Homegrown: Shaker Spirituals in Maine

hi everybody thanks for joining us my name is kevin siegfried and i'm speaking to you today from my home in andover massachusetts i'm honored that the american folk life center at the library of congress has invited us to prepare a video for the 2021 homegrown at home concert series today's concert offers a glimpse into the rich musical tradition of the american shakers and explores how i became involved in arranging shaker spirituals for modern choirs i'll be joined today by some friends of mine brother arnold had from the sabbath day lake shaker community in new gloucester maine and radiance a ten voice chamber choir based in seattle washington to get us started here's radiance performing come to zion a coral arrangement based on a shaker tune from the 1860s by paulina bates [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] maybe [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] who will be [Music] [Applause] [Music] all who will [Music] peace everyone welcome to our home i am brother arnold and i have been a shaker here at sabote lake for over 43 years sabbath day lake is the only functioning shaker community in the world we were founded in 1783 and in 1794 we became formally organized we covenanted with god and with each other to consecrate all that we had for this place and for the glory of god and the first evidence of this is right behind me which is our meeting house begun in on easter of 1794 and completed and first consecrated on christmas day of the same year for 1794 until 1887 this was the place of public worship a place where the world's people everybody who is not a shaker was able to come and witness the life of the shakers in worship [Music] us [Music] peace [Music] yes [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] i first encountered shaker music back in 1995 when visiting pleasant hill shaker village outside lexington kentucky on that visit i heard randy folger perform shaker spirituals in the meeting house there [Music] now anyone that saw randy perform could feel his love for the music and zeal for sharing it i just fell in love with the songs and loved to sing them they were fresh and inviting and sounded unlike anything i'd heard before as a choral singer and composer it was a natural step for me to make choral arrangements and share them with friends and fellow core musicians and as it turned out other people love seeing them too but it wasn't just the music i also became captivated with the people and stories behind the music and that's what led me to sabbath day lake we're now inside our dwelling house and this is the meeting room which was set aside for worship during the week by the various members of the community this was a room not supposed to be used by the people of the world but since the 20th century when we started to open up media again in 1963 this is a place where we have welcomed people to join us in worship very simply laid out brothers on one side sisters on the other corresponding with males and female guests who would also have to separate when they come to worship and see we have no altar rather it is worship in place now initially of course there would have been a very different kind of worship experience in that there were benches but they were stacked out of the way so that the dancing the marching could take place in the majority of the space itself and most of worship was done on your feet whereas today it's mostly done sitting but the core of the worship remains the same and that is to say individual testimonies and song everything a shaker has is a gift from god and song is one of the most long lasting enduring of all the gifts that god has given to us there are presently over ten thousand shaker songs in the canon we know several thousand of them by heart and after each testimony a song is used pitched up sort of as an ah men anybody who knows it joins in with it and that's how we keep singing through probably 10 12 songs besides opening hymns during the course of worship now in the old days of course song was important because we did not use musical instruments nor do we today it was all acapella so you had a cadre of brothers and sisters who would be central who could always sing up while the rest of the community would sing but they were also in physical motion and as such they would sometimes not have enough breath to keep the gift going and song itself became so important as shakers have no creed we see our theology played out mostly in our songs i hunger and thirst i hunger and thirst after true righteousness in what i've obtained in what i've obtained my soul cannot rest i hunger and thirst i hunger and thirst after true righteousness in what i've obtained in what i've obtained my soul cannot rest [Music] reach oh i know i will cry unto god i never will cease sauce filled with [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] will cry unto god i never will cease [Music] [Applause] [Music] peace [Music] is [Music] i hunger in thirst is one of the hundreds if not thousands of songs preserved in oral tradition at sabbath day lake i first learned it from the singing of sister mildred barker on a round of records recording called early shaker spirituals after true righteousness sister mildred who died in 1990 had a great year for music and devoted much of her life to learning and preserving the early shaker songs much of the repertoire kept alive in oral tradition today is the direct result of sister mildred's passion for sharing the songs and the stories that accompany them [Music] most shakers really couldn't read music so the gift of music was passed on orally and many songs that we retain now have a specific point of reference and that is to say that for the individual who learned it either it just spoke to them volumes about their faith or their feelings either the song itself or the melody or the tune is something that stayed with them or more usually it was that it had an association to an individual either the person who had received the song or who was noted for singing it a perfect example of that is sister mildred when sister miller was a little girl she was given to the caring of sister paulina springer who was the oldest member of the second family at alfred and she loves sister paulina sister klein was very very dear to me i loved her she was 90 years old and she used to ask if i could be the one to come and help her do her chores every morning make a bed and clean up the room and use my greatest delight to do it because i thought she was just an angel nothing else she looked to be 90 years old and when she was dying she asked if the children could come in and see her when i came up to her beard she took my hand and said no but i want you to promise me something and at that point in my life i'd have promised her anything in the world i didn't care what it was so i oh i certainly would i promise or anything and she said promise me that she'll be a shaker of course i promised her but from the took me a good many years to fulfill the promise and to really come to the point where i knew what that promise meant but it's always followed me and as i've gone along through life and this little song which she's saying not especially that particular time but some years before she had had the gift of this little song but after she talked with us we laughed and she said to the sisters in the room i'm not going to be here much longer so there's two angels standing over by the cup and do a waiting for me