Dorothy Brush "Random Thoughts" Published April 14, 2004

The human soul finds food in music

"There's sure no passion in the human soul, but finds its food in music." The man who wrote those words in the early 1700s, George Lillo, was a London dramatist. The American South was not part of his world but those words are an apt description of the feast of various musical styles the South has given to the world.

Country music is one of the first that comes to mind. Another George, George Jones, is to many the world's greatest living country singer. The songs he sang were filled with cheating and drinking and he also lived that wild life. His talent was recognized when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1992.

In the April issue of Texas Monthly magazine he spoke to an interviewer about his wild past life. Everything changed when he was involved in a terrible accident in 1999 and almost died. He was candid as he told that several months before that accident he had gone into the woods on his property near Nashville to do some praying. He asked the Lord to do whatever was necessary to make him stop drinking and really pull his life together. His prayer was answered because that wreck put the fear of God in him and he quit drinking and smoking all at the same time and is enjoying the changes he feels.

The article included Jones' thoughts on what has happened to country music. He calls it "downright pop!" He said that everyone in the business in Nashville knows how he feels but when he asks what has happened to real country music they respond, "That's old hat."

Sounding like a prophet, Jones accused the new country music as being ashamed of the steel guitar and the fiddle. He was emphatic as he said, "Real country music is supposed to be country music. It's for the man out there in the Mississippi cotton fields. It's for our everyday working man."

Another entirely different kind of music caught the imagination of the nation when the Sacred Harp Singers of Liberty Church on Sand Mountain in Henager, AL recorded their distinctive sound for the movie Cold Mountain.

This unique type of singing was introduced in colonial days and spread from New England to the south with the settlers. Sacred harp was an early term used to describe the human voice. It was also called shape-note or fasola because the notes of the scale were shown in the song books with different shaped heads. Fa was a triangle, sol a circle, la a square and mi a diamond shape. In Crossville as in communities all across the South singing schools to teach this method were well attended and popular.

Both three-part and four-part harmony are used in the unaccompanied music. The singers are seated in a hollow square. Tenors on one side, bass on another, treble on the third side and finally altos complete the square. The singing master stands in the middle of the square and sets the tempo and establishes the pitch with a tuning fork.

Those who practice these singings all describe it as a powerful emotional experience unlike singing hymns in church. One expert in shape-note singing explained the difference this way, "This gets deeper into my soul and comes directly out of my soul."

Yes, the human soul does find its food in music. Be it jazz, soul, gospel, the blues or classical music, it is there for the tasting.

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Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident and Crossville Chronicle staffwriter whose column is published each Wednesday.