“The Sacred Harp is a song book
odd in shape, with an odd name,
and as some think, has odd sounding songs sung by odd people.”

— Sacred Harp singer David Waldrop, Tyler, Texas

IT’S THE SATURDAY before the second Sunday of the month, and folks are gathered at the fellowship hall of Faith Primitive Baptist Church on Bee Road to sing anthems and hymns from “The Sacred Harp,” a sturdy, oblong-shaped hymnal containing songs considered to be America’s first music.
“Let’s try page 49 on the bottom,” says song leader Gene Pinion.  “Mear.” 
He’s standing in a space surrounded by singers seated in four rows of folding chairs that are arranged in a square and facing inward.  Pinion pitches the song as he gestures to each of the four sections — the trebles, altos, tenors and basses — and the singers chime in.  What follows next has been described by first-time listeners of Sacred Harp music as a foreign language or medieval chanting. 
The singers are actually vocalizing the syllables representing the basic four notes according to their shapes — triangles are fa; circles, sol; squares, la; and diamonds, mi.  When the song has been sung through by note, the singers return to the beginning and voice the words.

Will God forever cast us off?
His wrath forever smoke
Against the people of his love
His little chosen flock 

This is not a “performance” kind of music, but instead a group singing being done for each other, and it is sung a cappella style unaccompanied by any musical instrument other than the human voice — the Sacred Harp.  It’s foot-tapping music with often ominous lyrics, speaking of redemption, imminent loss, blood, heaven, death, prayer, Christ and Satan.  The sound produced is raw, stark and haunting, and one of the most defining characteristics is that it is loud.
Pinion, education program director for the Savannah Music Festival, formed the group a few years ago when he moved to Savannah from Atlanta, and the number of singers has increased steadily. 
The group is non-denominational and nobody’s faith or religion interferes with their love of the music.  It’s a shared, communal artistic creation, and the singing comes straight from the heart.
The song-leading system is democratic — everyone has the opportunity to stand in the center of the hollow square, where the listening is the best.  The leader calls out the page number and sets the pace by beating time with hand movements.  But taking the first step into the hollow square can be a test of courage, as all eyes focus on the leader to guide. 
“I’m over 60, and nothing embarrasses me any more,” one singer jokes as he directs from the center.
The songs are pitched without the aid of a pitch pipe; but instead, in a sense of relative pitch that is not necessarily in the keys the songs are written, it is in the “key of convenience.”
“Rather than pitch the songs according to the written keys, which sometimes places them too high for some voices or too low for others, we try to find an agreeable key in the middle that keeps the altos and basses from growling and the trebles and tenors from screeching,” Pinion explains.
“The Sacred Harp: The Best Collection of Sacred Songs, Hymns, Odes, and Anthems Ever Offered the Singing Public for General Use” was compiled in 1844 by two Georgians, Benjamin Franklin White and E.J. King.   But many of the tunes date back to Colonial New England times and earlier.
Sacred Harp, also referred to as “shape-note music,” flourished among American colonists in the 18th century.   Singing schools, independent of congregation or denomination, emerged to teach the basics of reading and performing this music in churches.  The schools were run by self-taught music teachers who traveled into the hearts of communities to teach unaccomplished singers to read this four note-based music. 
Shape-note composers introduced new tunes that ignored standard European musical theory and violated almost every rule of Western musical composition.
One of the best-known New England composers was William Billings, a Boston tanner and music school teacher.   His popular “fuging tunes,” in which each of the four sections learned to carry its own individual parts, were written for the enjoyment of the singers.
In the early to mid-19th century, music critics in northeast urban areas came to regard the kind of music taught in the singing schools as crude, old-fashioned and downright terrible.  The loud, full-throated manner of singing was considered to be unrefined. 
