It does seem to me that there can be a healing quality to the sound you hear in the middle of the hollow square; perhaps that is the unidentified something that some people find compelling about standing there and leading a lesson. Certainly, healing is mentioned in some of the songs in The Sacred Harp (e.g., 56b Villulia); and healing is definitely a feature of the Christian tradition, which is central to the spirituality of traditional Sacred Harp singing. But in the northern revival singings I have attended, I have rarely heard it articulated explicitly: that Sacred Harp singing might have healing properties.

When I got home, I looked at the relevant section in the Rudiments of Music section of The Sacred Harp, Chapter I, section 5: “The Sacred Harp uses four-part harmony. The parts, in order of increasing pitch, are bass (sung by men), tenor (men and women), alto (usually women)….” So the primary reference source holds out the possibility that men can sing with the alto section, albeit rarely; and presumably there have been some traditional male Southern singers who have sung alto.

This, however, raised another question for me. What about women, like my friend Bette, whose voice gets lower as they get older? In Bette’s case, her voice is now so low that she sings in the bass section of her church choir. We in the northern revival might have the tendency to interpret the Rudiments of Music fairly literally, and lean towards excluding women from the bass section; or we might put the question out on the Fasola email list — appealing to a higher authority, assuming that someone out there with a broader knowledge of the tradition could tell us about a time when a traditional Southern singing included a woman, or women, in the bass section.

In short, his path into Sacred Harp singing resembles the paths taken by the first singers in the northern revival: find the book, get a group of friends together to sing the songs, and only then encounter elements of the tradition like singing the shapes and leading styles.

I am always interested to watch the path of newcomers. How did they find out about Sacred Harp singing? How did they find out about our local singing? What does it feel like to them when they come to an actual singing — does it live up to their expectations, or not? How do we welcome them, and how do we teach them enough so that they can have some fun right from the beginning? And how long do they stick around?

One of the newcomers came to sit in the bass section, and we made sure to tell him that if he sat in the front row, he could listen to more experienced singers sitting behind him, and beside him. Hal was in the front, and checked in to make sure the newcomer knew what was going on.

“Someone gave me one of the cheat sheets,” said the newcomer.

“Do you read music?” asked Hal.

“Yes,” said the newcomer. Hal assured him that he would be fine. And then the singing began.

Another newcomer came in half an hour late, and slid into the back bench of the bass section. When the break came, he stuck around long enough to introduce himself when it was time for introductions, and said he lived across the street and decided to come in when he heard us.

After the introductions were over and people got up to eat snacks, I went over to try to talk to both new basses. The one who had come in late had already disappeared, but I talked with the other one. It turned out that he’s a minister as well, and we talked a little bit about where Sacred Harp singing fits in to American hymnody, and a little about the theology found in The Sacred Harp. He mentioned that the hardest part was trying to sing the notes, and I assured him that many of us who come every week sometimes just have to sing, “Nah, nah, nah,” instead of “Fa, sol, la.” Then I had to run to the bathroom, and left him to talk with others.

After the break, the other new bass — the one who had come in half an hour late — did not return. Was he not that interested anyway? — after all, he just wandered in on a whim. Or was it hopelessly confusing to try to sing without any explanation? Or did no one talk to him during the break? I don’t expect him to return next week.

But for the other newcomers, I thought that this evening was an excellent evening to begin singing Sacred Harp. It was a well-attended singing, with six or seven in the bass section, a dozen or more in the tenor section, six or seven trebles, and five altos. Each section had at least two strong singers to lead the singing, and I noticed that the alto section rearranged themselves so the two strongest singers sat in the back bench, behind the newcomers. And in general, it was a good singing: we had a good mix of faster, more challenging songs and slower, easier songs; and we had some really good singers (including a couple of singers visiting from other local singings). After the last song was finished, everyone just sat there for a minute or two — no one seemed to want to stop. And more people than usual stayed around afterwards to chat.

As we were leaving, I made a point of talking to the other new bass. “You have to come back next week,” I said, smiling. “We need more basses like you!” He smiled.

How many of the newcomers will come back? Unlike in traditional singings, newcomers don’t have bonds of family, friendship and local community to prompt them to come back. What, if anything, will prompt our newcomers to return?

