Surprisingly, the Ballstown singers take the actual singing more seriously than the traditional Waterville group. There's a fair amount of hand-wringing about tempo and pitch, and the group thoroughly deconstructs the first song, singing each part (bass, alto, treble, tenor) individually before going through the song from start-to-finish. It takes a full hour to complete one song (in Waterville, they sang ten songs in the same span of time). If the Sunday singing was a carrying on of tradition, the Tuesday gathering is a process of discovery. More tedious perhaps, but ultimately as pretty and unusual. (Another of the interesting quirks of this form of singing — with relative pitches and agreed-upon time-keeping — is that no two groups sound the same. Each is a unique collection of voices.)
Hows and Whys
I suspected that most of the Ballstown singers became interested in the Sacred Harp for the same reasons I did: because it seems so quirky and archaic, as unusual and fleetingly fascinating as the ephemera that floats through BoingBoing and your e-mail inbox every day. When I inquired about their shape note origin stories — and their thoughts about the practice's inherent spirituality — I was surprised at the lack of apathy in their responses.
Sarah Yanni, who hosts the group, learned from a friend who learned from a friend, and volunteered that the ritual "is a community experience for me, which is the closest thing in my life to a spiritual experience." Corinna Marshall, who argued that the "shared language" of singing "can definitely hook into something that can be described as spiritual or as God" — has been singing since she was a teenager, and she (along with another Ballstowner) was introduced to it by way of Vermont's famous folk-art troupe, the Bread and Puppet Theater. Jefferson Navicky said the experience, for him, is one of a "bodily oriented spirituality," saying "I can literally feel it opening my chest, similar to some yogic chanting." (Many of the singers offered in-depth stories about their experiences and thoughts about shape note singing, which you can find at thePhoenix.com/AboutTown.)
Some of the Ballstown singers expressed minor reservations (or, conversely, historical curiosity) at the devout context of Sacred Harp songs, but the overriding theme of their responses — and the reason that Sacred Harp singing is persisting and perhaps ready to thrive — is that it's such a communal and extremely mutual and collaborative gathering: Shape note singing can only be done in person, in a group; it's impossible to replicate, and never sounds quite the same twice; there's no cause for anxiety, since you can't "mess up" because everyone else is singing just as loudly as you are and there are no solos; and (based on my observations, at least) there aren't any egos or power struggles. As primal as the music can sound, the philosophy underlying it couldn't be more wholesome.
Johanna Franzel, a first-timer with the Ballstown Shapenote Singers, summarized the overall sentiment. "I'd say that singing is a spiritual experience — it's certainly spirited, and there's nothing like joining your voice with others to make a different, collective sound... Devotion, for me, isn't denominational, and if I can tap into why I'm doing it, the words are less important than the act."
Christopher Gray can be reached at cgray@phx.com.
