Several local choirs will perform at the Old State Capitol from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. The choirs will then travel to Lincoln Tomb for a 2:45 p.m. program, where they will combine into a single choir under the direction of Pastor Mike Harney and conclude with three songs, including “Amazing Grace.” Local historians Kathryn Harris and Dr. Wesley McNeese will speak during the Lincoln Tomb program.
Musical groups scheduled to perform include the Singing Senators, Old Capitol Chorale, Voices in Praise Choir, Lutheran Choir, West Side Christian Church Choir, and Baptist Pastors’ Fellowship.
Quote found in Google book search from Virgil Thomson" on working-class music w/ long catalog of musical styles including "the syncopated Scotch-African / spirituals" at the bottom of page 26 and top of page 27.
Virgil Thomson: Selected Writings, 1924-1984
By Virgil Thomson, Richard Kostelanetz
Edition: illustrated
Published by Routledge, 2002
ISBN 0415937957, 9780415937955
290 pages
http://www.btwsociety.org/library/honors/05.php
The Funeral of Booker T. Washington
by Isaac Fisher
Tuskegee, Alabama, Nov, 18, 1915
[excerpt]
At twenty minutes after ten Wednesday morning, a procession line composed of trustees, faculty alumni, visitors, honorary and active pall bearers, and students began to move slowly from "The Oaks" toward the chapel. The line was long and moved to muffled drums; but the procession ended at last. Inside, the building was packed to suffocation. Chaplains John W. Whittaker and Dean G.L. Imes of the Phelps Hall Bible School conducted the exercises.
Softly the choir began singing a Negro melody: "We Shall Walk Through the Valley and Shadow of Death in Peace." No songs were so sweet to Dr. Washington as these melodies of his race. Before the sweetness of the song had dissolved, the chaplain was intoning the simple words of the most simple burial service. A pause, and the school was singing "How Firm a Foundation." More reading of the burial service and the choir rendered Cardinal Newman's deathless classic - "Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom."
Here prayer was made by Dr. H. B. Frissell, president of Hampton Institute and one of Dr. Washington's former teachers. Once more the choir sung a melody, this time two in number, "Tell All My Father's Children Don't You Grieve For Me," and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and the tears were falling fast.
http://www.songtime.com/hymn/hymn1101.htm
How Firm a Foundation by Bill Dagle
First published in 1787 in a hymnal, "Selection of Hymns," the song was mistakenly credited to the publisher, Dr. John Rippon. The true authorship is still a mystery, as well as the composer of the music, even though the tune is of the sturdy folk tunes of the South. Dr. Rippon's hymnal became very popular to the extent that an American edition was also printed by the Baptist churches in Philadelphia in 1820. By the time of the Civil War, "How Firm a Foundation" was a favorite in the North and the South.
What I find to be most interesting is that this song had a real impact on some important people. Because the hymn had been a favorite of his wife, Rachael, President Andrew Jackson requested it to be sung at his bedside shortly before he died, saying he wanted only to join his wife in Heaven. Robert E. Lee requested the song for his funeral "as an expression of his full trust in the ways of the Heavenly Father." Even Theodore Roosevelt rcognized the importance of this song during a time of great need.
http://www.arts.state.al.us/actc/compilation/Sipsey.html
Elder Fred Cockrell, the song leader on "Sure Been Good to Me," is the pastor of Bethlehem Primitive Baptist Church in Eutaw, AL and the Moderator of the Sispey River Primitive Baptist Association. He and his wife Nellie are vitally interested in preserving the "Dr. Watts" style of singing as well as the spirituals sung by his ancestors. While some members of the Sipsey River Association do not believe spirituals belong in church services, Elder Cockrell remembers that his parents sang them and he sees to it that various people in his congregation start them at times during the service. He also tries to introduce other spirituals into the repertoire by inviting visitors at the Annual meeting of the Association to lead hymns and spirituals in the way they are sung in their home congregations.
The traditional song variety here, known as the "spiritual" in African American churches in Alabama, is a subject area in need of more documentation and study. While many spirituals were collected in the past there still are many individuals who remember a good number of these songs. Most were learned regionally through a strong oral tradition in an individual's church and at home from elder family members.
The form of this spiritual "Sure Been Good To Me" is strophic. Each strophe exhibits a repetition of the phrase "all of these years" between Elder Cockrell's more spontaneous interjections. After the phrase is repeated three times the end tag of "Sure been Good to Me" is sung at a concluding cadence. This simple but heartfelt poetic form is typical of many spirituals. The same formulaic device may have been an inspiration for the secular blues poetic structure.
"SURE BEEN GOOD TO ME" was led by Elder Fred Cockrell at Bethlehem Primitive Baptist Church. Recorded by Joyce Cauthen on May 12, 1996 during the field work for the recently released Alabama Folklife Association publication Benjamin Lloyd’s Hymn Book: A Primitive Baptist Song Tradition a book of essays with a CD recording documenting the history and current use of an historic hymn book.
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/s/Sutton,Brett_and_Peter_Hartman.html
Brett Sutton was born in 1948 and raised in Champaign-Urbana, Ill. He was graduated with honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1970 with a Bachelors degree in English. After a period of work and pursuit of his musical interests, he enrolled in the Curriculum of Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he earned a Masters degree in 1976. His thesis project, entitled "The Gospel Hymn, Shaped Notes, and the Black Tradition," focused on African American spiritual folk singing around Raleigh and Durham, N.C. In 1982, Brett Sutton went on to earn a Ph.D. in anthropology and, in 1988, he earned a Masters in Library Science, all at UNC.
Peter Hartman was born in 1959 and graduated in 1975 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.S. in business administration. Peter Hartman, also a banjo player, joined Brett Sutton to explore their mutual interest in religious folk music. In 1976, they moved to southwestern Virginia where they resided for eight months, the duration of the project documented in this collection, entitled "Religious Folksongs in the Virginia Mountains," funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This region of Virginia, including Franklin, Lloyd, Henry and Patrick counties, was chosen because of the numerous resources in the archaic spiritual folksong style. From this research, a book and LP recording were produced, Primitive Baptist Hymns of the Blue Ridge, published in 1982 by the University of North Carolina Press.
The collecting project investigated the relationships between many rural churches involved in the Primitive Baptist tradition in the Blue Ridge Mountains region, including white and African American congregations that attended the same churches up until the 1890s. A second emphasis was on other rural churches of the area: the Old Regular Baptists and other Baptist groups, the Pentecostal-Holiness sects, and the Church of the Brethren. Sutton and Hartman were mostly interested in collecting religious folksongs that are often unwritten, sometimes unknown to scholars, and variable from church to church and from tradition to tradition. The study revealed the importance of the music's presence in the community, the spiritual values that the music conveys, and why and how the music has survived.
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