Josten Library Shape-Note Singing: Celebrating the 2025 Edition of The Sacred Harp, October 25

Saturday, October 25, 5-7 p.m.
Josten Library Mezzanine

Open to all. Pizza and salad at the dinner break for the first 40 participants.

The library singing offers a chance to experience this joyful, democratic, welcoming, inclusive, and uniquely American living tradition—and to meet the newly revised Sacred Harp tunebook, where composers with Western Mass connections represent 20% of new songs! Local composers and editors of the new edition will be present to share their knowledge and experience—but mostly, we will simply sing.

Shape-note singing is a rousing participatory style sometimes characterized as “the punk rock of Protestant hymnody.” Founded over 25 years ago by Allison Blake Steel, then a Josten Library assistant, with a Smithie friend, the powerful sound of the weekly Tuesday shape-note singing has lured passersby off the street into the Chapel, become a fulcrum of the international revival of this living tradition, and created a diaspora of devoted singers and composers. Although the tunebook largely uses texts rooted in English and American Protestantism, the Sacred Harp singing community has always been non-dogmatic, with participants from any and no faith tradition treasuring the experience of unity in song.

Co-sponsored by the Music Department.

Contact

Janet Spongberg, jspongbe@smith.edu