I would go as far as to call it a “joyful noise.” Most common in sub-Saharan Africa, polyphonic singing is known to be integral to community building. Polyphony is a musical gift for the people, an awe-inspiring and disordered order which permeates folk as well as religious music. These religious distinctions aside, what I want to explore, though, is polyphony, a type of singing which is disappearing worldwide, church or not. In fact, when the shape note singers are getting warmed up, they explore just four notes in melodies without words, and the warm up practically hinges on glossolalia. Well, let’s just cut to the chase: shape note singing is a “low church” activity. Just a little superficial research online connects Elder Golden Harris with the rich heritage of shape note singing and American music that emerged from it: blues, blue grass, country, and other popular music, even rock-n-roll. I even related this in a poem which appears in Floyd County Moonshine. Uncle Monroe became so frozen with fear that he could not sing at the recording sessions, leaving Elder Golden Harris to finish the sessions alone. More than once, my dad told me about Elder Golden Harris and my Great Uncle Monroe Simpkins travelling to New York City from Floyd County, Virginia, for a recording session. When Hal mentioned shape note singing to me, I remembered my dad talking about singing in the churches he attended as a boy–some of them Primitive Baptist–and how memorable it was for him, though he is now a man grown divided against the Church. I wouldn’t be wondering about this at all, had my son Hal not asked me about shape note singing and shared that his music appreciation professor at Sewanee was requiring him to attend a shape note singing meeting. Could participatory singing be more valuable for community building than the more passive state of “listening” most of us are accustomed to today? After all, we are comfortable with consumption and the perfection it houses, but is music consumerism best for the hearts and souls of men? What possible value could untrained, localized voices have for singing? None, especially in this age of commercialism where we can buy the best for our listening pleasure, passive though our listening is. K-16 Education Program Focusing on Integrative Learning and Complexity in the Classroom
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