Some books

Here are brief reviews of some books which offer useful and interesting perspectives on documenting the urban revival of Sacred Harp singing:

(1) Of perhaps greatest interest to the documentarian is the chapter “Sacred Harp Singing” in Stephen A. Marini’s Sacred Song in America. Marini’s methodology for this book has the decided flavor of documentary work: he spent seven years traveling across American, participating in sacred singing, and interviewing notable composers and performers of sacred song. He also used his training as a historian to provide a historical context; his historical method owes much to social history, and thus here again has much in common with documentary work. Furthermore, Marini is a central figure in the New England branch of the northern revival, and he has an intimate and first-person knowledge of key moments in the history of the northern revival.

A primary purpose of Marini’s essay is to show that Sacred Harp singing is a form of sacred song. Through interviews with prominent traditional singers, Marini established that explicitly consider Sacred Harp singing to be a form of sacred song. But northern singers come from an entirely different cultural milieu, and, says Marini, “the cultural divide between northern and southern singers could hardly be greater.” Marini does find strong evidence that northern singers find something implicitly “sacred” in Sacred Harp singing, and some even find it to be explicitly sacred; but northern notions of the sacredness of the music are substantially different and less unified from traditional southern notions.

At the end of the chapter, Marini explores the tensions between traditional southern singers, and singers of the northern urban revival. Traditional southern singers, says Marini, have been challenged when northern urban singers participate in this tradition that for a long time belonged exclusively to the south. Marini quotes a traditional Southern singer to make this point:

“We want people to join our tradition and be a part of it,” Jeff Shephard told me, “but we don’t want them to come in and try to change us. We want to keep it as pure as we can.” Rather than be changed by the Sacred Harp revival, the Sheppards along with Hugh McGraw and Richard DeLong decided to change it…. On countless trips to state and regional conventions in New England, the Midwest, and most recently the West, these missionaries have patiently transmitted the history, techniques, and spirit of Sacred harp and invited new northern singers to join its fellowship.

But Marini goes on to detail how the northern urban singers have in fact changed the traditional southern singers. The traditional singers have been influenced by the postmodern singers of the revival; at the same time, the northern singers have been influenced by the religious character of the traditional singers. In short, this chapter is probably the best overview and interpretation of the interaction of the traditional Southern singers and the northern urban revival.

Sacred Song in America may be previewed online at Google Books.

(2) Kiri Miller’s Traveling Home: Sacred Harp Singing and American Pluralism is a more problematic account of the northern urban revival. Miller, an ethnomusicologist, borrows the concept of diaspora from Mark Slobin’s Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West, transmogrifies it in a postmodern way, and applies it to the Sacred Harp revival. Her central image for the book, the image from which the title is derived, is the image of taking road trips to Sacred harp conventions; and once you get to the convention, you’ll always find a home in the middle of the hollow square.

Miller is something of a Platonist when it comes to Sacred Harp singing: there is a right way to sing Sacred Harp music, and every other way is wrong. This is entirely in keeping with her organizing concept of diaspora: at some time before the urban revival, there was an unsullied Southern Sacred Harp tradition, and part of the task of the diaspora is to keep the old tradition pure. In a revealing anecdote, Miller says:

A few weeks after moving from Chicago to Massachusetts, I attended the 2000 session of the New England Convention in Middletown, Connecticut. Things proceeded more or less as I expected — until a leader on his way into the square took his pitch from a pitch pipe. With a visceral shock of indignation, I immediately shut my book and sat out his lesson. At this point I recognized myself as a Chicago singer. (p. 111)

Thus, Miller ranks Chicago singers as better and more pure than New England singers; and presumably Chicago singers are more pure because they more closely imitate traditional Southern singers. In a diaspora, the further one gets from the pure source, the more corrupt, and the less worthy, the tradition becomes. Unfortunately, from the point of view of the documentarian, Miller’s angry rejection of the use of pitch pipes means she is not fully able to record and understand this musical and social practice; yet it is precisely this kind of detail that the documentarian does not want to ignore.

From the point of view of the ethnomusicologist, it may well be that Miller’s use of diaspora, as opposed to revival, deepens our understanding of how northern urban singers interpret this tradition. By calling it a “diaspora,” Miller seems to make a clear distinction between urban Sacred Harp singing, and urban folk revivals, and this may be a valid ethnomusicological point. But as a documentarian, this distinction prevents me from a full and nuanced understanding of the social and musical phenomenon of the urban revival. Although this book seems at first glance to be an essential resource for documenting the northern/urban revival, with its first-person viewpoint and wealth of details about northern singing, a closer look shows this to be a problematic resource for the documentarian.

Traveling Home may be previewed online at Google Books.

(3)Although it primarily covers traditional Southern singing, John Bealle’s Public Worship, Private Faith: Sacred Harp and American Folksong is an essential resource for anyone documenting the urban revival.

First and foremost, almost a quarter of the book, the chapter titled “Writing Traditions of The Sacred Harp,” is a brilliant analysis of the ways in which Sacred Harp singing has been portrayed in writing. Bealle looks at five “written forms,” and outlines how each type of writing affects the understanding of Sacred Harp music. The first written form is material that appeared in contemporary Southern newspapers of the mid-19th C., including musical debates, sheet music, advertisements, letters from singers, etc.; much of this is writing done by actual singers. Bealle goes on to consider later, somewhat romanticized, written portrayals of Sacred Harp singing, usually written from an outsider’s perspective. Other written forms include analyses of Sacred Harp written by singers; minutes of conventions; etc. Bealle points out the strengths and weaknesses of each written form, showing how each form both reveals and obscures.

Second, Bealle devotes nearly another quarter of the book, the chapter titled “‘Our Spiritual Maintenance has Been Performed’: Sacred Harp Revival”, to analyzing the northern/urban revival. In this chapter, Bealle makes an important point:

In recent decades, folklore scholarship has brought to the folksong revival process and uncharitable scrutiny. The term cultural intervention has been coined as a label that includes well-meaning fascination with a cultural Other, a relationship that is facilitated, systematically so, by latent structural inequities. With this as a backdrop, it would be remarkable enough to describe a process by which singers have employed traditional forms and institutions to retain some measure of influence over the revival process. But, by so many accounts, an even more remarkable consequence is the degree to which these institutions have been reenergized by transforming antiquarian fascination into traditional practices and sentiments. Today, “folksong” recedes into the background as the central interpretive device for Sacred Harp revival. “Spiritual maintenance,” one singer has called it — and this in an age where so many traditions are subjected in popular culture to postmodern detachment or are enlisted in dogmatic confrontation….

Moving our understanding of the Sacred Harp revival outside of the interpretive framework of folk song is an important move for the documentarian to make. Rather than focusing our attention primarily on the music, we can broaden our view to include social, religious/spiritual, and cultural aspects of the northern/urban revival. In the course of this chapter, Bealle offers some good questions for the documentarian to ask: How have individuals found their way to Sacred harp singing? How did recordings affect urban singers? How did published accounts of Sacred harp music (e.g., Buell Cobb’s The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and Its Music) influence the revival? How did other institutions (e.g., Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music) influence and interact with the revival?

Bealle’s book is essential reading for anyone planning to do documentary work on the urban revival of Sacred Harp singing.

Public Worship, Private Faith may be previewed online at Google Books.