Music of the Old Regular Baptists of Central Appalachia

Please see the "Introduction to American Musical Traditions" in this volume for biographical information on co-editor Jeff Todd Titon.

A religious denomination descended from the Calvinist wing of the Protestant Reformation, Old Regular Baptists (ORBs) are concentrated in the central portion of the southern Appalachian Mountains, particularly in the counties of southeastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia (see map). They descend chiefly from English, Scots-Irish, and German (Pennsylvania Dutch) immigrants, most of whom settled in Appalachia in the nineteenth century. Sixteen associations of ORBs comprise approximately 15,000 members and come from all walks of life. In their small region they are the dominant religious group. They preserve an eighteenth-century hymn repertory and an even older way of singing that once was common in the American colonies but now is little known or practiced outside this region. (Dorgan 1989 gives an overview of the ORBs' beliefs and practices.)

THE MUSIC

Music serves the primary function of offering praise to the Lord. As in other Protestant hymnody, the whole congregation is invited to sing. The songs are sung in church as part of worship, at memorial meetings and baptisms, and in homes. The singing brings the worshipers closer to God and to each other. The older texts express praise and thanksgiving to God, while more modern texts dwell on the joys of heaven. The singers meditate on the words as they sing.

Songs of the ORBs fall into the musical genre of the Anglo-European Christian devotional hymn, with lyrics by eighteenth-century writers such as Isaac Watts, coupled to melodies living in oral tradition and taken from the British/Irish folksong stock. The distinctive musical features are:

melodic elaboration, in which a given vowel of text may carry a sequence of two to five (rarely more) pitches;

antiphonal singing in a manner called "lining out";

slow tempos without a regular pulse beat;

no musical instruments (the music is vocal only);

a heterophonic vocal texture.

Like almost all Christian hymns, Old Regular Baptist congregational songs (as they call them) consist of rhymed, metrical verse in a series of stanzas to which a repeating tune is set. The metrical verse patterns include common meter (alternating lines of 8 and 6 syllables; that is, 8,6,8,6); long meter (8,8,8,8); short meter (6,6,8,6); and various others. The leader sings the very first line, and the congregation joins in when they recognize the song. After that the song proceeds line by line: the leader briefly chants a line alone, and then the group repeats the words but to a tune that is much longer and more elaborate than the leader's chant or lining tune.

Listeners or singers who approach this music for the first time have difficulty because there is no steady pulse beat. The rhythmic framework is governed not by metronome time but by breath-time. Yet the singers' sense of time is remarkably consistent from one line and verse to the next, and with experience one learns.

Songbooks are kept at the pulpit and passed around to the song leaders. These books have words without musical notation. The oldest lyrics are the eighteenth-century hymns, written chiefly by familiar English or American devotional poets. These fill their two favorite songbooks, the collections Sweet Songster and the Thomas Hymnal. Newer song books contain a mix of the older hymns, nineteenth-century camp-meeting songs and spirituals, gospel hymns from the later nineteenth century onwards, and finally a number of contemporary gospel songs—some written by Old Regulars known to have this gift, others popular on

the radio and recordings. The congregation catches the words from the song leader as he lines out the song. They do not have songbooks at their seats.

Tunes are passed along orally from one singer to the next and from one generation to the next. Singers learn by following and imitating others, not by reading notes, for there is no musical notation for this music. Melodies are highly elaborated: many syllables have three or more tones, and many have at least two. Their closest parallel in melodic elaboration is to the Gaelic seannós singing tradition in Ireland. Each singer is free to "curve" the tune a little differently, and those who are able to make it more elaborate are admired. Outsiders are mistaken if they think the intent is singing with unified precision and that the result falls short; on the contrary, the singing is in step and deliberately just a bit out of phase—one of its most powerful musical aspects.

ORBs believe that their music is a gift from God and should be sung freely to express praise to the Creator. Everyone who can and will, sings. A pretty voice is not important. Singing from the heart brings a person closer to God. People who are overcome by emotion during a song shout or weep for joy, but only a small percentage are so demonstrative. Sometimes people cannot clear their hearts and minds to experience music properly and thus they refrain from singing. Music should be unaccompanied, sung "with the voice that God gave us."

