the usual bluster that I've come to expect from Sunday sermons, but S pointed out afterwards that it was strikingly different from the usual spiel in that the preacher proclaimed the wicked to be the ones outside the church, and that the ones listening to him were among the proud and few. Whereas a typical Southern Baptist tenet is to hit us over the head with a blunt object 50 times reminding us how WE ARE NOT WORTHY over and over. True to what we understood previously, the Primitive Baptists draw clear lines between sheep and goats and declare that one can't become the other. That said, the preacher did tell us that we should always be living the holy life, even to the point that he made some potentially damning statement on the singing to take place in the church in the afternoon, that we'd better be doing it to glorify God and not just to listen to some pretty music. I figured out that we probably wouldn't see him hanging around the church once he was finished talking, and I was right.
In fact a decent part of the church left when the sermon was over (most of the freaky looking people, it must be said). Even the call for a free lunch was not enough to entice them. Perhaps because those darned sacred harp people had started to show up. We had always planned on attending the whole ceremony, but we didn't know if it was possible to skip the service and just show up to sing. It didn't dawn on us that others might do that since they had their own church obligations to attend to, but now we know. In any case, it was lunchtime for the few who stayed and those who were arriving.
Lunch is a traditional accompaniment to Sacred Harp, traditional "covered dish" affairs where people bring stuff from home to share. If you know me, you should know that I would gladly take on a marathon of preachers condemning me to eternal damnation before I accept a typical Southern lunch. I dreaded the prospects of it so much that we actually had to stop at a gas station on the way to church so I could fortify myself with pretzels and sunflower seeds if necessary. And the lunch itself was bad, but it could have been worse. There was some good macaroni & cheese, and there were a few fruit selections of cherries, grapes, and watermelon. S went to get me a chocolate brownie for dessert later, and reported back that one of the latecomers had actually brought some good-looking tabbouleh! Tabbouleh, of all things! And it was sitting there unloved...but alas I found out too late.
While having "lunch", an older gentleman came over to sit at our table. He asked our names and then wanted to know our life stories before enquiring why we were here. He had been into sacred harp for about 3 years, although he had been aware of it since his childhood in Northeast Georgia. We asked him some questions about the singing, and he told us the following which summed up what we knew and gave us some additional info about the style of singing the music.
There are 4 singing voices in sacred harp: treble, tenor, alto, and bass, from high to low. Each section sits together in their own group. Imagine an invisible square, with each style of singing sitting just on the outside of each side. The invisible square is where the leader of each song conducts, for lack of a better word. The leader will walk up, call out the song to be sung, and everyone will turn to that page in the book (books were provided). The leader will then sing out the key of the song by intoning "fa-sol-la" and the singers will get into tune. The song then begins, with everyone singing not the words to the song but instead singing the notes of their respective parts ("fa-sol-sol-sol-sol-la-la-fa-la-fa" for example), and upon singing the whole song in this manner, they'll then go back and sing it again, this time with the words instead of the notes. There is no de facto "leader" of sacred harp singing; everybody gets a chance to lead typically, and a singing session will generally go on until everyone has had a chance to lead. The guy was curious to know what style we were going to sing, which reflected the sacred harp mind that there is no audience, only performers. S suggested treble, thinking that we would be able to sing the same melody as such which would help me out. Unlike S, I have no ability to read music so she wanted to make it easy for me even if treble is not at all my style. And of course I would never dream of being separated from her at this function - I was quite terrified of the singing prospect but I really wanted to listen.
Just before the singing started, S and I went to use the restroom at the back of the church. She got out before I did, and had been approached by a very experienced treble who decided that she would look after us both. She even sat between the two of us which made me feel a little weird but I understood her logic. And it helped that she was EXTREMELY LOUD. Part of my desire for wanting to attend a singing was to get knocked out with sheer volume, and she more than compensated for it. Thank goodness she was sitting next to my good ear or else it would have been Atari Teenage Riot all over again [reference to the concert that knocked my left ear permanently out of wack for those of you who don't know me].
As for the singing...its funny, I have this huge lead-in to this and I have relatively little to write about the singing itself. Because what can you say really? It was exactly as I expected it to sound. Maybe not as Dionysian as I had hoped, but that could only be done by having a larger crowd. But the singing itself was beautiful, particularly when they sang the dirges which sound very medieval and contain all of those devil-inducing harmonies that made the European scholars wince. Some songs in the Sacred Harp songbook are well-known in other guises, such as "America" (S was shocked to discover that we stole "God Save The Queen"'s melody) and "Amazing Grace" (known as "New Britain"; a lot of sacred harp songs have cities or states in the title, I guess reflecting where they're from). We also sang an apparent classic of the sacred harp, "Wondrous Love", which I actually knew because my beloved DQE covered it years ago. Indeed, everyone led, including S and I who got up with our mentor when it was her turn. On the recommended DVD documentary Awake My Soul, they talk about how the sound inside the "invisible square" is the only place you feel the true power of the music, but honestly anywhere on the premises is nice (as S learned when she had to step out for a moment & encouraged me to do the same). After 2.5 hours we were done, and our slow ear recovery process began.
It was really quite a wonderful way to spend the day, all things considered. I'd even like to learn how to sing the music, which says something since I usually hate to sing around others and enjoy the mystic arts of listening more than participating anyway. But such is the way of the sacred harp. It certainly appears addictive, maybe even obsessive when you see personalized license plates on the cars in the parking lot saying "fasola". And when there's something musical and obsessive, chances are you'll find me lurching
around.
So there it is. I was gone from this portal for so long that a few of you wondered if you'd ever hear from me again. And after this, you're probably thinking "when will he ever go away again?" How about now, temporarily? But before I go, mention must be made for 2 of my most beloved LJ posters of all who will only show up with lines through their names here, ikahana and hedorah. This place just isn't the same without either one of you here. I'm conducting a sacred harp rendition of
silence for you right now...