Category: Other local singings

From my notes; posted more than a month after the singing

The drive to the Mount Madonna Center, a yoga retreat center, took me out of Gilroy, at about 200 feet above sea level, up Hecker Pass along narrow winding mountain roads, up into the Santa Cruz Mountains along Pole Ridge Road to over 1,800 feet above sea level, and then down a few hundred feet to the retreat center. It was getting dark as I pulled into the retreat center, and the Arati service was just ending at the Sankat Mochan Hanuman, or Hanuman Temple. I could smell the incense as I got out of my car and walked down to the community center, carrying my Sacred Harp book.

At the door of the community center, one of the Santa Cruz singers saw the maroon book in my hand, and told me where the singing was going to be. It was obvious that we were supposed to take off our shoes, so we did, leaving them in the shelves provided at the door for that purpose.

Pretty soon, people began to gather. I was glad to see Janet Herman, who knows Sacred Harp inside and out and is a darned good musician to boot. We were there to introduce the Mount Madonna residential community to Sacred Harp singing, so having someone like Janet was important. I was also glad to see Ed walk into the room; he’s got a better bass voice than I, and with him there I wouldn’t have to worry about holding down the bass section on my own.

Soon Aaron, also known as Rajeev, came in; he had learned Sacred Harp singing back East somewhere, and since he is living for a few months in the Mount Madonna community, he decided to introduce them to Sacred Harp. He got us organized setting up chairs, and said he was pleased to see so many of the regular Santa Cruz singers there — he had been worried about getting even one experienced singer on a part, but we had at least two experienced singers in every section.

It turned out to be a good singing room, and I do enjoy singing with the Santa Cruz singers: they are tuneful, enthusiastic, and fun. Some members of the Mount Madonna community wandered in; some joined in singing, some sat with us and listened with their eyes closed, and some just stood at the door and listened. We had some good, powerful singing, especially considering that there were only a dozen or so experienced singers. But we did notice when Janet, our strongest leader, had to step out to chase after her toddler.

I left right when the singing ended; it was an hour and a half back to my house, and I had to get up early to go to church. As I drove out past the now-dark temple, I thought a little bit about the incongruity of singing Protestant hymns near a Hindu temple — the Protestant tradition does not look kindly on graven images. I still remember sitting next to my mother when my home church started lighting a candle at the beginning of every Sunday service; “Graven images,” she muttered under her breath; and we were very liberal Protestants. I decided that it is a mark of both our postmodern era, with its dizzying religious diversity, and a mark of northern California culture, that there could be a Sacred Harp singing next to a temple to Hanuman — and it didn’t seem all that incongruous.

During a recent four-week drive across the country, I got to sing in Portland, Maine. This was written back then, revised and posted three weeks later.

About a dozen people came to sing in the monthly Portland (Maine) singing: at one point I counted two tenors, two trebles, three altos, and five basses, though those numbers changed somewhat during the course of the afternoon. The venue, Portland New Church, a Swedenborgian church, was a small wood-frame building; we sang in the main auditorium, a room which was open up to the roof. Despite the high ceiling, the sound was lovely — perhaps the reverberation time was a little longer than would be preferred by many Sacred Harp singers, but more on that later.

It was a real pleasure to sing in eastern New England once again. Sacred Harp singers in eastern New England sing the way people used to sing in the church I grew up in outside Boston: no vibrato, little ornamentation, and a strong but restrained sense of rhythm. When I got into high school and started hearing New England contra dance bands, it was the same kind of sound as my church — simple, un-ornamented music. In addition, eastern New England Sacred Harp singers tend towards a tuning that sounds to my ear (for want of a better term) very pure; some kind of just intonation, I guess, that produces lots of harmonics; whatever the exact musical term, the block chords all sound wonderfully rich to my ear.

Hearing this sound again made me remember the first Sacred Harp convention I went to: the 2008 New England Sacred Harp convention in Walpole, New Hampshire. I drove up with Ken, a treble and a delightful man whom I had run into previously at church events, the New England Folk Festival, and dulcimer conventions. It was a prefect New England fall day, and we sang in a picture-perfect New England church on a town green. So I was predisposed to love the whole experience even before the convention began. And the singing was indeed lovely from the beginning. But then, midway through the morning someone stood up to lead a Lowell Mason tune — I think it was 147t Boylston — and I was immediately transported back to my childhood church. We had sung a lot of Lowell Mason in that church, and we sang it just the way the New England Convention sang it that fall day in 2008, only the Convention sang it better because in my childhood church not many of us knew how to sing anything but the melody. I think that moment in 2008 was when I got really hooked on Sacred Harp, and knew it was something I’d be singing for quite a long time. People talk about various southern Sacred Harp singing styles, they talk about the Western Mass. style, or Chicago style of singing, and these are held up as the “best” singing; but I’ll take the warmth and simplicity of eastern New England singing over anything else.

I noticed that the Portland singers tended to sing slower than we usually do in the Bay area. They sang slower, and their tuning was excellent, and they dwelt on sustained block chords. Perhaps the long reverberation time of the Portland New Church pushed them a little in that direction. But it also felt like a lot of traditional New England music: not too fast, not overly ornamented, taking time to enjoy the music. My limited experience of traditional southern singing is that it can tend towards the urgent expression of religious passion; from a religious standpoint, New England singers strike me as more inclined to the meditative; and, mind you, while they are different, both are equally valid expressions of the religious impulse.

When I stood up to lead a tune, I admit to feeling a little like a bull in a China shop. I have become fully indoctrinated into the fast and furious Bay Area style of leading. I apologized in advance if I led a song too fast; they told me that as the leader I got to choose the tempo; and then of course, I set a tempo that was faster than they were used to and they tended to slow down. I let them slow down; regional traditions should take precedence; and I enjoyed it when they did slow me down.

When I got back to the week-long church camp I was staying at, someone asked me how the singing was. “Fantastic,” I said. “Better than I could wished for.”