Sacred Harp

I actually wrote this out a while ago and posted it elsewhere, but I wanted to have it on here so I could remember it.

I recently went to a Sacred Harp shape note convention that a friend of mine had invited me to. Sacred Harp is a musical tradition, 4 part a cappella singing, using simple shapes to define notes. It’s mostly hymns and anthems, though there’s some folk music in there. It’s very, very beautiful music. I love old gospel, and this musical tradition takes that style and makes it completely nondenominational. It doesn’t however, make it non-spiritual. And that was a bit of a problem for me. I’m not a religious person, by any means. But I grew up in a small, tight knit community where going to church three times a week was required, and you sang three times at each session. I’m very, very familiar with the idea of singing as a religious experience.
And I’m uncomfortable with it.
I never liked being in a group of people and praising a god I didn’t believe in, and while the music itself was beautiful, I could never really get the sense of satisfaction out of it that others obviously did. I disliked the idea of allowing music to catch you up in spiritual ecstasy, and to me it felt very similar to any other drug that allows you to loose control of your sense of self and to feel like you’re merging your spirit with something greater. I didn’t WANT to merge my spirit with something greater, thankyouverymuch, I liked it just where it was. Besides, I happened to know for a fact that most of those singing around me weren’t really people I’d want to touch spirits with for any length of time, and god didn’t really sound any better than them when it came to someone I’d want to get that intimate with.

So, while I’ve always found Gospel to be beautiful, I’ve never felt compelled to be any part of it. I kind of surprised myself by even going to this convention, because even though I knew it was nondenominational, I also knew it was spiritual and religious in content.
I walked in the door already nervous. And right off the bat it met my expectations for a religious service. That special kind of quiet, broken by the basso voice of a tall man standing in the middle of a square of seated folk. He was gesticulating a little wildly, and the others were nodding their heads and smiling. A sweet, older, frumpy lady met us at the door, handed us a songbook, and, whispering, asked us what section we would be singing in. I told her I was there as a visitor and was looking for my friend Greg. She pointed us off to the side and said he was singing somewhere in the tenor section.

We sat down, opened the books curiously, and waited for something to happen. Suddenly, the entire room broke out into a round of Fa So La, and ran up and down the scale several times. It was kind of overwhelming, in a smallish room with high ceilings and about 75 people singing all at once, in almost perfect pitch and harmony. And that was just the warm up. They segued smoothly into the song itself, with the man in the middle conducting the beat with a very simple up and down motion of his arm, copied by most of the people singing.
When that song was done, the man in the middle sat down and a very young teenage girl took his place. She called out a number, there was a rustle of pages as the singers found the song in their books, and then somebody in the back row of the bass section began the warm up, with a very deep and prolonged Fa. I have to say, that was probably my favorite part of the singing. The running up and down the scales, with each section finding their own pitch in the song before starting the song itself, was fascinating and lovely.
And then each song would start. I tried to follow along in my book at first, curious about the words. Most of them were full of grief and misery, as are most gospel songs, bewailing this existence and speculating on how wonderful the next one will be. I gave up following along quickly, and just watched the faces of those singing. It was a surprisingly diverse group of people, with a lot of young trendy twenty-somethings, and a few very alternative looking folk with piercings and tattoos mixed in with the conservative crowd. And they all had the same expressions on their face. Brows furrowed in concentration, mouths open wide and singing as loudly as they could, with a smile at the edges. It was fun to watch them, as they raised and lowered their arms in metronomic synchronicity, and sang their hearts out. Every song had a different person in the middle, and while at first I thought that person was conducting, I quickly realized that they simply chose the song and stayed in the middle. It seemed that some were more experienced than others and would take a more active part in starting the warmups and conducting the song. But for the most part they just sang along, standing in the middle.

My friend found us eventually, and stayed with us, showing us the basics of the note system and how to follow along well enough to sing. It was a lot of fun, and I sang a few songs once I got the basic concept of the shape notes down. I thoroughly enjoy singing in a group, and can easily find my voices’ place in a crowd. It was fun.

And yet I still left there feeling antsy and nervous, full of uncomfortable energy. I was trying to explain to my friend what made me so uncomfortable about something that I obviously enjoyed. And I realized that a big part of it was I put a lot of faith in the power of music. I always have. I regularly have people over my house just so that I can listen to the talented musicians I’m lucky enough to be friends with create something lovely in an intimate setting. I love what their music does to us, and I love the feeling of connection we gain from it.
There are few things in this world more soothing, more uplifting, more energizing, and more intense than a group of humans using their voices to create intricate and melodic sound. It does something to our brains, and we’re biologically bound to be affected by it in one form or another. Music has been a powerful shaping force in the human psyche, and music combined with religion is especially potent.
And not something I want to be touched by in a crowd of strangers. I am extremely sensitive to crowds; I have no barriers to the swirls of energy and thought created by them, and the intensity of emotions created by communion with “spirit” hits at me like a hammer. I think that the energy created by all these people in ecstatic communion with each other has to go somewhere, and I don’t care how fucking woowoo it sounds, it exists and can be used. And there are people in any given group who use it to their advantage. Some people conduct others the same way that they would conduct music, manipulating emotion and intensity like notes, tweaking at the bonds created by the sweet connection of spirit others feel. They’re like motivational speakers, or revivalist preachers, working an already worked up crowd into a frenzy of intensity for their own ends. And just the idea of that sort of power makes me uncomfortable.
Being in a crowd of people who are so willing to subsume themselves into others feels like being a cat in the midst of a flock of sheep, with wolves circling the edges. So, I get edgy and uncomfortable, looking nervously at those around me, waiting for the predators to show themselves and feeling bad for the sheep. I really wish I didn’t feel this way. I enjoyed that music an awful lot, and they were a group of very sweet people.