ORBs do not preach or sing on radio, television, or other media. Their songs are not for sale. In church, at memorial services, baptisms, and funerals, and among family at home are the usual contexts for singing, but one should sing whenever moved to do so. Stories circulate among the ORBs about men occasionally singing in the coal mines and show that the impulse to sing should not be denied despite ordinary social proprieties. Most ORBs oppose changing and modernizing the old songs, many of which date from the nineteenth century or earlier. ORBs consider their music to be one mark of their particular identity, both spiritually and historically.

In church, ORBs sing as a congregation; they do not have choirs, choir directors, rehearsals, or musical instruments to accompany the singing. Ministers sometimes will sing a solo or lead a song just before preaching, and occasionally members of the congregation will request a special song by a small (usually family) group. Most people who become ORBs join as adults. Some wait until middle or old age to join. Youngsters, particularly teenagers, are not expected to be interested. As a result, the membership consists largely of married adults. The formal church organization is patriarchal. Only men are permitted to deliver sermons, lead songs, hold office, and speak in business meetings. Women make their opinions known informally. Men and women church members sit on separate sides of the church by custom; visitors occupy the fourth and largest quadrant of the church sanctuary. While delivering sermons, preachers look in all four directions. In some churches, husbands and wives sing duets together upon request. Couples bring babies and young children, who remain during the entire worship service—there is no Sunday school. Children usually are quiet but are free to walk around in the sanctuary, sometimes going to the pulpit to get candy.

HISTORY

Calvinist emphasis on plain, participatory congregational singing is felt in the history of ORB music. More particularly their music is traceable to practices of the sixteenth-century English parish church (Temperley 1981). In 1644 the Westminster Assembly of Divines recommended the practice of lining out, and it was adopted in Massachusetts a few years later. By the end of the seventeenth century lining out had become the "common way of singing" among Anglicans and in other Protestant denominations (Lutherans excepted) throughout Britain and its colonies. African Americans learned it and carry a parallel tradition today, particularly among Baptists in the rural South.

As American settlers moved during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries into the frontier South, to the Shenandoah Valley and later across the Cumberland Gap, they carried the "common way" (now called "the old way") of singing with them. Most Appalachian settlers from the English/Scottish borderlands were familiar with this music, for it had lingered there well into the eighteenth century even after it had declined in southern England and the urban parts of the American colonies. The Old Baptists used well-known secular tunes and composed other, similar-sounding tunes to carry the sacred texts. Nineteenth-century camp meetings gave rise to newer spiritual songs—usually easily sung, rapid choruses with refrains. But the more conservative Old Baptist ancestors of the Old Regulars clung to the traditional ways in singing, also resisting musical notation in shaped notes, a reform designed to drive out the "old way of singing."

The greatest challenge to "the old way of singing" among the Old Regulars today comes from the gospel songs on radio and recordings. A few of the churches have succumbed to part-singing, and many include a percentage of gospel hymnody, but usually the gospel hymns are changed to ORB style, lined out and melodically elaborated. Most of the tunes come from the Anglo-American folksong tradition. Some of these, such as the one used for both "Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah" and "Every Moment Brings Me Nearer" are quite old, while others are more recent compositions in the same folksong style. Some tunes, such as those for "Salvation O the Name I Love" and "The Day Is Past and Gone," are clearly related to tunes that were printed in parts in nineteenth-century shape-note hymnals. But this does not mean that the Old Regulars' songs came from those printed versions, for the book tunes were written down from melodies in oral tradition then. More likely, the Old Regulars were already singing the tunes before they were written down by the editors of nineteenth-century shape-note hymnals. Newer tunes are either adaptations of gospel hymn tunes ("Precious Memories," for example, done in a lined-out format) or compositions by local and regional songwriters that draw on the resources of all available melodic traditions.

MUSIC OF THE OLD REGULAR BAPTISTS OF CENTRAL APPALACHIA

THE MUSIC

HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY