DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, there's a kind of singing that came west with the settlers, and once it put down roots in east Texas, it never did let go. It's called Sacred Harp singing — fasola, some call it — and it runs on shaped notes, dispersed harmony, and minor chords.
That last part matters. Those minor chords give it a sound that can stop a conversation cold, the kind of sound that feels older than the room you're standing in. What made it special from the very start was that it belonged to ordinary people.
Rural people. Folk who wanted to interpret the music, personalize it, make it their own. No conservatory required.
Just a voice and a willingness. The tradition rode west in the luggage of migrating settlers, kept alive through special songbooks passed hand to hand, generation to generation. And when those settlers landed in east Texas — many of them coming up from the south, where this music was already part of the air — they found a place that understood it.
East Texas took to it like it had been waiting. Tradition holds that the East Texas Sacred Harp Singing Society, the forerunner of what would become the East Texas Musical Convention, dates all the way back to 1855. Now that is a long memory for a singing society.
They held their annual conventions year after year, centered on six area counties, and the whole thing hummed along until — well, until the Civil War came through and suspended it briefly. Briefly. Because when the war years passed, they started back up.
The conventions came back, and they kept their popularity through all the years that followed. Some traditions fade. Some get written about on historical markers and leave you wondering how it sounds when all those voices find that minor chord at once.
I'd wager it sounds exactly like east Texas feels on a cool morning — old, and unhurried, and entirely itself.
What the marker says
Sacred harp (fasola) singing is based on a system of shaped notes, dispersed harmony and minor chords. In its origins it was rural, folk, religious music that allowed singers to interpret, or personalize, the sounds. Brought westward by migrating settlers and kept alive through special songbooks, it found a welcome home in east Texas, where many settlers were from the south. Tradition holds that the East Texas Sacred Harp Singing Society, forerunner of the East Texas Musical Convention, dates to 1855. Suspended briefly during the Civil War years, the annual conventions, centered on six area counties, have maintained their popularity through the years. (2005)