One subject came up that has been passionately discussed many times by singers of the urban revival. Towards the end of the “Other Book” singing, I asked us to sing Lebanon by William Billings, no. 2 in Norumbega Harmony. I had been playing through it at home, and noticed that if you try to raise the sixth, as is common Sacred Harp practice for songs in a minor key, at one point you get part of a diminished chord. So I was curious as to how we would sing the song. Unfortunately, since we don’t really know the song, we sang a fair number of wrong notes (I know I sang plenty of wrong notes), so I couldn’t be sure: did the experienced singers raise the sixth, or not?

Without my saying anything, after the song was over, some of our more experienced singers began talking about whether or not to raise the sixth; Mark asked Marsha what she though, and she replied that raising the sixth would result in a tritone, certainly not something you’d hear in Sacred Harp music. Mark and Marsha mentioned other songs (canonical songs from the 1991 Denson Sacred Harp) in which most experienced singers would probably not raise the sixth; these were mostly 18th century songs. The consensus seemed to be that traditional signers would learn whether or not to raise the sixth through the tradition; they would know what sounds right to them. (Discussion by Karen Willard and John Garst on the practice of raising sixths on minor tunes.)

Our Berkeley local singing always takes a break at 8:30, and we are supposed to reconvene fifteen minutes later, although recently our breaks have been going on for twenty-five and even thirty minutes. While we were at the Jolly Memorial All-Day singing in San Diego, Betty and Linda and I made a pact: we would begin the call-back promptly at 8:45. I reminded Betty and Linda of this, and we all sat down to begin the call-back song at 8:46. It took a long time for the other signers to return; I had to lead a second call-back song in order to get at least one signer in each section.

We do like to socialize with each other. But we live all over the Bay area — several of us drive for more than an hour to get to the singing. It’s hard to socialize before the singing because Bay area traffic keeps us from starting any earlier; and not many of us want to stay past 9:30, especially those of us with long drives home. So that fifteen minute break is our only time to socialize, and no wonder we want to extend it longer and longer. Yet if we extend our socializing time, we eat into our singing time.

For me, this dilemma reveals our postmodern rootlessness: we have only a tenuous connection with one another, with little opportunity to develop deeper relationships. By contrast, many traditional Southern singers will have known the people with whom they sing for years and years; singings become a time to renew old relationships, not try to develop new relationships. And then those of us in the urban revival are more likely to be geographically mobile; for example, I just learned that one of our best altos is moving to Los Angeles, and we won’t be seeing her any more. Our singers come and go, and sometimes we’re not even aware that they’ve gone until well after the fact.

We continued our experiment of having each singer pitch their own song, if they chose to do so, in order to continue to build our skills as singers. Pitching tended to be quite low — although I don’t have a particularly good ear, based on notes I could not sing I’d estimate that one song was pitched a good fifth below notated pitch. Yet in spite of the generally low pitches, there were no negative comments — everyone continued to be very supportive. I was aware that this openness to learning and making mistakes gave me more confidence as a singer. I kept working on the same problems I’ve been working on for the past year — breath support, rhythmic accuracy, and intonation — yet I felt a freedom to focus more than usual on my own problems without worrying about what others thought, and wound up making particularly good progress on breath support.

In keeping with this new sense of experimentation, one of the newer women singers decided to join the bass section. During the break, I mentioned that is was great to have a woman in the section, and asked how it went for her; she said the tenor section, where she had been singing, was just too high for her voice, and this felt better; and I didn’t ask why she chose to join the bass section rather than the alto section. The treble section got shaken up a little, too:– During the break, one of the basses went to sing with the trebles, the first time in a while that a man has sat in that section. And one of the regular altos sat with the trebles; later she said she was able to do so in part because the pitches were so low.

A youngish man wandered into the singing about halfway through, and sat in the tenor section. He was welcomed and coached throughout by a couple of experienced singers. I talked with him briefly after the singing was over, and he said that he lived across the street, had heard the singing, and decided to come over and check it out. But I got the impression that he felt he was in over his head, and I have my doubts as to whether he’ll be back.