and about 12 o'clock she just passed away so this is a song mother has come with a beautiful song oh tell me ho mother has come with a beautiful song oh tell me how she's come to bless his children dear oh tell him [Music] and christ your savior will be near oh ho telling me ho she told us that she landed from a little bit so every time she sang that song mother has come with her beautiful song paulina was alive and that was an important part of her whole life now in turn when we think of sister mildred we can't help but think of that song and so instead of thinking of sister paulina we think of sister mildred and that's sort of the way these kinds of songs continue to be lived and continue to live within the community [Music] oh [Music] she's come to visit [Music] hope in christ [Music] shaker songs run the gambit we have many many little ones that are just two couplets a a b b parts and then we have anthems and we have hymns and we have all of those other grand things but generally speaking the shakers took to the little songs and the reason is that not only are they compact but they have so much to them and it's much easier to learn one didn't have to bring words to meaning but rather those could be memorized rather quickly and how it also happened to be memorized rather quickly was these couplets were just sung over and over and over again so if you were doing a ring dance and you would have this little song you would go in a direction for the a part you would go to the right for the b part you would go left and then you would just keep repeating it and repeating it until the elders felt that it was enough and it was really being said if you think about it like a little prayer a mantra freeing you from your thoughts and rather allowing the spirit to give direction to you and elevate you during these times of exercises or meaning one thing you'll note in shaker songs is the use of vocables that is to say non-words and the reason we did that was in the very first stages of our existence there were not worded songs generally speaking father james whitaker was on the only one of our founders who used actual words and that makes sense because he was also the public preacher mother anne father william elder john hochnell etc they were all noted to have songs but they were all vvvs or low to the lows something like that to carry the melody and when father joseph took over what he found is that people were bringing hymns they were their old heaven's religion and he didn't want it so he nixed anything to do with words and inserted rather the vocables and those were needed to keep time to the beat of the movement and worship as things evolved words become much more important but it had such a hold on the community that in the 1830s and 40s during that time known as the revival or mother's work you see a lot of vocables again being resurrected and not only that but then in conjunction and if you think about like death the halls with boughs of howling has a follow-up people forgotten the words and they just use it well for us it was sort of a page note so that we could keep our place there's a song we still sing which goes like this turn to the right ye lovely band turn to the right with heart and hand turn to the right ye lovely band turn to the right with heart and head low little low low low go low low low little low low low [Music] foreign [Music] baby [Music] um [Music] boom boom [Music] [Applause] [Music] i've learned so much from brother arnold he's an inspiration humbly and powerfully carrying the torch of the shaker faith moving the songs stories and traditions of the community forward in recent years i've been working in the archives at sabate lake transcribing main shaker spirituals songs that have fallen out of oral tradition i featured a lot of these newly uncovered songs in public performances at sabbath day lake collaborating with brother arnold who offers context and commentary during the performance he always brings such a wealth of historical perspective to the table and shines a light on the soul and spirit of the music when people come to meeting i think what draws him in the most is not just the spontaneousness of it in the individual testimonies but what really binds it together is song and that's one thing that people seem to hunger to have a greater knowledge of we have put out since the 1960s a series of recordings that have given some of the more popular songs within our community to the world we know simple gifts for instance a song that was composed here in maine has traveled to every which direction of the globe and it speaks to people and our songs do speak to people and we want to share them we have adamantly opposed people doing our marches and our dances because we see that as the heart of our worship however the heart of our spirituality is in our songs and that's what we wish to share with the world and are glad to do so when we have people who pick up on it who are inspired by it who want them to make these songs live again it brings us great joy for us as believers the songs stick to our very heart essence of who we are they explain our life our love our love of god our love for each other our need to improve how important it is to be humble and low how we have to set our goals not on here but on the world to come these songs are alive because they give you that sense of the spirit and they're alive in us because it's also from our parents whom we learn these songs and from their parents who taught them the continuum of the church is alive in the work of the church hands to work and hearts to god it is as brother ted would call it the eye of eternity that is what we're aiming for to build the kingdom of god here upon earth we do it not by our own efforts but because of the efforts of those who have gone on before us we are the present and we are building for the future so we're just a part of this continuum we are passing guests and sojourners as our fathers and mothers were before us and it is in our humility that we will be able to overcome it is in our sharing of our life that we will have people finally understand who we are and what we believe in living the fullness of the life the christ's life and in so doing that spirit that we can pass on so simply in a little song helps it to live helps us to live as well i will walk with my children in ho holy comments unspotted unsported with [Music] [Music] i will dwell with the lowly and they with shall be filled [Music] i [Music] i will [Music] i [Music] i'm [Music] i will [Music] i will [Music] is [Music] [Applause] shall be filled with [Music] i will walk with my children [Music] thank you so much for listening today if you're interested in learning more about the shakers please visit sabbath day lake shaker village in person or online there are also many other shaker sites and museums around the united states and i've compiled a list of those on my website the library of congress is an incredible resource and i encourage you to dig around in these collections if you are ever in the washington dc area and be sure to check out the american folklife center's website where you can find lots of amazing sound recordings online to explore [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] baby [Music] baby [Music] from [Music] boom boom you

Channel: Library of Congress

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Keywords: Library of Congress

Id: vWseWKLIsh8

Length: 31min 8sec (1868 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021