Musicians such as one-time Savannah resident Lowell Mason and the “better music” cultural church circles campaigned against the singing schools and the kind of music they promoted.  As a result, singing-school music began to decline in New England.  But, as immigrants moved southward into Virginia and the Carolinas, shape-note singing masters and singing schools followed, planting deep roots in regions of the South.
The music thrived around the foothills of the Appalachians in northern Georgia and Alabama and gained strong followings in parts of Tennessee and northern Mississippi.  Singing schools continued, and gatherings provided an opportunity for people living in isolated or rural areas to socialize and sing for each other.
Eventually, sweet and sentimental gospel music became the music of choice, contrasting sharply with the fiery and inelegant lyrics of Sacred Harp.  The old shape-note songs all but disappeared from bigger cities but remained alive at a grassroots level throughout the South.
There has been revived interest in Sacred Harp music in the past 40 years.   In the 1960s, it was revitalized on college campuses and was sung on stage at the Newport Folk Festival.  More recently, the Civil War film, “Cold Mountain,” featured Sacred Harp music as part of the film’s soundtrack. 
The historical documentary, “Awake My Soul:  The Story of the Sacred Harp,” received critical appeal when it was broadcast last year on PBS stations throughout the country.  Filmed and produced by the Georgia husband/wife team of Matt and Erica Hinton, the film was screened as part of the 2007 Savannah Music Festival.
Articles on all-day singings have appeared in newspapers and national publications regularly, and Time magazine ran a feature story in a January 2008 issue.
Locally, a singing school was scheduled as part of the 2008 Savannah Music Festival.  And all-day singings and schools continue to abound across the country. 
Not content to wait for the monthly gathering at Faith Primitive Baptist Church, a group convenes weekly to share food, beverage and song at various locations in Savannah.  In the spirit of old-time singing schools, folks gather around kitchen tables and in living rooms to breath new life into these time-honored hymns.
Singing this traditional form of music means different things to different people.  It attracts a diverse, cross-section of singers, drawn to the history of the music itself, or to the intense energy created during a singing.
According to 88-year-old Lucille Gunnels, she has been singing Sacred Harp since she was “knee high to a duck.”  She fondly recalls her childhood in western Georgia, where her entire family was immersed in the music.  “I learned by ear,” she said.  “I could sing it before I could read it.”
“It’s an opportunity to participate in creating music without the pressure of it being a performance,” said Tom Ivey, who treks down from Charleston, S.C.,  with his wife, Sharon Strong, every month. 
“For me, the shape-note music has a surprising emotional resonance, more so than the music or the words alone would have.”
Strong first became involved with a group in Chapel Hill, N.C., a dozen years ago, and the two started going to singings regularly in Ohio.  “Before I got into it, as a listener, I didn’t think much of it,” Ivey admitted.
Eventually, Ivey became inspired to write songs of his own and often shares his compositions with the group.
“I often start by finding interesting texts, like Tate & Brady’s versifications of the Psalms, or poems from mainstream hymnbooks.  I’ve even set some verses that I found on the tombstone of a distant relative.”
John Gentry became interested in Sacred Harp singing after catching “Awake My Soul” on Georgia PBS and was delighted to find a group in Savannah. 
“At first, I was pretty overwhelmed trying to sing unfamiliar tunes with the words and music in different places on the page,” he said. 
He purchased a song book and began the process of learning to sing shape notes using the software, Noteworthy Composer.  When he attended the recent annual all-day singing in Hoboken, Ga., Gentry said that he was “awestruck.”
“The harmony resonates with my soul,” he said.  “The tunes usually use the same chord progressions that I am familiar with, but the strange way the chords are sung is altogether new to me.  The tunes and words to some of the songs evoke strong emotions for me.  They remind me of singing with my parents in church or funerals of old aunts and grandparents.
“There is just good fellowship,” Gentry added.  “When we get together, you can feel it.  I just really love people who sing Sacred Harp.  I think (singing teacher) Richard Delong was right in the documentary:  ‘When you get to heaven, we’ll be a-singing, and you can sing with us.’  I believe Sacred Harp is the music of heaven.”