I arrived in the Oldtown neighborhood of San Diego at 9:30, half an hour before the singing was to start. There weren’t yet many tourists, and I wandered around the State Park for a few minutes before heading over the Adobe Chapel at ten of ten. A couple of the San Diego singers were already there, and greeted me cheerfully. Jerry and Carla Schreiber, clearly the central figures of San Diego local singings, showed up soon afterwards.

We waited for a good twenty minutes for someone from the Save Our Heritage Organization (the building’s owner) to come open the chapel for us; Jerry called two or three times to find out when they could send someone over. At last, we decided to start signing outdoors, and had just started singing the notes of Windham when the person with the key arrived an opened up the building.

The chapel is relatively small. There was some confusion as people decided how to set up a hollow square; at last, the pews were pushed back, and the chairs brought by the Schreibers and others were set up in a hollow square. We started singing, and had to push the pews back further and readjust the chairs again to make more of a square. Before the singing, the local singers talked about how wonderful it was to sing in that space, and it was indeed fun to sing in the space. The ceiling and floor is wood, and the walls adobe covered with plaster; the room is perhaps as high as it is wide, and perhaps twice as long as it is wide, with a small choir loft, and a tiny side chapel; the voices of twenty-plus singers filled the room nicely, and the room gave a robust resonant quality to the singing.

There were perhaps twenty of us, half a dozen in each section except the basses where there were only two of us; only four of us were men. Three of us were visitors from the Berkeley local singing, and a few others were visitors from Los Angeles singings. A few more San Diego singers drifted in later on, including one more man.

The local singers talked about how they would lead the songs — go around the hollow square, or popcorn style? It was a brief and good-humored albeit chaotic discussion, loosely guided by Jerry and Carla (at one point, Carla humorously made a motion and asked for a second, though no real vote was taken). Finally, the locals decided to go around the hollow square, though after just two people had led songs it changed to popcorn style.

The hollow square was pretty small. Most of those who led lessons just sat in their seats, and did not stand up to lead their lesson. This led to some confusion, as not everyone could see the person who was leading. Another brief and good-humored but chaotic discussion, and it was agreed that everyone would try to help beat time so all could see. A few people did stand in the center to lead, and it really was easier to follow along when someone did so; but the San Diegans seem to value their informality, and most people stayed in their seats to lead.

Everyone was white. I learned from conversations after the singing that there was some real economic diversity. At least one of the singers was a native Alabaman who had sung some Sacred Harp as a child; there were a couple of native Californians (though they did not grow up in San Diego); the other people I talked with had come to San Diego from other parts of the U.S.

The singing was quite strong, with at least one strong singer in each section. I did not hear much in the way of vocal ornamentation. A couple of the singers might have had some formal vocal training, although they sang with a full-throated sound appropriate to Sacred Harp music. I heard a couple of singers who sang with what I would describe as a standard sort of folk revival sound; I learned later that at least one of them has done a lot of recreational folk singing. One voice was quite powerful, though I had a hard time identifying the vocal style; I learned later that this singer has sung with rock bands and in other similar settings.

Although there wasn’t a large number of people, the singing was loud, accurate, and joyful. It seemed to me that a few strong voices pretty much carried each section, with the rest of us filling out the sound. The resonance of the space also helped; with a wood floor and ceiling, the sound was mellow and lively.

As with any singing, there were some minor local peculiarities. The singing did not open with “Holy Manna,” nor did it close with “Parting Hand” (the closing song was “Christian’s Farewell,” which I have heard used to close local singing sessions). One person pitched all the songs (with the exception of two or three people who pitched their own songs), and occasionally she used a tuning fork as she was deciding what pitch to give. No collection was taken, since there was no charge for using the building — typically the biggest single cost for an all-day singing — and the chairman of the singing paid for whatever other minor incidental expenses arose. There were two business sessions, one at the beginning of the day to formally elect the officers (who were already carrying out their duties), and one at the end of the day for resolutions, etc.

