In the small town of Benton, Kentucky a few dozen people are gathered in the local county courthouse to participate in the 142nd annual “Big Singing.” A plaque on the building claims it’s “the oldest indigenous musical tradition in the U.S.”
This isn’t a concert. The singers haven’t rehearsed the music and they’re seated in a square, singing to each other, not an audience. It’s like a musical equivalent of pickup basketball – it doesn’t matter how good you are, just that you have fun.
“I could make you a list of people who sing almost every weekend in a year and they could not hold a tune in the bucket… but they're accepted, they're valued, and that's just part of it,” Tim Reynolds said with a grin.
Reynolds came from Nashville, Tennessee for the Memorial Day weekend event. An avid shape note singer, he’s given lectures on the origins of the tradition that he says is uniquely American, but has traveled across the world.
“I spent an evening two or three years ago singing in Berlin, Germany. I’ve sung in England, but there’s also groups in Poland,” he said.
Shape note was popular in the early 1800s and especially took hold in rural areas of the South where music education was rare, but church-related singings were big social events. Without instruments like organs and pianos, people sang acapella. They sang from music books with odd shapes like squares and triangles on the note heads, thus the name.
“It is a method to teach people how to sing when you don't have an instrument,” Reynolds said.
Now, for the first time in more than 30 years, the most popular music book called “The Sacred Harp” is getting an update.
John Plunkett is chair of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company, a small nonprofit that’s been printing the book and promoting shape note singing for nearly a century. Over time, singers have routinely refreshed the book every 30 years or so.
“The book was originally published in 1844 and it's been revised every 25 to 35 years since that time,” he said. “The current book that we're using came out in the early ‘90s. So it's just time.”
Plunkett says this isn’t just a reprint. Each time the music book is revised, less popular tunes get removed and totally new compositions are added. He says it’s important to keep adding tunes because it keeps the tradition dynamic and alive — not just a re-enactment of a musical era frozen in history.
The changes keep the shape note community engaged in a world where the internet has brought so much music to our fingertips.
“Sitting next to somebody and singing together, I think that’s an unusual and unique experience in our lives today,” Plunkett said.
The current edition of “Sacred Harp” was published in 1991 before the internet was widely adopted. Then, they got about 150 new tunes submitted. This time, nearly 1200 songs were submitted, most by email.
David Ivey is in charge of the nine-member committee that decides which tunes will make it into the new book and which may have to wait for the next generation.
“I think all of us feel sort of a weighty responsibility to revise a book that so many people care so much about,” he said.
The song selection committee organized nearly a dozen signings across three countries to record the tunes and get a feel for them. For fairness, they removed lyrics and identifying information from the submitted tunes. Then, Ivey said he would listen to those recordings over and over and over, sometimes on long road trips.
“I just wanted to hear the song and because you, you want to see, do you get tired of it?” he said.
Ivey says the songs also have to sound old. He imagines what his great grandfather – who also sang with shape notes – would think of the new tunes.
“A lot of times you’ll hear a song and think, ‘Was that written 20 years ago, or was it written 120 years ago, or 220 years ago?’” he said.
Which tunes and exactly how many will be in the new book? Ivey says that’s top secret.
Everyone will find out at the same time, when the new “Sacred Harp” is released in September. Ivey and Plunkett are expecting somewhere around 500 people to show up for a special singing in Atlanta, Georgia with the new book.
They say it could easily be the largest shape note gathering in their lifetimes.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU in Kentucky and NPR.
