#ShapeNote

Sacred Harp singing - one of the things I love doing the most!

Shapenote singing or "Sacred Harp Singing" (named after the most popular songbook of its tradition) is an American a capella four-part harmony community singing tradition that got popular in Europe over the last decades.

Here's a neat little video in which my singing friend Kevin from Seatte gets the chance to present the PNW singing community.

https://youtu.be/LVYYoxSYqIk

#sacredharp #folkmusic #choir #berlinshapenote #shapenote

To start off our #EarthDay set, here is Crooked Mowth's recording of Emerald Stream. If you like what you hear, check us out on #bandcamp .

#acappella #shapenote #earth

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmlg8pRY074

Oh wow, they’re playing shape-note singing on ThreeD radio! I love that. #Shapenote #Folkmusic

Are y'all familiar with #ShapeNote / #SacredHarp singing? It's a gospel sound I've been digging into for a few years. There's really nothing out there like it. About the only description I could give is it's like a #gospel choir but early rural American and more... "primitive" and very powerful like four walls of sound. If you've seen the movie Cold Mountain or heard the soundtrack you've heard it. A trailer from a doc that came out a few years ago that will explain:

https://youtu.be/YHUfHNEZDPc

I’m going to shamelessly self-promote my Christmas/winter Spotify playlist because it’s the best. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6xOHzLMsv318F26lR35KmG?si=T67J0wZcQKug4JOeDPRH8Q #spotify #music #christmas #holiday It has trad/#folkmusic, #shapenote, #rock, #hiphop, even some #hanukkah jams :3

@danielpebrace It's interesting to compare this discussion within a church context to the religious music I'm involved in: #SacredHarp/ #ShapeNote singing and traditional English #VillageCarols, both in secular settings and mainly sung by atheists.
Approaching the music as more of a "folk" tradition makes it easier to accept some texts as drawing from a cultural/historical context that the singers don't need to share. But there are limits: the Sacred Harp is currently editing the next edition and removing some texts for more straightforward misogyny, antisemitism, and colonialism. For now I think they're planning to keep texts like Jezemiah Sumner's extremely Manifest Destiny-esque "Ode on Science" (attached), which I think works in a music-focused setting but which would be more objectionable in a church context.