The majority of the singers were middle-aged or older. There was, however, a contingent of some six or eight younger people, probably in their late twenties. All but one of them worked for the same non-profit organization, “Invisible Children.” I chatted with one young man who was wearing a Boston Red Sox hat, and it turned out that although he was originally from eastern New England, he had come out to San Diego to work for this nonprofit. Another of them, a young woman, stood up to lead no. 134 in honor of one of their co-workers who had been killed in a bomb blast while working for the non-profit in Uganda.

I found this group to be very friendly and welcoming. It seemed to me that all of the San Diego regulars found it easy to initiate conversations with newcomers and visitors, and they were more than willing to join in a conversation if someone else started talking. I talked to two different singers who had grown up in the south, and whose families had sung Sacred Harp music when they were young; one of them was from Alabama, and one was from Georgia. Another woman with whom I chatted is a professor at UCLA who will be teaching a for-credit Sacred Harp class for the first time this fall. When the song “Boylston” was called, the man sitting next to me in the bass section whispered that this was the song that they had sung for him not too long ago when he was in the ICU.

At the end of the day, after the second business session, the chairman called on us to sing no. 347, “Christian’s Farewell.” There was the usual shaking of hands (not much hugging with this group, though), for those who knew the song well enough to be able to look away from their books. And as usual, several of the newer singers hadn’t been let in on the secret: that you’re supposed to know the song well enough to be able to shake hands. On my way out, I overheard the young woman who had led the memorial lesson talking to the young man in the Red Sox hat, as she was saying something to the effect of: “I don’t know the song, I didn’t know whether to look down at the book and sing, or stop singing and try to shake hands with everyone.” I stopped and said, “It’s terrible, isn’t it? It’s the worst of the Sacred Harp traditions.” She and the young man suggested that maybe it’s a tradition that shouldn’t be continued, and I replied that at the very least the local singing should practice that closing song every week for months ahead of time, and let people know ahead of time about the shaking of hands.

———

Six of us gathered for dinner after the singing, three from San Diego, and the three of us from the Bay area. Over dinner, Jerry Schreiber, one of the core personalities of the San Diego singers, told us a little bit about the history of the San Diego singers. It had started out as a group that was really led by a single person, someone who had had little or not contact with the oral tradition of Sacred Harp singing; this was someone who had learned it out of the 1971 edition of the Denson book. “We didn’t sing the notes,” Jerry told us; instead, the leader of the group taught each group its part. (It’s worth noting that I also learned that during the local singings, which they sometimes call “practice singings,” they still sometimes take the time to go over individual parts.)

Eventually, the San Diego singers made contact with other Sacred Harp singers. One of the earliest contacts was when Carolyn Deacy invited them to join in the first All-California Convention. This convention, I gathered, was their first big experience singing with other Sacred Harp singers. Interestingly, Jerry had had a much earlier experience with Sacred Harp singing. In the late 1970s, he had been living in the Toronto area, and was a part of the folk scene there. Joe Hickerson, who had apparently listened to some field recordings, decided to put on Sacred Harp singing at an annual folk festival, and Jerry and others who had helped with that decided they wanted to keep on singing this compelling music. They met monthly at a local pub called Fiddlers Green. Some time after Jerry moved from Toronto to San Diego, that early Toronto group disintegrated.

It’s interesting to hear the different stories of how the local singings of the northern revival got started. The stories of the San Diego singing, and that early Toronto singing, share in some common themes: the intersection of the northern revival and the urban folk revival of the 1970s; the role played by charismatic central figures, some of whom had no knowledge of, and no real interest in, the Southern oral tradition of Sacred Harp singing; the isolation of some local singings in the era before the World Wide Web made communication much easier.

Norumbega Harmony is an atypical local singing. The core group of singers meet weekly to sing together in an invitation-only singing, and once a month they host an open singing. They have a “singing master,” Stephen Marini, who founded the group in 1976 (prior to any contact with Southern singers) and continues to be a central force. They perform Sacred Harp music; they are not purely participatory. In addition to singing from the Denson revision of the Sacred Harp, they have long sung other material gleaned from old New England songbooks, and in 2003 finally published their own songbook.

