Customer Reviews

Colored Sacred Harp

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My great-grandfather wrote the Colored Sacred Harp and several members of my family are heard on this recording including myself (the Welcome Address). This album was recorded at the annual Colored Sacred Harp singings held at Union Grove Baptist Church in Ozark, AL every third Sunday in April. It's a family tradition that my great-grandfather passed down to his sons and daughters who passed it on to their sons and daughters and so on. Every time I hear this album, it's home to me because I grew up listening and going to these singings all my life. For some one to criticize it is hard for me to hear because I know how dedicated every one was on this album. For all those who buy it, I want to say thanks, and I truly hope you enjoy the view into our family gathering.

The music and the liner notes for this CD struck a positive emotional tone with me. My great grandparents participated in this tradition and because they were proud of their ability to read, write, and compose music and song lyrics, they would have been especially pleased with the quality of Dr. Hampton's liner notes and the care she took to cite the most current research (e.g., the "academic study published in 1987") as well as statements from her interviews with the performers. One of the reviewers clearly is unaware of the history of this music and appears unwilling to grasp it. The pioneers of this music WERE Africans. I would call it accuracy that the author does not refer to African Americans as such until accounts after 1868, when the United States Constitution confers citizenship that would apply to the Africans who were emancipated by its thirteenth amendment. The reader will note that the author refers to the Colored Sacred Harp performers after that year, including the Wiregrass Sacred Harp Singers of today, as African Americans. Similarly, the roots of this music in the white communities predate 1776. By the eighteenth century, this music had taken hold in southern Alabama; yet this territory was under the French (1710-1719 so that the Mardi Gras actually began in Mobile), the British (1763-1780) and the Spanish (1780-1813) during much of the 18th century. The last time I looked these were European nations! One reviewer objects to the people there being called Europeans. Moreover, the wiregrass region, specifically, sits on the border with Florida and even today The Wiregrass Singers co-participate in Sings with Floridians. I appreciate the author's recognition of the fact that Florida did not become a state until 1845, halfway through the century during which The Colored Sacred Harp was composed. This is not political correctness. It is historical correctness!! Some of us appreciate precision and accuracy in our liner notes and that is what we get with this CD. It is unfortunate that fans don't take the time to study before they write these reviews.

My grandmother, mother, and aunts sing from the B. F. White Sacred Harp. I sing occasionally. The intensity of this type singing, along with its almost exotic harmonies, gives it an enduring place in American Music...

This is the first time I have ever heard these arrangments on tape other than my family singing these songs at our family reunions. There is seven sisters and brothers and every year the family sings together. I hopefully the tape is much clear sound than on the internet

The documentation for this album resulted from research done by an outstanding ethnomusicologist. She provides a finely detailed historical and socio-political context that has greatly enhanced my understanding and appreciation of this very important American religious music.

The music on this CD was everything I had hoped it would be: moving, haunting, filled with life and religious spirit, and beautiful. My only complaint--and I wouldn't have posted this review if I didn't feel this complaint so strongly--is the poor quality of the liner notes. This is really an example of how NOT to write liner notes for a CD: filled with gratuitous academic jargon, imprecise, historically inaccurate, and burdened by what can only be described as a paralytic anxiety over political correctness. For example, the author, Barbara L. Hampton, refers to Alabama farmers as "Europeans," when she means white Americans. Similarly, the pioneers of "Colored Sacred Harp" singing aren't Africans, they're African-Americans--or maybe, for the sake of brevity, Black people (?!). There is in general a stiffness, a squareness to the way this scholar expresses herself: for example, she references the assertion "Africans isolated within the plantation system established their own communities" to an academic study published in 1987! One strains to imagine how the singers appearing on this CD would react to the idea of needing to footnote such a statement!

I love Sacred Harp music and own five CDs of it. I listen to this music frequently. It's appeal to me is its beautiful harmonies and strong feeling.

The singing on this CD has real feeling but often the harmonies and timing are very rough and not pleasing to my ear. I will listen to it very little, if at all, in the next year. I regret not buying a different Sacred Harp CD instead.

I do not understand why the title suggests the music is Sacred Harp when the style is something entirely different and not traditional. A couple of people wrote all the songs and the singing wasn't at all interesting. Save your $$ for true Sacred Harp Music from the Sacred Harp official book. I'm getting rid of my copy.