Folklorist and ethnomusicologist Laurie Kay Sommers is founding director of the South Georgia Folklife Project at Valdosta State University and research associate with Michigan State University Museum. She specializes in regional music traditions in the United States.
The Okefenokee Swamp occupies more than 600 square miles of southeast Georgia and northwest Florida. Indian peoples occupied the "Land of the Trembling Earth" through the early 1800s, when most were driven out or forcibly removed by Europeans. Until 1937, the swamp housed an independent, self-sufficient community of "Crackers," most of Scotch and Scotch-Irish origin via North Carolina, who scratched out a living through cattle grazing, subsistence agriculture, and turpentining. This distinctive folk region was shaped by Celtic ethnicity, geographic isolation, and Primitive Baptist religion. The establishment of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in 1937 marked the end of the historic period of music and folklore in the Okefenokee itself, although certain longstanding traditions have adapted and persisted in nearby communities. The present-day economy is based on forest products and agriculture.
Cornell biologist and amateur folklorist Francis Harper documented this folk community from 1912 to 1951. Georgia Southern professor Delma E. Presley published a sampling of Harper's work in 1981. Harper's work documents historic folk culture of the swamp, but a rich musical culture still exists in the surrounding region. The major musical genres include a distinctive regional variant of sacred harp, Primitive Baptist hymnody, the remnants of the secular fiddle tunes, hollering, and balladry documented by Harper, plus bluegrass and gospel sings. This entry focuses on British American traditions and the Harper legacy, to the exclusion of other repertoires and cultural groups found in the region.
REPERTOIRES OF MUSIC
The music of the Okefenokee Scotch-Irish and their descendants includes both sacred and secular repertoires. The sacred music is dominated by two intertwined musical styles: unaccompanied Primitive Baptist hymns and
sacred harp. The most distinctive hymnody traditions are associated with the Crawfordite sub-sect of the Alabaha River Association of Primitive Baptists in southeast Georgia and northwest Florida. Hymn texts are drawn from Primitive Hymns by Benjamin Lloyd, an 1841 compilation of preexisting hymn texts, organized according to topic, which reflect Primitive Baptist belief and discipline. Crawfordites use the "700" hymn version as opposed to the more widely adopted "705" in deference to the old ways. The Lloyd hymnal contains no tunes; instead, the texts are sung to memorized sacred harp tunes in the appropriate meter. If the singers remember all four parts to the sacred harp tunes, then hymns are sung in harmony; otherwise, worshippers take the tenor (melody) line. The influence of sacred harp melodies among Crawfordites has shaped a rich, fervent, full-throated singing style that is much less ornamented and heterophonic than performance practices found among other old-line Baptist groups in the United States. Crawfordite ornaments are composed of upper and lower neighbors and passing tones. Congregational hymns occur more informally at the beginning and end of worship and during foot washing. By contrast, lined hymns are part of the formal worship procedure, and may be "given out" only by a licensed minister. Tempos in general are quite slow, allowing the singers time to meditate on the text.
Sacred harp sings date to at least the 1860s in the Okefenokee. Although historically part of the larger sacred harp movement in the South, the cultural isolation of southeast Georgia fostered a distinctive stylistic variant characterized by the same slow tempos and ornamentation found in the Primitive Baptist meeting house, walking time in a counterclockwise fashion according to the meter of the tune, and occasional use of the "drone" or human bagpipe. The drone involves a core of six to eight singers standing in the center of the room who sing all three parts of the sacred harp harmonization. Three circles of singers, composed respectively of bass, treble, and tenor, drone the tonic, dominant, and octave of the scale, while walking in opposing directions. Alto singers are not used in the drone technique and are a recent addition to the local singing style. Singers use the B. F. White revised Cooper edition; other books have been used in the past but always with four-shape rather than seven-shape versions of sacred harp notation.
Contexts for sings include monthly singing schools, rites of passage, family reunions, and individual homes. Sacred harp, or "notebook singing," once was so widespread that different families each had their own sound. Francis Harper documented sacred harp among the Chesser family of the Okefenokee in 1944, for example, a tradition perpetuated today, although in altered form, by descendants of Harry Chesser at the annual Chesser Homestead Open House in the Okefenokee National Wildlife refuge outside Folkston. Few families maintain their own singing style today.
