"Like Cords Around My Heart": Sacred Harp Memorial Lessons and the Transmission of Tradition

Abstract

My Christian friends, in bonds of love, Whose hearts in sweetest union join, Your friendship’s like a drawing band, Yet we must take the parting hand. Your company’s sweet, your union dear, Your words delightful to my ear; Yet when I see that we must part You draw like cords around my heart. (“Parting Hand,” 62) 1 After spending all day Saturday and most of Sunday morning engaged in full-voiced, energetic singing, the two hundred fifty people gathered for the 2009 Midwest Sacred Harp Convention grew quiet for the memorial lesson. The three members of the memorial committee stepped to the center of the hollow square of singers, carrying two lists of names: the deceased list, representing Sacred Harp singers, friends, and family members who had died in the past year; and the list of “the sick and shut-in,” people too infirm to attend the convention. The singing room, an elaborately painted performance hall on the University of Chicago campus, had been ringing with sound all weekend; now even its bright Progressive Era murals seemed momentarily subdued. Bob Meek, a singer from Kentucky, spoke on behalf of the deceased: I’d like to tell you a story, and it’s about Chicago. Many years ago, when I had hair—and it wasn’t the Midwest Convention; it was at the Anniversary Singing in January. I came up [from the South], and it was at the Irish-American hall, the heritage hall, and I was singing somewhere in the back row. And I looked up and saw—literally saw—a feathered angel sitting right across over the treble section looking down. Now, before you think I’m nuts: the Polish-American Christmas pageant was next door [laughter] in its full regalia with feathered angels, so one of the guys came