A major Hollywood film featuring Alabama voices has resounded with popularity among the moving-going American public.
“Cold Mountain,” set in North Carolina during the Civil War, was number 6 at the box office Jan. 16–19, earning a weekend gross of $7.9 million, according to USA Today.
Part of the film’s intrigue is its approach to some of the film’s music using a cappella voices from Alabama. One of the voices heard when actors sing is actually that of David Ivey, a member of Weatherly Heights Baptist Church, Huntsville.
Ivey and other Alabamians whose voices are in the movie were invited to the premiere of the movie in Los Angeles, Calif. While there, they joined with others to film a television special for the Arts & Entertainment network (A&E), called “The Music of Cold Mountain.”
The movie has already received several British Academy Awards nominations, including “best music.” While America’s Oscar nominees have not been announced, the movie is expected to have nominations.
The music Ivey and the others sing for the soundtrack of the movie surfaced long ago and far from the glamour of Hollywood. Known as shape note, fasola or Sacred Harp singing, its roots grow deep into spiritual soil of Alabama church life.
Rural beginning
This no-instruments musical technique dates back to the 1800s and was designed for rural churches, most of which had no instruments or members who could read music. Each note on the scale is represented by a different shape, making it easier for untrained singers to follow. This kind of singing uses four notes — fa, sol, la and mi. The group sings just these syllables first to set the tune, then they sing the words to the particular song.
Sacred Harp singers often sit in a square and keep time by raising and lowering one of their arms, while a leader stands in the middle of them.
The name “Sacred Harp” comes from the title of a songbook published in 1844 by B.F. White and E.J. King. The title is symbolic because harps are mentioned frequently in the Psalms and are associated with King David and because the singing voice is sometimes described as a “sacred harp.”
The music was once widespread in Alabama churches, but slowly gave way to hymns, choruses and instrumental accompaniment. Today, Sacred Harp is considered a type of folk music and performed primarily at local singings and conventions. For more about Sacred Harp singing, visit resources at www.thealabamabaptist.org.
“Fifty years ago and before, people in the South especially were familiar with Sacred Harp,” Ivey noted. “Most courthouses had singings. It was kind of a civic event. Today, only one courthouse singing survives … at the Cullman courthouse the second weekend in July.”
Modern devotees of the music often travel great distances to attend monthly singings, annual conventions or weeklong singing schools. Ivey recalls meeting people from across the United States who are interested in the musical form.
It’s who you know
One person he met, Tim Eriksen, was responsible for the Alabama singers’ participation in the movie. Eriksen met Ivey on one of his trips to find more information about Sacred Harp singing several years ago.
Eriksen, a musician from Minnesota, was hired to provide the singing voice for “Stobrod,” an itinerant fiddle-playing character in the movie. Learning that the director intended to have a group of professional singers in Nashville record some Sacred Harp songs for the movie, Eriksen suggested that they consider using real Sacred Harp singers that he knew in Alabama. To his surprise, the directors agreed.
“Tim Eriksen called me in the summer of 2002 and asked me if I could get some Sacred Harp singers together to come to Nashville. I told him I could, but we could get more singers if they could bring the recording equipment to Henagar,” Ivey said.
Once again, the director agreed, bringing recording equipment and sound personnel to a singing at Liberty Baptist Church, a small independent Baptist church in Henagar on Sand Mountain in northeast Alabama.
According to Ivey, the best setting for the music is old, small churches with floors and walls of wood, like the church he suggested for the “Cold Mountain” recordings.
Accustomed to visitors, even visitors with recording equipment, the informal group spent the evening singing. Of the dozens of songs they recorded that evening, two are in the movie.
“We were surprised to get two whole songs in the movie. We expected to get about 30 seconds,” said Shane Wootten, an Alabama poultry farmer who was one of the Sacred Harp singers. “The two songs are ‘I’m Going Home’ and ‘Idumea.’”
One of the songs is used in a church scene in the film when the congregation learns that its state has seceded from the Union. One by one, the males stop singing, representing the soldiers going off to war.
Eriksen explained that Sacred Harp singing being in the movie at all came because “the director had heard of a song called ‘Logan’ and that inspired him when he wrote the screenplay. He imagined a scene with singing coming out of a church,” he said.
Eriksen said he taught Sacred Harp singing to two of the film’s stars, Nicole Kidman and Jude Law.
Growing up on Sand Mountain in Henagar, Ivey never expected the music his family sang would be featured in a hit movie, but millions are seeing it.
Although Sacred Harp had a strong following before the movie, Ivey said the widespread publicity from the movie has impacted their gatherings on Sand Mountain and at another church used frequently for similar singings — the Old Madison Baptist Church, part of the Burritt Museum complex in Huntsville.
Even though this kind of singing is practiced more often as a folk art than in actual worship, Ivey said it is “very much Christian music.”
“The singings are inclusive and ecumenical,” he explained. “We have people who are Jewish … and we have an Indian lady who is Hindu. We have people who are atheists [come].”
“People ask, ‘What do you think about that?’” he continued. “I think that if they are singing these words … it has a chance to get in them. What could be bad about that?” (RNS contributed)
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