What I noticed most in the three or four times that I came to one of their open singings was how friendly everyone was; it was the most welcoming local singing I have attended. Perhaps because the regular singers see each other every other week of the month, they are much more open to meeting and welcoming newcomers. (Indeed, the second time I attended with my friend Ted, who is an experienced singer with a full bass voice and the ability to sight-sing, we were invited to join the regular weekly group; I can see why Ted was invited, but that I was invited to join shows that it’s a pretty open group.) This was by far the friendliest New England singing I attended; it felt much like the friendliness and openness of the Boston-area folk music scene.

While Norumbega Harmony is an atypical local singing, they are not entirely atypical in New England, and in some ways follow the pattern set by Larry Gordon’s revival of Sacred harp singing in northern New England: charismatic central figure, interest in performance and recording, digging up old New England choral music. The Western Massachusetts Convention also follows this pattern, with Tim Ericksen as the charismatic central figure, Ericksen’s publication of old choral music, and the series of recordings issued by the convention.

As is characteristic of the New England folk scene, some of Norumbega’s singers also sing in other folk music ensembles: Bruce Randall (alto) is a central force in the revival of West Gallery music in New England, Ken Mattson (treble) sings with other semi-professional folk ensembles, “Ishmael the fiddler” is (obviously) a fiddler, etc. As is also characteristic of the New England folk scene, the music is performed such that it is relatively devoid of ornamentation (just as New England contra dance bands tend to perform with little ornamentation).

Musically, this is a characteristically New England folk music group, influenced by the forces of historical research, historical re-enactment, the broader folk scene in New England, the early music scene in New England, New England folk musical styles, etc. And socially, this is a characteristically New England folk music group, influenced not only by the Southern traditions of Sacred Harp singing (for they are careful to acknowledge their debt to Southern singers), but also by indigenous New England folk scene, academia, and the urban folk revival.

The average age appeared to be fairly young, with a good selection of tattoos and piercings; and dinner on the grounds featured a good selection of vegan dishes. All this was in keeping with the hip culture of central Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley. The singing was indeed vigorous and energetic, and many of the songs were taken at quite a brisk tempo. It will be interesting to see the minutes when they are published, to see just how many songs we got through in the day; it felt as if there were a few more than average. The singers filled the room; the bass section had only one or two empty chairs during most of the day; the altos expanded back into the section of the room where the food was; the tenor section was well-filled; the treble section was perhaps the least full.

I had forgotten how stand-offish New Englanders can be; the only person who talked to me at length was Swiss-German, not a New Englander at all; a few other people noticed that my name tag said I was from California, commented on that, and then ended the conversation. The Western Mass. folks have the reputation of being very welcoming, but that must be in comparison to the general New England culture — but then, I attended one monthly singing in New England for 8 straight months and no one ever initiated a conversation with me, so by comparison the Western Mass. folks were positively chatty. On the other hand, compared to the Minnesota singing I attended last week, Western Mass. was less chatty.

At the same time, I was very impressed by the community-building done during the memorial lesson. When a woman (I did not catch her name) stood up to read the list of people who were ill or who were shut-ins, she began by telling how important it was for her to know that people were singing for her when she was caring for her father in India, and she said it was even more important that people from the local singing sent her cards and notes as well, to let her know they were thinking of her; then she read the list of regular singers unable to attend the singing due to illness or because they were shut ins. After that, a young woman stand up to give the memorial lesson. She preached a lovely and heartfelt brief homily on the inevitability of death (during which she had no qualms about mentioning reliance upon God’s strength), and then read the list of those to be memorialized; the list included names of local singers, as well as people dear to local singers, and the list even included the president of Poland, who died in the past year. The general effect was that the regular singers constituted a tight-knit group who supported one another.

Back to the singing: As I said, the singing was vigorous and energetic; but the tone was sweet and true enough that you wouldn’t say the singers were simply shouting — yes, the altos had that piercing tone that could peel paint, but it was a tone that peeled paint melodically and pleasantly. Rhythmically, nearly all the songs were sung straight, with little or no swing to them; every once in a while, a singer would anticipate the beat, but mostly people sang with the beat set by the leader. I heard little vocal ornamentation, as is typical of New England folk music more generally; a few little slides, an extra eighth note snuck in here and there, but that’s all I heard from my vantage point deep within the bass section.