Colored Sacred Harp State Singing ConventionI am a child of the Colored Sacred Harp State Singing Convention of north central Mississippi; not to confused with Judge Jackson's Colored Sacred Harp songbook and the southeast Alabama Wiregrass singers. While both groups were organized by African Americans in the late 1800s and even sing some of the same songs, this is where their similaries end. The Colored Sacred Harp State Singing Convention was founded in the 1930s and included churches in a six county area of northern Mississippi. This state convention was made up of four smaller or local shapenote singing conventions. It included the: Pleasant Ridge Musical Singing Convention from Calhoun county;
All of these conventions were organized between 1890 and 1922. Convention delegates came together around 1934 and organized the Colored Sacred Harp State Singing Convention which met annually each Saturday before the second Sunday in September. The Order of the Day for Saturday and Sunday was: Morning Session - 9:00 a.m. - 12 noon Dinner - 12 noon - 1:00 p.m. Evening Session - 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Saturday night was "Little Book" Singing from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m My parents, grandparents and many other family members on both sides sang Sacred Harp. My mother was the secretary of the state singing convention. My grandmother and my parents served as delegates. In my family going to singings were a way of life. When I became old enough, I served as a delegate and participated on convention committees convention committees which always presented reports on Sunday afternoons. The Colored Sacred Harp State Singing State Convention is unique. Although we sang out of the four shape Denson Sacred Harp songbook; we used the William Walker seven shape scale. In other words, we transposed the lower fa sol la to do ri me. Buell Cobb refers to us in his work The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and Its Music. I grew up with memories of singing in the sacred hollow square with alto and treble singers seated across the front of the church, old men singing bass on the left and tenors or melodies on the right and facing the alto and trebles. We sang in country churches with outhouses and no kitchens or fellowship halls. There were no air conditioners, just open windows and doors and wooden floors that carried the music for miles. One year, my job was to fill paper cups with water from the portable thermal jug in the back of the church and take them to the hot and thirsty singers. They never stopped singing, and I probably spilled half the water but it was fun. It was my first serving role in the singing convention. I was seven and I was hooked. Help us preserve The Colored Sacred Harp State Singing Convention with your old minutes, songbooks, obituaries of singers, and your memories. For information on materials that have been donated to preserve the tradition, click on our link Shapenote Music Collections. More importantly, we invite you to attend our 76th convention in September 2010. Go to our Announcements page for more information on shapenote singings and conventions through out the summer.
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