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Quaker disciplines in the mid-19th century had sections critical of instrumental and choral music as forms of frivolous "worldly" recreation that led Friends away from God. It appears that this viewpoint had been abandoned by Hicksite as well as Guerneyite Friends by the beginning of the 20th century. FGC published a series of hymnals beginning with a paperback hymnal in 1919 containing 39 hymns. Our first hardback hymnal in 1924 contained 122 hymns. The first version of A Hymnal for Friends was published in 1942. A revised version was published in 1955. These hymnals included more and more hymns that had been rewritten to reflect liberal Quaker theology or attitudes towards Jesus.
Singing was central to the life of Ann Arbor Meeting when I grew up there in the '50's. I'm not sure how often we used to sing together out of the maroon 1955 hymnal (was it every Sunday morning?), but I cannot think of that supportive community of large young families without remembering fondly hymns like "For the Beauty of the Earth", "All Things Bright & Beautiful", "This Is My Father's World" or "At Work Beside His Father's Bench". Nor can I sing any of those hymns today without recalling vividly the conviction and joy with which we sang them together at Meeting. Singing those simple lyrics together affirmed who we were as Friends and how we looked on God and God's world.
My family attended FGC Gatherings in Cape May several times in the late 50's and early 60's. One of my fondest memories of those gatherings was singing hymns in the old convention hall built over the water and later in the circus tent with the gentle sound of the surf blending with our voices. Many years later I had the great joy of meeting the Friend who probably led many of those sings, Walter Felton, shortly before his death.. Walter was able to live long enough to see another hymnal nearly being born - though not to see how tremendously successful it would be.
In high school we sang folk songs together, at Saturday nights at the Meetinghouse and around the campfire at quarterly and yearly meeting gatherings. We drew heavily on the new "Folk Revival" songs of Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter Paul & Mary. Later we sang many of the same songs at YFNA gatherings, New Swarthmoor, events organized in resistance to the Vietnam War, and activities of A Quaker Action Group and its successor Movement for a New Society. We ran off informal songsheets for all of these groups, which included hard-to-read mimeographed collections of the lyrics to a hundred or so Quaker favorites. FGC published 2 songbooks, May the Longtime Sun and Songs of the Spirit, both of which grew out of mimeographed collections of folk songs and :folk hymns. Some of the songs we sang were drawn from the Catholic folk mass movement, such as songs of Joe Wise and the Medical Mission Sisters. The more traditional hymns of the Hymnal for Friends seem to have fallen somewhat out of favor in the groups I sang with at the time.
For years I had thought about putting together a more permanent and larger collection of the kinds of songs we put into all those songsheet collections. The idea was born first at Tamarack Farm (a Quaker workcamp for teenagers located in Vermont) in 1973. It took 6 years of work before Winds of the People was born. This was a songbook very similar to Rise Up Singing but considerably funkier - put together much more informally, fairly heavily edited in favor of Movement for New Society values and not too scrupulous in terms of copyright permissions. Most of the song selection and production work were done by Quaker involved in MNS in Philadelphia. David Finke and other MNS Quakers in Chicago printed the book on a tiny press that took months to print the book, two pages at a time.
SINGING AT GATHERINGS IN THE '80's AND '90's. I had not attended an FGC Gathering for many years, but decided to take the newly printed songbook to the gathering held in Earlham in 1979. A group of us (I can't even recall how we found each other?) started gathering at the same time each day and singing together using these books. An informal community of singers immediately emerged. Many who sang together that week took a carton of books home with them at the end of the week to use in singalongs in their home meetings and communities and to sell them to friends. A kind of underground singing revolution had begun...
The next year, I believe FGC staff (I think Ken was conference planner in those days) asked us if we would hold these sings at noon to encourage some Friends to eat an hour later and cut down on the long lunch lines right after morning groups. Our numbers swelled gradually until it was not unusual to have as many as 100 of us singing together enthusiastically out of the books. People would call out a song name and a chapter and then everyone would flip to it using the books specially alphabetized system of organization. Others hauled in guitars and sometimes led songs in place of Annie and myself.
