Shaping the notes

Partly to distract myself from my melancholy thoughts about the issues of the day, I went looking for some examples of "shape note" or "sacred harp" music. In "Some People Change" the sound of the black women's choir, who come dancing into the tent, continues to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it. It led me to thinking about indigenous forms of sacrality in America. Which led me to this:

Last December, in a happy frenzy of listening to holiday music, I asked myself which sense I would choose to lose if I had to decide, hearing or sight. I chose to lose sight, even though I live so much of my life by reading, watching. But I could create a lot of remember sights now by combining other senses. But the sounds in my ears...these I cannot hold so well. Losing hearing would mean losing music. I couldn't. My choice to keep hearing over sight rather astonished me, but six months later, I feel the same way. Chatting on IM with a deaf friend back East, I cannot imagine what his world is like. He knows he can't hear, but since he never did, I wonder what possible conception he could have of sound. So,on to the shape notes.

Sacred Harp music: see what the wacky Wiki says about it, if you like. It is both entirely American, and entirely primitive in the way that chant music is. It is the music of deeply religious people who lived tough lives. I really paid attention to it when I watched Cold Mountain, and searched for the musical background to one of the most searing battle scenes in movie history. It is a tune called Idumea.

Here are the lyrics. (The first round consists of the sol-fa exercise, then these words).

And am I born to die?
To lay this body down!
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?

A land of deepest shade,
Unpierced by human thought
The dreary regions of the dead,
Where all things are forgot.

Soon as from earth I go
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe,
Must then my portion be!

Waked by the trumpet sound,
I from my grave shall rise;
And see the Judge with glory crowned,
And see the flaming skies!

And here (soon) is the music. The video is irrelevant and I would recommend closing your eyes or reading they lyrics. I found other videos with Idumea as the background. One was a lament for American Indians. Not on my agenda. The other was a replay of 9/11. I couldn't watch it. I still can't. I don't need the video...the images are in my head and I remember them every day.

Haunting, rough-edged, roaringly powerful harmonies, deeply human, dark, defiant, ancient and local, archetypal, trance-inducing...American sacred music: