Sacred Nine Project: Re(new)ed American Music
Sacred Nine Project strives to pioneer in the curation, creation, and circulation of re(new)ed American music.
This term, coined here, almost always refers to a reimagining of early American vocal music (c.1700-1900), that holds relevance for our country today. “American music” denotes works by Americans, or works that have enjoyed a significant tradition in the United States. “Re(new)ed American Music can also encompass contemporary music and verse that confront troubling aspects of our history. Through strong musical performance and research, re(new)ed American music can:
refresh or revisit earlier compositions.
indict problematic worldviews.
unearth almost forgotten genres.
wield textual themes as present-day parables.
foster introspection, healing, and action.
We have old ‘scores’ to settle. By engaging with music, texts, or events from an earlier America, we may shape a future one.
Sacred Nine Project is becoming a kind of nerve center in this very specific American “music with a message” space. As so much new music is emerging from the projects, it is natural that Sacred Nine Press will emerge in one to three years. There, select pieces from our concert repertoire as well as other innovative and mission-specific selections can be purchased and widely performed.
Central to this repertoire will be a yearly “call for scores,” in which African American composers are encouraged to create new Spirituals and submit them for consideration. The winning composer will receive an honorarium, have the work performed by Sacred Nine Singers at one of our concerts, with the option of having the piece published by Sacred Nine Press.
Sacred Nine Project is committed to diversity and inclusion. In fact, the themes of the projects so far have been focused on bringing awareness to prejudice and injustice. Although the lyrics in Sacred Nine Projects are often highly devotional, the organization is not affiliated with any religion, and welcomes engagement with people of all races, genders, beliefs, and disabilities. Sacred Nine Project can be most effective when including Singers of Color, taking extra care to contextualize the demographic of the originators of the music.
The richest mine for the projects is early American hymnody. Other genres of interest are American folk ballads, protest songs, reform songs, minstrelsy and its implications, and the music of Enslaved People. Often music of other countries (namely England, for obvious reasons) is featured prominently, but that is only when the music in question has enjoyed a strong tradition in the United States.
In 2017 I needed to create an arrangement of “Brethren, We Have Met to Worship” to compliment a sermon. Trying to avoid copyright issues, I sought out an original source for the tune, HOLY MANNA, finding a facsimile of Southern Harmony. There I saw the usual and welcomed suspects like “Amazing Grace” and “Wondrous Love.” However, I was alarmed to find many tunes that not-so-subtly advanced the shame-based theology of the time. I decided to arrange 14 Southern Harmony hymns and songs, including some that contained the troubling and seemingly obsolete texts.
However, if those disturbing musical and poetic pieces did not survive the natural selection, why revive them now? A modern listener’s first reaction might be to condescend to our forebears. However, Sacred Nine advances the belief that just because we know what is proper to sing and say in polite society does not mean that we do not harbor primitive sentiments; the more austere and primitive texts we sing are dead and buried, but the sentiments they represent are alive and well.
C. Leonard Raybon, Founder and Pharisee
Raybon is Associate Professor, the Director of Choirs, the Virginia Beer Professor in Singing, and Interim Artistic Director for Summer Lyric Theatre at Tulane University, and the Director of Music at Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church. He earned a DMA at Louisiana State University under the mentorship of Dr. Kenneth Fulton. Raybon enjoys creating helpful methodologies for his students, including his "Vowels in Hand" system, which aims to take the mystique out of choral vowel unification, and which was published in Voice and Speech Review in 2017. He has shared his vowel method in ten states and three countries. Sacred Nine Project is the vehicle for his current research: finding the darker parts of music history and seeing what lessons can be learned from them. The “Regret, Repent, Rejoice” was released on the Centaur Records label in March 2021. The article, an outgrowth from “Sacred Nine Project: Sing Me, Sing Me Not,” is soon to be published in Journal of Singing.