Historically, sings were nondenominational; however, factionalism among Primitive Baptists gradually eroded the social and community base of sacred harp until, by the early 1990s, the tradition was in severe decline. Many Crawfordite Primitive Baptists did not realize that other people sang sacred harp until the mid-1990s. In 1995, cousins David and Clarke Lee began to revive the monthly sings at the Hoboken School in Brantley County, Georgia, a tradition initiated by David's great-uncle Silas Lee around 1950. The national sacred harp community since has taken tremendous interest in the Okefenokee style, resulting in a growing cross-fertilization of musical styles. The Georgia-Alabama-Florida Sacred Harp Convention, held in Hoboken for the first time in the fall of 1997, included singers from at least eight states. Regular monthly sings currently take place at Hoboken School and at Nathalene, a Crawfordite meeting house in Nassau County, Florida.
Collector Francis Harper provides the best documentation of swamper secular music. His field notes and sound recordings include locally composed songs and variants of widely disseminated ballads such as "Barbara Allen" and "The Little Mohee" (or "Lassie Mohee"). The annual Chesser Homestead Open House and the Harper field recordings provide incentive for a few swamp families to perform several of the old tunes. Harper also documented hollering, a distinctive, yodel-like alternation of head and chest tones, sometimes interspersed with song fragments, which was used to call hogs and cattle, to signal that an individual was returning home, or simply for the sheer joy of it. This tradition is no longer widespread, although a few more traditional families maintain the practice.
The old-fashioned frolic, with its fiddling and square dancing, was once a common form of community entertainment. Frolics peaked during the fall harvest season as part of cane grindings, hog killings, fodder pullings, and candy pullings. Holidays such as Christmas and the Fourth of July, as well as impromptu house parties, were also settings for music and dance. Harper reports that local tune favorites included "Sally Goodin," "Molly Put the Kettle On," "Cotton-Eyed Joe," and "One-Eyed Gopher." The swamp's cultural isolation also fostered distinctive local repertoire among families of fiddlers. Fiddle performance practice included the southern tradition of using a straw or piece of cane to beat rhythmic accompaniment to the tune. Banjos, some of them homemade, were almost as popular as fiddles. Little of this older musical repertoire survives today. Bluegrass and old-time country are now widely popular in the region.
IDEAS ABOUT MUSIC
Primitive Baptist beliefs about music, especially those of the conservative Crawfordite faction, have had a powerful influence in the Okefenokee. Religious prohibitions against radio and television and against prayer led by non-Crawfordites reinforced the region's cultural isolation and encouraged the preservation of regional musical styles. The strongly predestinarian Crawfordites model their worship on the early or "primitive" church, eschewing evangelism, Sunday schools, musical instruments in church, or a professional paid clergy. In their prohibitions against instruments they follow the practices of early frontier Baptists and Methodists as well as Scottish Calvinists. The lay preachers or elders deliver "inspired" sermons in a heightened speech or chant. The Lloyd hymnal, as well as the sacred harp notebook, are viewed as sacred texts by the more conservative Crawfordites, and any change is viewed as disrespectful if not sacrilegious.
Primitive Baptists also prohibit dancing and drinking among members. These beliefs conflict with many secular music traditions. If the children are not yet formal members of the church, they are sometimes allowed to attend dances. In the past, some Primitive Baptists allowed their children to attend play-parties but forbade frolics.
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF MUSIC
Primitive Baptists sing as a congregation; there are no choirs or formal musical organizations. To preserve the same-sex decorum of foot washing, men and women sit on opposite sides of the meetinghouse. Visitors generally sit in a separate section, although they are not required to do so. In keeping with the Apostle Paul's views of women's role in the church, only men are allowed to lead songs, serve as elders and deacons, and speak in church. Sacred harp leadership is also confined to men, although all are welcome and encouraged to sing. Singers now sit in the "hollow square" formation common to the larger sacred harp tradition, although in earlier years a circle formation was used.
DOCUMENTARY RECORDINGS AND FILMS
Francis Harper's field recordings from August 1944 are available from the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress (AFS 7721–7737). Included are stories, ballads and songs, and sacred harp. A CD of the all-day sacred harp sing in Hoboken, Georgia, recorded by Keith Willard in December 1996, was released in 1999. It is available from Willard, who can be contacted via e-mail at: kwillard@abaton.com; 486 Mt. Curve Blvd., St. Paul, MN 55116; telephone 612-699-2040.
