September 3, 2024
Sacred Harp Singing
“Sacred Harp is a uniquely American tradition that brings communities together to sing four-part hymns and anthems.” This definition is taken from the front page of https://fasola.org
This style of singing has been preserved for a couple of centuries now, and is quite instructive to modern hymn singers. I frequently suggest that persons give study to this style, to gain pointers on how our general worship style can be enhanced.
Sacred Harp Singing is also known as Shape singing, or Fa-So-La singing. Using these terms to search YouTube should yield good results.
A good starting point for research would be https://fasola.org.
Good history can also be found on Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp.
Here’s a quick, important tip about listening to videos about sacred harp singing. You may be confused at the beginning of a song, because they sing syllables like “Fa”, “So”, “La” and “Mi”, for the entire verse. It sounds confusing, but what they’re actually singing are the ‘shapes’ of the notes. Each shape is pronounced a particular way.
The easiest was to describe this is using our “Do-Re” scale. We sing: “Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do”. Their version is: “Fa-So-La-Fa-So-La-Mi-Fa”. They sing the first verse in “Fa-So-La”, then go into the actual words afterwards.
Enjoy your journey of discovery!
Videos
Shape Note Singing, Great Smoky Mountains
A quick introduction to Sacred Harp singing.
Sacred Harp Chicago 1990 United Convention
A documentary on Sacred Harp singing.
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