Critical Review: Campbell

This reading deals primarily with the modernization of the Sacred Harp tradition.  The party in favor of modernization focused on two specific facets of the tradition: material and notation.  Specifically, inclusion of material from the gospel repertoire, and a shift from four symbols to seven symbols.  However, both of these changes brought about a great deal of controversy whenever they were attempted.  Whenever change to tradition is resisted, the rational is often that the tradition will be lost.  However, it is interesting to examine exactly what would have been lost by these changes.  The change from four to seven note heads would not have been a difficult change logistically, indeed, the eventual clarity it would provide would doubtlessly make up for the transition period.  This is, of course, only decisive so long as the battle is fought on purely practical grounds; as we know, this is not the case.  This means that the four shapes of the notes have more than musical meaning--they are somehow intertwined with the identity of Sacred Harp singing.  Perhaps it is the simplicity of having only four notes, the perceived fundamentality of resisting all but the most basic notation that gets tied up in the notion of Sacred Harp singing as a primal, basic art form.  These adjectives are not meant to degrade, but rather to associate Sacred Harp singing as a transformative process rather than a performative one.  There is not an audience in the traditional sense, it is the experience of being part of the process that is important, and thus a means of notation that can theoretically be understood by as many people as possible on the merits of its simplicity would be ideal.  In this way, something as simple has the difference between four and seven note head shapes can carry connotations of the very purpose of the culture.  

The issue of gospel music is interesting as well.  Gospel music is unarguably an American art-form, so the idea that it would tarnish the "Americanness" of Sacred Harp singing is not probable.  Neither is the notion that it is not congruent with the southern identity of Sacred Harp singing, for American Gospel music is southern in origin.  One possibility that I do not want to either personally refute or support is that the issue with Gospel music stems from the origins of Gospel as a means of communication among slaves, tarnishing the positive image of the south that Sacred Harp promotes.  

Whatever the reasons, the attempt at modernization for Sacred Harp singing is unique in that there are a few individuals attempting to pull a group of people who are both the audience and performers into facilitating the changes.  Generally, a performance culture has two identities--the identity the group has of itself, and the identity the audience has of the group.  This means that only one identity needs to be influenced to successfully reinvent the tradition to some degree--for example, in the Canadian folk band we studied earlier this year, a small group of performers attempt to affect the view that the public has of their tradition.  They do not need to convince a large group of performers to agree with the change, they only need to identify the shift in the public consciousness.  However, in the case of Sacred Harp, the group of performers is also the audience.  Does this mean that, in a way, those who were trying to "modernize" Sacred Harp singers were acting as outsiders attempting to modify the culture they were not a part of?

Discussion Question:

We have discussed at length the pros, cons, and ethical complexities of an outsider trying to preserve a culture they are not a part of.  What are the ethical concerns when an outsider tries to change a culture they are not a part of?  Is there any situation where this is acceptable, ethnomusicologist or not?