3 Oct 2025
By David Brodeur
Málaga, Spain, and Burlington, Vermont
On the occasion of a singing school:
Tradition & Etiquette in Singing: What Serves the Class?
Our Sacred Harp singings are largely organized according to unwritten customary practices that are:
- Inherited from past singers, who’ve been working them out by trial-and-error since the 1840s;
- Accepted and respected today by the members of our community;
- Transmitted onward in a delicate dance between the past and the future
Transmitting etiquette and tradition relies mostly on experience and pragmatism, and the most important teaching and learning occurs by example during singings. We can also refer to our new Rudiments and Essays from The Sacred Harp: 2025 Edition.
For example, Buell Cobb writes on page 7:
Sacred Harp may be of dispersed harmony, but the tradition itself is a great unifier, a bringing together of people of sometimes widely different demographics, believers and non-believers alike, and of varied singing abilities. As has been said, it is “the people” singing. It works. And Sacred Harp continues to demonstrate a remarkable power that transcends the elements that make up the singing event itself.
There is “remarkable power” in the combination of the people, the book, and the practices we use to foster class singing. So, I ask myself over and over, “What serves the class, rather than just my own preferences and idiosyncrasies? … What fosters this remarkable power?”
Buell also describes historically moving from “virtual unanimity regarding beliefs in the Christian hymn texts” to a more diverse “crowd.” Since the weaving in of Folk Revival singers began in the Seventies and Eighties, Sacred Harp singing has evolved beyond mostly White Evangelicals in the South, to become a larger and more diverse community. Many (not all) singers would credit this diversity with rescuing Sacred Harp singing from obscurity. Judy Hauff referred to her experience when she addressed the class on Sunday at the 2025 United Convention, speaking of her real fear in the Eighties that Sacred Harp was dying.
Hugh McGraw deserves enormous credit for his evangelistic approach of traveling with volunteer Southern singers across the United States to promote traditional practices. One can almost hear Hugh admonishing groups: “Now y’all are going to sing the notes, and organize an all-day, and have prayers … and a Memorial Lesson.” One of Hugh’s many aphorisms was, “The only requirement for singing Sacred Harp is the willingness to do so.” But he wasn’t afraid to teach the specific traditions of singing as well!
When we apply the principle of “willingness,” we avoid unnecessary tests—of religion, dress, gender conformity, or family lineage. Our common songbook and our traditional practices serve to bind us together in a practical way that transcends those unnecessary tests. The class singing I experience today is living proof of this.
While the churches may be supplied from this work, others have not been forgotten or neglected; a great variety will be found suited to singing-schools, private societies, and family circles; in fact, the Sacred Harp is designed for all classes who sing, or desire to sing.”
—BF White, 1844, Preface to The Sacred Harp
If you sing Sacred Harp, you’re my friend, and we love you. … Everybody draws you in. And as long as people want to sing, then they will be welcomed with open arms.
—Helen Brown, Sep 2025
I love this Convention, and remember it being called when I was young, “The Big Singing.” And I’ve grown to appreciate its name and its purpose: “United.” As a diaspora of singing people, we are “United,” and we must stay united. …
I love going, and singing these songs. This book unites us. These singings and conventions that we hold and work for and attend, and that we enjoy, unite us. And most of all, the love we have for one another unites us. Let us pledge to be United in song and love forever.
—David Ivey, Sep 2025
On page 17 of the Rudiments we read, “This welcoming inclusive fellowship is enabled by singers’ deep respect for the wide range of beliefs and identities represented in the singing community.” This is a remarkable statement.
Expressions of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and sexism are necessarily going to have a chilling effect on participation in “traditional” singings by “outsiders.” This effect is already evident. Without tolerance for manifold beliefs and identities, regional singings become a less welcoming environment for visitors and travelers.
Again, Buell on page 7: “Matters of philosophical and religious differences should be left outside the door along with our sodden overshoes and pack animals.” We are being issued the challenge to drop our baggage for the sake of the community. Each singer is entitled to their own politics and religious beliefs, but we can’t place emphasis on them and expect the singing community to manifest its “remarkable power.” Buell notes that the traditional practice itself is a great unifier for “believers and non-believers alike.”
Jesse Karlsberg refers to the question of “representation” in his essay on page 9. The context here is geographic representation in the 1991 Edition, but it’s obvious that queer, trans, and disability representation has increased among the living composers by additions to the 2025 Edition. Representation matters. It is part of the “remarkable power” of singing.
Warren Steel’s essay on page 8 notes that Sacred Harp singing is “also a religious-worship experience for many singers.” Anyone who sings Sacred Harp more than once or twice understands this profound spiritual experience: the meditation on sickness, dying and death; the sense of longing; the sweetness of community; and the hope of redemption.
Warren goes on to say, “While the Tradition welcomes singers of any religion or no religion, it avoids contentious discussion of politics and denominational religion.” It’s precisely because we do not make too fine a point of religion and philosophy that we can have this communal experience in the bounds of tradition, what Warren calls “persistent collaboration.”
Convention singing and the traditional practices of etiquette are great uniters, and tangible expressions of how we love and care for one another, going beyond warm feeling to genuine respect, care, and support. That is the basis for strengthening the traditions, and why we transmit them to new singers. Our goal in strengthening the singing tradition is not to express a particular viewpoint, but to model cooperation and collaboration in the task of singing. You could call it love—as in our love for each other that transcends our differences. I would not be the first to use that word. Singers and teachers far more experienced than I have described it exactly thus. That is the seriousness of our task. When I sing, I assume I’m in the room with people for whom the singing is a religious, explicitly Christian act of worship. And that I am also in the room with people for whom it is a spiritual experience outside of Christian tradition. And that I am also in the room with people who have experienced religious trauma or alienation and are anxious about being around anything religious. And all points in between. What we have in common in singing has to transcend our differences in the bonds of love.
We do not detract from the religious-worship experience of other singers by simply being who we are when we sing. There are two spheres of activity being described here. Within the bounds of traditional practice, there is considerable latitude for diversity of experience. We do not have to privilege one form of spiritual experience (White Evangelical) over other forms in order to have “authentic” Sacred Harp singing.
Red or Green?
We have begun to see rejection of the 2025 Edition serve as a surrogate for rejection of queer/trans representation, and for excluding participation in the singing and the Revision by those who are not White Evangelicals. We are now faced with the task of respecting and honoring the traditional Southern White Evangelical singer—without privileging them. This is our responsibility for our “direction” on this two-way street of mutual love and respect.
v. 11 Jan 2026 Atlanta
This page: https://tinyurl.com/essayInc