Arnold Zwicky's Blog

A message to SF-peninsula Sacred Harp singers today, in the midst of a morning of complex life arrangements:

Some years ago I was given the printer’s plate for SH99 Gospel Trumpet in the 1991 Denson Revision (and have it on a display stand). A very touching gift from my singing community. I am now obliged to dispose of almost all my belongings, to reduce them to a small collection that will fit into a small assisted living facility apartment, saving just those things I need to continue the essays I post on my blog. This task is taking months, involving many thousands of objects; it is emotionally devastating; and it goes slowly because I am so disabled, and have become more so each day as the work damages my hands further. But, bit by bit, I am eroding the mountain of things. The plate for SH99 must go; I hope that some singer would love it as much as I have. Would come and take it.

A very few items shimmer with personal meaning for me; for them I’ve tried to find a truly suitable donor just for this one thing, and I’ve had some great successes. Now this, going to a married couple of long-time singers.

Now, for you, some of the back story, starting with a photo.

the centerpiece, the printing plate for #99 (Gospel Trumpet) in the 1991 Sacred Harp, a gift to me from my fellow shapenote singers years ago (thank you especially, Chris Thorman), when printing moved from hot lead to photographic reproduction on computers — one of the most moving presents I’ve ever gotten, a recognition that this fuguing tune was one of “my songs” (sometimes sung in my honor when I couldn’t make it to a singing).

… You can click here on a 2008 singing of 99 by the Golden Gate Sacred Harp Singers. (Yes, it’s supposed to be loud, harsh, and unpolished.)

— from my 2/6/22 posting “The SIN and GUILT of a LINGUIST” (it’s an anagram, SIN + GUILT –> LINGUIST), about:

The world of the Sacred Harp. “To save our souls from sin and guilt”. From a tradition whose native home has been, for about 150 years, Primitive Baptist and Methodist churches in the rural South (especially Georgia and Alabama); there’s a Page on this blog inventorying my postings on Sacred Harp music. Participating in this tradition, in both Columbus, Ohio, and the Bay Area of California has been immensely satisfying to me, musically and (because of the community of singers I joined) personally.

Yes, it’s a strange fit. I am a worldly, obtrusively queer nonbelieving college professor in Silicon Valley. The music is “white spirituals”: raw, passionate expression of uncompromising, unvarnished fundamental Christian belief; its most common theme is the glorious reward that will come to the believer as a relief from the pain and woes of this earthly life — in death.

An altered state of consciousness. I believe none of this, but I sing the music because it’s powerful and, in its way, quite beautiful; because it brings me into the community of singers; and because it’s capable, on occasion, of carrying me out of myself into an altered state of being, a kind of ecstasy, a condition that true believers think of as a state of grace, conferred by God. I can’t call this up, I’m just singing the music all-out (the way you sing Sacred Harp), but sometimes it happens. (I’ve written elsewhere about sexual ecstasy and religious ecstasy and related altered states of being — for example, in highly focused activities, in the passion of crowds, and of course under the influence of certain drugs.)

Only certain songs can trigger this state for me, and Gospel Trumpet, SH99, is one of them.

The first time it happened, unbidden and also unmistakably unhinged — I believe my eyes rolled up in my head and though I was belting out the treble line in time with everyone else I was clearly, scarily somewhere else — the other singers were understandably, um, concerned.

When I came to, I felt fabulous: my body was no doubt bathed in amazing hormones, though I felt like I might be emanating streams of light (which would, of course, alarm any on-lookers). I apologized to the other singers, said that was just something that occasionally happened to me, no reason to panic, just think of it as a state of grace and be happy for me. And so we went on, in our companionable way. The community is a generous one.

This entry was posted on July 9, 2025 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Language and religion, Music, My life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.