Folk Music and Modern Sound

New Directions in Sacred Harp Singing

New Directions in Sacred Harp Singing Dons J. Dyen I WANT TO SHARE with you some thoughts I have had on the subject of recent developments in Sacred Harp singing, and to invite comments and discussion on new trends that I perceive in this constellation of folk music traditions. I am particularly concerned with the relationship of Sacred Harp singing both to the mass media and to the scholars and fieldworkers who have been endeavoring to document the music for research. The aims of scholars and the aims of media specialists are different from each other: scholars wantmainly to document traditions and preserve them for present and future study; media specialists want to produce well-crafted recordings, videotapes, films, etc., for presentation to the public (sometimes with an eye to possible commercial viability ). Both groups are well-meaningin their efforts (sometimes the same person is both scholar and media specialist), and usually want to have the best interests of the performers at heart; yet both these groups of outsiders have an enormous impact on the performers they work with. This problem is compounded when the scholar or specialist is also involved in public programming, for then that person's own visibility is greater and his or her financial backing, coming directly from the government, carries more weight and influence. Recorded documentation in sound of Sacred Harp music 73 74 THE R E L I G I O U S S O U N D began in the 1930s and has continued ever since. The most extensive recording efforts have involved white singers who sing from the Denson revision of the Sacred Harp book (first published in 1936 as The Original Sacred Harp, revised by Paine Denson from Benjamin Franklin White's Sacred Harp, 1869 edition), who are concentrated mainly in north and central Alabama, Georgia, and areas of Tennessee and Mississippi . So widespread has been the dissemination of the Denson singers' performance via these recordings that, for much of the outside world, their style is Sacred Harp singing. The emphasis by outside fieldworkers and recording companies (such organizations asthe Library of Congressand Folkways Records) on the Denson tradition has fueled the disagreements over style and repertory whichalready had existed to some extent between singers from the Denson revision and those who use the W. M. Cooper revision of the Sacred Harp (first published in 1902 as The B. F. White Sacred Harp, revised by Cooper from B. F. White's 1869 edition of the Sacred Harp). The Cooper-book adherents are concentrated mainly in southern Alabama, and in Florida, with some singers in other areas of the Deep South. Outside workers have in effect given a stamp of approval to one branch of the tradition, while assigning a secondary status to all others. Furthermore, it is not the intrinsic value of one or another branch which has determined the situation, but the weight of historical accident: the Denson-book singers were the ones recorded earliest and most heavily. But there have also been stylistic changes brought about in the white Sacred Harp singers' performance, due to increased public exposure. One result of the interest by fieldworkers in recording and rerecording these singers has been that the singers themselves have become interested in producing their own recordings. Both the Cooper-book and the Denson-book singers have done this on local labels. The Denson singers in particular have been trying for a more blended, "refined" choral sound—because they have had more opportunities to New Directions in Sacred Harp Singing 75 hear recordings of themselves, and because they have been hearing comments on their music from the fieldworkers. In the last ten years, singers from the Benson tradition have had the opportunity to do fieldwork of their own. Many of them have been invited to perform at festivals and at events on northern college campuses, such as the annual sing of the newly formed New England Sacred Harp convention. Even the Cooper-book singers, though more isolated, have obtained recordings of college groups and pop singers singing Sacred Harp songs. I had the odd experience myself of having an informant in south Alabama play for me a selection from a recording of Sacred Harp music done by the American Music Group (a University of Illinois performing ensemble)—a recording in which I had sung. When these singers participate in outside events or listen to outsiders' recordings of the music...