And so it begins...
The Gift to be Simple: Songs, Dances and Rituals of the American Shakers (1940) by Edward Deming Andrews
The first Shaker "songs" were wordless tunes. In their meetings at Manchester, on board the ship "Mariah" which took them to America, and at the early preaching stations in the new world, the Believers had n hymns, anthems or spiritual songs expressive of their new-born faith. Taboo were the songs they were accustomed to sing: the anthems of the established sects, the "carnal" verses of British marches, hunting songs, popular ballads and other secular compositions. Singing was either a droning of fragments from the psalms, a babble of "unknown tongues," shouts and outcries of "ho, ho," "halleluiah," etc., or such random sing-song as "do, do, diddle, do" and "too-ral-loo." [p.9]
It is from this book that Jerome Rothenberg selects a piece to include in his 1985 updated edition of
Technicians of the Sacred. He adds to the "sounds" section an 1847 Shaker song (Ah pe-an t-as ke t-an te loo) composed of non-English vocables. Rothenberg sets the Shaker song next to songs with Navajo and an Australian Aborigine origins. Fair enough in the context of cross-cultural ethnopoetics. In the commentary he doesn't quite lead us astray but neither does he elaborate at any length on the actual origins of the Shaker song, gift of Indian spirits. He begins by taking Andrews's first sentence (drops by the way the quotation marks around "songs") on page 9 and threads to it a passage from page 29. He does indicate the ellipsis in his quotation from Andrews:
"The first Shaker songs were wordless tunes ... [&] were received from Indian spirits or from the shades of Eskimos, Negroes, Abyssinians, Hottentots, Chinese and other races in search of salvation. Squaw songs, and occasionally a papoose song, were common. When Indian spirits came into the Shaker Church, the instruments would become so 'possessed' that they sang Indian songs, whooped, danced and behaved generally in the manner of 'savages'" (Andrews, p. 29).
It is Rothenberg who places quotation marks around 'savages'. They are absent in Andrews.
During the period of the so-called "manifestations" many "native" songs were received from Indian spirits or from the shades of Eskimos, Negroes, Abyssinians, Hottentots, Chinese and other races in search of salvation (note 49). Squaw songs, and occasionally a papoose song, were common. When Indian spirits came into the Shaker Church, the instruments would become so "possessed" that they sang Indian songs, whooped, danced and behaved generally in the manner of savages.
Note 49 reads:
The Shakers believed that the souls of the dead wandered about until they were converted and entered the Shaker heaven, a celestial community of stately spiritual buildings, gardens of delicious fruits and beautiful trees and flowers. The spirits of departed Believers held intimate communion with mortals who were already traveling the way of regeneration or resurrection. Through such psychic attunement, heavenly songs, melodies and messages could be imparted, and sensitive Shaker instruments could in turn envisage, and hear the voices of, the heavenly saints.
Rothenberg appends the following comment to his quotation from Andrews: "As such, they [these gift songs from Indian spirits] show the kind of connection between ideological & formal innovation that has characterized many movements-of-recovery, past & present." To which we append this observation from Andrews:
Usually, at the beginning of the meeting, the rounds and marches were ceremoniously performed; but as we shall see, orderly services sometimes turned into what was called "a quick meeting," or "Shaker high," when dancing would return to its earlier, the "back" or "promiscuous" form, and the singing, regardless of spectators, partake of a substance and quality not provided for in the printed hymnals.
From one collector, Rothenberg, to another, Andrews, we receive gifts when we track the sources through their material spaces, spirits notwithstanding. It is our own sort of salvation through sound.
And so for day 1333
07.08.2010
