A revival of a form of traditional sacred music has found a toehold in Alaska. The 4th annual Alaska Sacred Harp Convention was held in Sitka over the weekend (Oct 20 – 22, 2011). About a dozen singers from around the state and the US joined locals for social gatherings, a song school, and an all-day sing. KCAW’s Robert Woolsey listened in, and sent this audio postcard.

Singer: “There’s a saying that I wouldn’t go across the street to listen to a shape-note singing. But I’d drive 500 miles to be in one!”

I’m standing in the middle of the Alaska Sacred Harp convention. Literally in the middle. Grouped around me in a compact square are twenty-five or so altos, sopranos, tenors, and basses. They’re seated in a high-ceilinged private studio space in Sitka that amplifies the energy of their voices. I entered this funnel of sound with permission to take a panorama picture of their faces. It’s two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and they’ve been singing almost without interruption since 9.

Malone: “When you get in the car and you get on the highway, you go 65. That’s how we sing, because we have to go all day. It’s not like we’re doing a concert that’s over. So we get in to high gear and leave it there.”

Dr. Tom Malone teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. He taught a song school in Sitka on Thursday, and serves as the convention’s guide and educator.

Sacred Harp refers to one of several early American songbooks. It’s also called shape-note singing, solfege, or fa-so-la. With roots in England, Sacred Harp took shape about the same as the nation did. It is a simple and powerful form of expression – perhaps the most democratic choral music I’ve ever encountered.

Malone: “One of the appeals of it, the FaSoLa system, even though it’s very old, is that its meanings are current. It brings us to this moment today, where we’re sitting together across from each other, in a square, looking at one another and not looking at an audience.”

Malone disputes the idea that Sacred Harp is the revival of a folk tradition. Looking around the room I see a couple of Ph.D.’s, two physicians, a nurse, a school teacher, and some kids. No one looks like they’re here to recapture the past.

Malone: “One might view it as folk music, but if you grew up in a community where this is how music was taught and how music was sung, and you became musical, what right does someone have to tell you that’s folk music? It’s like if you learned to count or do math, is that folk arithmetic? This is music, no less and no more. This is people’s means to musical literacy going back hundreds of years. So while it’s one person’s folk music, it’s actually just music. That’s why we say the Sacred Harp is just a book, fa-so-la is just one way to discover what we all discover. It’s just music. It’s just wonderful to make music with others.”

Neither does anyone appear to be in a religious swoon. The Sacred Harp is not carried around and played by an angel, it’s carried around by us. It’s the human voice. By definition spiritual, Malone says the power of Sacred Harp is in the moment.

Malone: “A lot of the songs talk about the fact that life is finite, and that we all have to think on that. We won’t be here forever, and we should kind of look at the people around us and appreciate them.”

Singer: “I get a bit of a high from singing this music. It affects me emotionally in a very deep and profound way. It gets deep in my bones, and I need my fix.”

The Alaska Sacred Harp Convention meets the third weekend in October.