{"id":2927,"date":"2017-10-25T17:16:13","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T21:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrayarcher.com\/WordPress\/?page_id=2927"},"modified":"2024-09-18T21:34:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-19T01:34:51","slug":"sonorous-dissonance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kevinrayarcher.com\/WordPress\/sonorous-dissonance\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonorous Dissonance"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the age of six, I could circumscribe my world in song. I was not particularly precocious. My world was just small. Ultimately, it would be fractured by its own rebellious genesis.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Two genres of folk music marked out the poles of my preciously tiny planet. Heaven\u2019s jubilee<\/a> rang in one ear: a cappella<\/em> gospel, sturdily founded upon the biblical injunction to make melody in the heart<\/a>. In the other ear, however, was the music of the devil himself: alcohol-drenched, two-stepping, hell-raising honky-tonk, enticing one to sin not just in the heart, but with the entire body. Together, they formed an eternally reciprocal refrain: Saturday night sin prompted Sunday morning renewal. There was little room for anything else, particularly dissent.<\/p>\n

\"Title<\/a>
Title page from the 1909 edition of The Sacred Harp.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sunday morning\u2019s renewal resounded with four-part harmony based on a shape-note system of musical notation, widely referred to as Sacred Harp<\/a>. <\/em>We sang again at our Sunday evening and mid-week services. Throughout the year, we also hosted regional \u201csingings,\u201d bringing together folks from other congregations, swelling our own sound by double. Our a cappella<\/em> songs were performed by the whole congregation, some singing the melody in unison, while others ventured into alto, tenor, and bass. It was an easy form of music to learn by design, with its origins in early 19th<\/sup>-century America. Its strongest base was in the south, and I inherited at least two generations\u2019 worth of experience. It set the tone for my interactions with the world for the first three decades of my life.<\/p>\n

Musicologists have documented and analyzed Sacred Harp thoroughly, with Alan Lomax having had a particular fascination for it. He considered it as not only an extension of four-square Anglo forms, but also as the crossroads where the Reformation met the Democratic Experiment. In Lomax\u2019s view\u2014expressed in a 1982 interview at the Sacred Harp Convention at Holly Spring, Georgia<\/a>\u2014European migration to colonize America broke the established authority of the church, leaving every person to forge a singular relationship with God. This supposition harmonizes perfectly with the views of the congregational church I attended. We had no hierarchy, no choir, no piano. Every man, woman, and child added their voice, as best they knew how, to raise an egalitarian song of praise. Songs such as This World is Not My Home<\/a><\/em>, The Glory Land Way<\/a><\/em>, and Blessed Assurance<\/a><\/em> exemplify the form: simple AABB or ABAB rhyme schemes; closely-yoked shifts in harmony and rhythm; and southern gospel\u2019s initial shunning of poly-rhythms or syncopation.<\/p>\n