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Sacred Harp

tagStarted 1844Peak 1850s–1900s in the rural South; revival growth since the 1970sLast big hit still activeFrom US South, United States

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Gospel / Christian / Spiritual → Sacred Harp / Shape-Note / A Cappella

America's oldest continuously practiced vernacular singing tradition: four-part unaccompanied hymns and fuging tunes sung from B.F. White and E.J. King's 1844 tunebook The Sacred Harp, printed in fasola shape-note notation. Singers arrange themselves in a hollow square facing inward by voice part while leaders take turns beating time in the center; every tune is sung first on the solmization syllables, then the words. The sound is loud, open-throated, and dispersed-harmony raw — a participatory worship and social institution built around all-day singings and dinner on the grounds, not a performance genre.

History

The tradition descends from New England singing schools (Billings, Read) through the four-shape notation of The Easy Instructor (1801); White and King's Georgia tunebook of 1844 outlived every rival, carried forward by the Cooper (1902), James (1911), and Denson (1936; current 1991 Edition) revisions under the Sacred Harp Publishing Company. The Alabama Sacred Harp Singers' 1928 Columbia sides "Present Joys" and "Rocky Road" reached the folk canon via Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music; Alan Lomax recorded the United Sacred Harp Musical Association convention at Fyffe, Alabama in 1959, issued as White Spirituals from the Sacred Harp and later named to the National Recording Registry. Buell Cobb's 1978 study and the Word of Mouth Chorus's Rivers of Delight (Nonesuch, 1979) fed a folk-revival adoption; Hugh McGraw (NEA National Heritage Fellow, 1982) shepherded the 1991 revision; Cold Mountain (2003) recorded the singers at Liberty Baptist Church, Henagar, Alabama, and the documentary Awake, My Soul (2006) followed, with singings now held across the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, and Poland and minutes logged at fasola.org.

Defining artists

Essential listening

Show 2 more
  • Idumea(2003) — Sacred Harp Singers at Liberty ChurchSpotifyYouTube
  • I'm Going Home(2003) — Sacred Harp Singers at Liberty ChurchSpotifyYouTube
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Sources

  • Buell E. Cobb Jr., "The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and Its Music", University of Georgia Press, 1978
  • Alan Lomax liner notes, "White Spirituals from the Sacred Harp — The Alabama Sacred Harp Convention" (New World Records 80205, recorded Fyffe, Alabama, 1959)
  • "Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp" (dir. Matt & Erica Hinton, 2006)
  • Sacred Harp Publishing Company, https://fasola.org/