African American and Gaelic psalm singing ...Celebrating Congregational Line Singing
by
The line connecting Gaelic psalm singing & American Music
Unlikely Linkages and a 'Joyful Noise.'
The 1640 publication of the Boston Bay Psalm Book, the first book ever published in Amerca, was a user-friendly collection of metrical Psalms, a 'words only' songbook. And no event in the early history of New England Christians underscores so well how vital congreational 'line singing' was to church life. Line singing in its traditional mode depended on a designated leader, a precentor in Scotland, and a clerk in England, to speak or intone the first lines of a Psalm, pulling the whole church into a spirited unison response. This slow, dirge like way of worship dominated musical mainstream Protestant America for nearly two centuries when the introduction of hymn books, organized choirs, and musical instruments rendered the Bay Psalm book obsolete.
Yet even today, descendants of African slaves in America and in the West Indies, and a Dwindling number of white "Old Regular Baptists" in Kentucky, still cling to the formative elements of the "old Way" of congregational singing.
As one of the descendants of African slaves, line singing was as central to my own upbringing among 1930s Alabama foot washing Baptists, as it had been to the 1640 Yankees who lined out of the Boston Bay Psalm book.
But the subject broadened for me two summers ago. On a visit to Alabama I noticed for the first time that a small congregation of black Presbyterians -- a denomination that never succeeded in getting a foothold in the Baptist, Methodist and Sanctified world of my childhood -- were thriving across the river from where I grew up. More importantly, they were holding onto the line singing that white Presbyterians in America and the English speaking world abandoned more than a century ago.
But when I learned that white Presbyterians in the Highlands of Scotland, in the outer Hebrides sing the metrical Psalms as they appeared in the Bay Psalm book, only translated into their native Gaelic, stories the great trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie used to regale me with as we toured the concert circuit in America and the West Indies, resonated stronger than ever.
Some of Dizzy's grandparents, he said, had described a North and South Carolina world -- the Cape Fear region -- in which slave masters and the slaves they took to church with them, spoke and worshipped in the Gaelic language.
Weeks later when I booked passage to Scotland armed with what I recalled of Dizzy's stories and a broad collection of recordings of various black congregations in Alabama and North Carolina, I felt as if I were headed for the jam session of my life, for a singing leader in North Uist and I were set to spend some concentrated time in a comparative line singing analysis. It didn't take long to ferret out similarities and differences -- both instructive -- between the Gaelic and African blackened musics. Nor did it take long for all of Scotland to begin treating these unmistakable and powerful linkages in two television documentaries funded by the Scottish government and filmed in the Highlands and the U.S.
The culminating event in this cross-cultural inquiry takes place on May 5 and 6th at Yale University. I have organized an International Conference of scholars including sociologist Kai Erikson, Yale Chaplain Frederick Streets, History Professor Glenda Gilmore, Associate Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center Robert Forbes, Professor Douglas Kelly of North Carolina and Edinburgh University, and Dundee University Professor Katherine Smith -- and others. The two day gathering will examine how ideas and experiences of the Scottish diaspora influenced the culture, bloodlines, prayers and songs of early Colonial America.
Finally on the last evening Rev. Streets will lead a singing service in Battell Chapel where Hebridian Psalm singers and their American counterparts from small denominations from across the country will sing in the rapidly dying tradition. To learn more about the Gaelic tradition and hear samples: www.gaelicpsalmsinging.com.
Yet even today, descendants of African slaves in America and in the West Indies, and a Dwindling number of white "Old Regular Baptists" in Kentucky, still cling to the formative elements of the "old Way" of congregational singing.
As one of the descendants of African slaves, line singing was as central to my own upbringing among 1930s Alabama foot washing Baptists, as it had been to the 1640 Yankees who lined out of the Boston Bay Psalm book.
But the subject broadened for me two summers ago. On a visit to Alabama I noticed for the first time that a small congregation of black Presbyterians -- a denomination that never succeeded in getting a foothold in the Baptist, Methodist and Sanctified world of my childhood -- were thriving across the river from where I grew up. More importantly, they were holding onto the line singing that white Presbyterians in America and the English speaking world abandoned more than a century ago.
But when I learned that white Presbyterians in the Highlands of Scotland, in the outer Hebrides sing the metrical Psalms as they appeared in the Bay Psalm book, only translated into their native Gaelic, stories the great trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie used to regale me with as we toured the concert circuit in America and the West Indies, resonated stronger than ever.
Some of Dizzy's grandparents, he said, had described a North and South Carolina world -- the Cape Fear region -- in which slave masters and the slaves they took to church with them, spoke and worshipped in the Gaelic language.
Weeks later when I booked passage to Scotland armed with what I recalled of Dizzy's stories and a broad collection of recordings of various black congregations in Alabama and North Carolina, I felt as if I were headed for the jam session of my life, for a singing leader in North Uist and I were set to spend some concentrated time in a comparative line singing analysis. It didn't take long to ferret out similarities and differences -- both instructive -- between the Gaelic and African blackened musics. Nor did it take long for all of Scotland to begin treating these unmistakable and powerful linkages in two television documentaries funded by the Scottish government and filmed in the Highlands and the U.S.
The culminating event in this cross-cultural inquiry takes place on May 5 and 6th at Yale University. I have organized an International Conference of scholars including sociologist Kai Erikson, Yale Chaplain Frederick Streets, History Professor Glenda Gilmore, Associate Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center Robert Forbes, Professor Douglas Kelly of North Carolina and Edinburgh University, and Dundee University Professor Katherine Smith -- and others. The two day gathering will examine how ideas and experiences of the Scottish diaspora influenced the culture, bloodlines, prayers and songs of early Colonial America.
Finally on the last evening Rev. Streets will lead a singing service in Battell Chapel where Hebridian Psalm singers and their American counterparts from small denominations from across the country will sing in the rapidly dying tradition. To learn more about the Gaelic tradition and hear samples: www.gaelicpsalmsinging.com.
This story has received widespread press coverage in both Scotland and the Unites States:
Newhouse News Wire - by Chuck McCutcheon, Feb. 16, 2005
The Scotsman - by Susan Mansfield, February 13, 2005
The Herald - by Rob Adams, January 24, 2005
The Scotsman - by Sue Wilson, January 22, 2005
The Scotsman - by Ben McConville, December 12, 2005
Web Resources
The Scotsman - by Susan Mansfield, February 13, 2005
The Herald - by Rob Adams, January 24, 2005
The Scotsman - by Sue Wilson, January 22, 2005
The Scotsman - by Ben McConville, December 12, 2005
Morning Edition, May 6, 2005 · African-American Baptists, white Baptists from Appalachia and Presbyterian Scottish Highlanders are gathering at Yale University to celebrate a shared tradition. It's called line singing, and it's being recognized as the root of gospel and other modern-day church music
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