VOLUME III: Shape Singers, The Federated Church, Arrow Rock, Missouri

It's the first day that really feels like summer. The sky is a pale blue, as if the sun has faded some more brilliant color. The heat is baking the leaves and grass into heady scent. And there's a slowness to the gait of passersby that says, "there's time." On the street in front of the old Federated Church, you can hear the sound of an all-day singing in full swing. It's like a thunder clap two counties over. All the way up the sidewalk it crescendos until, finally, you are inside. And there, some 40 voices sing full-throated a cappella as if their lives depended on shattering every window in the place. Near the chancel in the simple wooden structure, rows of pews are arranged in a hollow square. The four parts - treble, alto, tenor and bass - each fill a side, facing inward. One by one, the singers step into the center to lead, one arm pumping, index finger pointed skyward, in a steady down-and-up down-and-up down-and-up. Their bodies slowly turn and dip to face and cue the parts in a strange, mesmerizing dance. It's here the music sounds the best, in the center of the square, where the fierce and moving harmonies merge. Every pair of hands holds an oblong tune book, The Sacred Harp, filled with a mixture of hymns, odes, sacred songs and anthems. It looks at first like standard musical notation but is in fact a geometric one, made of notes in the shapes of triangles, ovals, rectangles and diamonds. The singers begin each song by "singing the notes," reading the shapes and calling out syllables that correspond to them fa, sol, la and mi. Then they sing the lyrics, many of them religious poems written in the eighteenth century.

Hear the St. Louis Shape Note Singers sing "Delight," an American folk hymn from The Sacred Harp (Denson 1991 ed.) at Karen Isbell's house in St. Louis proper: No burning heats by day, Nor blasts of evening air, Shall take my health away, If God be with me there. Thou art my sun and Thou my shade To guard my head by night or noon, Thou art my sun and Thou my shade, To guard my head by night or noon. (p. 216; copyright 1991, The Sacred Harp Publishing Company, Inc.)

The heat in the church rises. The windows are swollen or painted shut, and faces gleam with sweat. Music pours out the front doors of the church, and people wander in, listen, then wander out. The singing goes on, undiminished, part ear-thrashing catharsis, part full-on expression of joy. As noon approaches, the assembled community sings memorials for those who are missing - the dead and departed, the sick and the simply absent. Then it celebrates itself in a board-groaning potluck spread of chicken dishes, potato salad, lemonade, cheeses, cakes and breads. This is tradition, harking back to colonial days, when shape-note singing first took root in this country. After the meal, the singing resumes. One by one the singers again step into the center of the square. Their arms move through the heavy air, steadily, setting and keeping the tempo. And these swaying arm motions are answered, gesture for gesture, by singers on all sides, rocking in their seats and tapping their feet in time.