Boundaries

Where are the boundaries of the urban revival of the Sacred Harp tradition?

One thing I notice about the urban revival is that we’re always a little worried about not straying too far outside our boundaries. We know we’re not traditional Southern singers, and maybe that makes us feel a little uncertain about who we are. And so we seem to spend a good deal of time maintaining our boundaries: we try to learn directly from traditional Southern singers; we adhere to social norms that we associate with Sacred Harp singing; and we talk a lot about what’s “real” Sacred Harp music and what isn’t.

So where are our boundaries? Let’s take a look at some variations on Sacred Harp music that break the boundaries, and try to figure out where the break occurred, and how serious it is.

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A. Tim Ericksen is a professional musician who is one of the central figures among western Massachusetts Sacred Harp signers. In addition to singing in urban revival singings, he also sings Sacred Harp songs during his paid performances. Here’s Ericksen in a highly-produced rendition of the Sacred Harp standard Idumea (47b):

Alternate link to video on Youtbube.

Where do you think Ericksen breaks the boundaries of the Sacred Harp tradition? Here are some possible answers:

• This is a performance; traditional Sacred Harp music is participatory.
• Not only is this a performance, it is a highly staged performance with very high production values; traditional Sacred Harp music has more of a D-I-Y feel to it.
• Not only is this a performance, there is a firm and distinct boundary line between performers and audience, which is set by the stage, the amplification, and social norms preventing audience participation; traditional Sacred Harp singing has no boundary between performer and audience.
• This performance includes fiddle and banjo players; traditional Sacred Harp music is a capella.
• Not only is this a commercial performance, it seems designed to exploit the commercial potential of a popular soundtrack from the movie “Cold Mountain”; traditional Sacred Harp music feels removed from the trends of popular culture.
• The singers don’t sing the shapes, nor sit in a hollow square, nor lead with the arm motions peculiar to the tradition; traditional singers do all these things.

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B. Sean Conway, who regularly sings tenor in San Diego local Sacred Harp singings, is also a sound and performance artist who has incorporated Sacred Harp music into his performances. In the video below, he sings the tenor line of Idumea (47b) over heavily distorted electric guitar chords.

Alternate link to video on Youtube.

Where do you think Conway breaks the boundaries of the Sacred Harp tradition? Here are some possible answers:

• This is a performance; traditional Sacred Harp music is participatory.
• This performance includes electric guitar; traditional Sacred Harp music is a capella.
• This performance feels like some variant of rock music; traditional Sacred Harp music lies well outside the boundaries of rock music.
• Conway doesn’t sing the shapes, sit in a hollow square, nor lead with the arm motions peculiar to the tradition; traditional singers do all these things.

Curiously enough, Conway’s performance seems to break the boundaries of the tradition in fewer places than does Ericksen’s performance above. Conway’s performance is non-commercial; as a performance artist, he is committed to breaking the boundary between audience and performer; his rendition of Idumea has that D-I-Y feel of traditional Sacred Harp music.

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C. Neely Bruce is a composer who is the driving force behind the Middletown, Connecticut, monthly singing; indeed, he originated this singing. The 1991 Denson edition of The Sacred Harp includes one of his compositions. Not only is he well within the boundaries of the urban revival, we might even call him one of the central figures of the revival in New England. In 2005, he composed a piece of music in the Sacred Harp style, for which he used the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as the text:

(You can hear an amateur performance of this work here.)

Where do you think Bruce’s composition breaks the boundaries of the Sacred Harp tradition? Here are some possible answers:

• Bruce’s composition uses a patriotic rather than a religious text; only a handful of Sacred Harp songs in the accepted canon, all of them much shorter than this composition, use patriotic texts rather than religious texts.
• Bruce’s composition as published does not use shape notes, and instead uses regular round notes; traditional singers almost always use shaped notes.
• Bruce’s composition does not appear in one of the canonical music books.

Here’s something to think about: Assuming you placed Bruce’s composition outside the tradition, if Bruce’s composition is ever published in shape notes and appears in one of the canonical collections, does that automatically place it within the Sacred Harp tradition?

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D. Larry Gordon was a founding figure of the Glover, Vermont, local singing. He was another one of the people who helped kick off the New England Sacred Harp revival. He makes his living as a chorus director, and his choruses are known for their big full-throated sound, high volume, and energy. In this video, Gordon’s teenaged “Village Harmony” chorus performs “Delight,” no. 216 in The Sacred Harp:

Alternate link to video on Youtube.

Where do you think Gordon breaks the boundaries of the Sacred Harp tradition? Here are some possible answers:

• This is a performance; traditional Sacred Harp music is participatory.
• The singers don’t sing the shapes, nor sit in a hollow square, nor lead with the arm motions peculiar to the tradition; traditional singers do all these things.

Or is this really a violation of the boundaries of the Sacred Harp tradition? One of the first things I learned when I first started singing Sacred Harp music is that there used to be traveling singing school masters who went from place to place teaching young people how to sing in the Sacred Harp style. And even today, traditional singers come up from the South to lead singing schools for us northern urbanites, and they might even get a travel allowance or free housing. Furthermore, Gordon does sometimes have his young singers sing the shapes before singing the words, and his conducting style does seem to owe much to Sacred Harp leading styles. Maybe Gordon is reviving the old tradition of the traveling singing school master?

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E. Norumbega Harmony has been singing Sacred Harp music continuously since the beginning of the urban revival. Their founder, Stephen Marini, has contributed significantly to Sacred Harp scholarship. Members of Norumbega Harmony had several of their new compositions included in the 1991 revision of the Denson edition of The Sacred Harp. They have also produced their own tunebook, titled Norumbega Harmony. Here they are performing Ocean:

Alternate link to video on Youtube.

Where do you think Norumbega Harmony breaks the boundaries of the Sacred Harp tradition in this performance? Here are some possible answers:

• This is a performance; traditional Sacred Harp music is participatory.
• Not only is this a performance, there is a firm and distinct boundary line between performers and audience; traditional Sacred Harp singing has no boundary between performer and audience.
• Not only is this a performance, but in other videos of this performance you can see that the director gives an extensive historical introduction to the music about to be performed; traditional Sacred Harp music does not include scholarly introductions.
• The singers don’t sing the shapes, nor sit in a hollow square, nor does the director lead with the arm motions peculiar to the tradition; traditional singers do all these things.

Although it’s clearly outside the boundaries, this performance feels fairly traditional — e.g., it feels more traditional the commercial recordings made by traditional Southern singers in mid-twentieth century. But Norumbega Harmony has questionable reputation among many singers of the urban revival because it deviates from the contemporary Southern tradition in several ways:– Norumbega Harmony has a director, Stephen Marini, whom they call their “singing master”; Norumbega Harmony has one open singing per month while the other weeks are by invitation only; Norumbega Harmony regularly performs; Norumbega Harmony has created their own tunebook; Norumbega Harmony engages in scholarship; Norumbega Harmony emphasizes the New England roots of the Sacred Harp tradition, perhaps at the expense of the Southern tradition. Because of Norumbega Harmony’s general deviation from tradition, many urban revival singers might be tempted to place this performance further outside the boundaries than Tim Ericksen’s performance above.

All this raises two important points:

(1) Even though I’d say the performance in this video breaks fewer boundaries than Tim Ericksen’s performance above, because Ericksen has a higher reputation for many in the urban revival (i.e., he is perceived as hewing more closely to traditional Southern practices), his performances are often perceived by urban revival singers as being more traditional.

(2) Although they are very aware of, and sensitive to, traditional Southern singers, Norumbega Harmony is also very interested in exploring the New England roots of the Sacred Harp tradition. I suspect this is felt by some singers to be something of a betrayal of the Southern tradition. Yet we know that there isn’t one monolithic Southern tradition; there are many different traditions, with different performance practices, and even variant tunebooks. This raises the question of whether urban singers will be allowed to evolve their own peculiar regional styles; or perhaps to remain within the boundaries of the tradition, urban singers will be expected always to imitate traditional Southern singers.

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Closing questions

So where are the boundaries of the urban revival of Sacred Harp music?

Is Tim Ericksen more traditional than Sean Conway? If so, what makes him more traditional?

Does Larry Gordon offer an acceptable model for a twenty-first century singing school master? Is it ever acceptable for today’s singing school masters to get paid?

Who gets to decide which new tunes get placed within the tradition? If a group creates a new tunebook, do we cast them out of the Sacred Harp tradition, or do we recognize a new variant tradition, not unlike the Cooper and Denson book traditions?

Wherever you put the boundaries of the tradition, why do you place them there? And are you the final arbiter on this matter, or is there someone to whom you would defer?

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Version: 5 August 2010