Various of us (including Susan Stark, Bobbie Ruby, Ginger Swank, Claire Brandenberg and Paul Tinkerhess among others) have led singing before most evening plenaries over the years. Sometimes we ran off special songsheets of lyrics (reminiscent of the old days!) so people would have words to sing from. Some years we tried hauling many hundreds of songbooks with us so that everyone could use those to sing out of, though that tended to be a bit unwieldy. I recall one particularly moving occasion in a thousand or more Friends at a gathering at Carlton College joined their voices together joyfully to sing the round "Jubilate" in the college chapel. A Friend wrote me after the gathering that at that moment she was certain she heard angels voices joining us from the rafters above.
Singing has flourished at gatherings in many other settings as well: the "torch song" sings led by George Lakey and others around a piano just before or after supper; rounds groups led by Steve Woodbury and others; gospel sings as led by Ginger Swank, shape note sings, and early rock and roll singing groups (often led by Gretchen Barnet). Each of these sings have developed their own mini-communities among gathering attenders with Friends who look forward to this opportunity to re-form this singing community at sub sequent gatherings.
We also developed a tradition of doing a "farewell sing" around 9pm on Friday night at gatherings. These frequently drew together 3-400 Friends to say goodbye to a joyful week together via song. In good weather and sufficient light these farewell sings were often held outdoors.
All of these forms of singing combined to mean that singing has come to play a more and more central role in the gatherings of recent years. Certainly the old adage that Friends were poor singers became less and less true!
RISE UP SINGING. In the mid-1980's we decided to try and transform Winds of the People into a fully legit songbook. (I should stress that we had tried to get permissions for Winds of the People but had gotten doors slammed in our face virtually without serious consideration of our request by most of the big music publishers. Many individual artists had given us their permission and we had been scrupulous in not keeping any earnings from Winds.) _ WOTP_ had sold over 30,000 copies totally by word of mouth and out of the living rooms of Friends and their friends. WOTP was reborn as Rise Up Singing: bigger, better, fully legal and thus saleable in your neighborhood bookstore. The group singing at FGC gatherings went on...
Many Meetings began holding monthly sings using WOTP or Rise Up Singing. Annie and I often traveled around to visit meetings and lead singalong concerts, often co-sponsored with other churches, schools or projects that reflected Quaker testimonies. These concerts and ongoing singalong groups have provided important vehicles for outreach for many Meetings. The songbook itself, with its heavy emphasis on Friends testimonies, has been a significant vehicle for permeating our beliefs through its half a million copies sold. We believe with Pete Seeger that empowered peoples' singing is an invaluable tool for undermining the grip which a warfare state and consumer culture hold over people's souls.
PETE SEEGER. Speaking of Pete Seeger, a major highlight in Friends singing at gatherings occurred at the gathering held in Harrisonburg, Virginia, around 1996 when Pete Seeger came to the Gathering. Friends had tried off and on to get Pete to attend a gathering for many years. Many FGC Friends have been moved and inspired by his musical and political leadership and recognized the major contribution he has made to the movements for peace, social justice and unity with nature. One notable such effort centered on trying to get Pete and Toshi to attend a gathering to honored by Friends for their great contributions to world peace. Pete (who hates such events focusing on his own accomplishments) would have nothing of it! Finally, at one point I asked him if there was anything that would get him to attend a gathering. He said, "Well, I don't have much energy for singing lots of places anymore. I kind of feel like singing with Friends is singing to the already converted. I like to focus my time as much as I can on singing with new groups who aren't so familiar with me, like union members, people of color and young people." My face lit up. I said: "Pete: do you have any idea how many children and teenagers attend these gatherings?!" Pete was hooked.
Pete brought two African-American friends with him to share in his musical contribution to the gathering. These three led musical workshops for every junior gathering group. On Wednesday night a gymnasium was filled with our gathering plus a goodly number of others from Harrisonburg. One could feel how moved Friends were to be with this great man and to hear him address them in song and in words. The entire wall of bleachers along one side of the gym was filled with huge numbers of young people, fully with Pete heart and soul. Pete was very glad to have come. (Although Pete and Toshi were not Quakers, they sent their children to First Day School for a number of years in Poughkeepsie. Finally one of their children questioned the justice of being forced to go to a religious activity that their parents did not share and this practiced ended. Their children also attended Oakwood School.)
A NEW HYMNAL. It took a significant leap of faith for FGC to decide to create a new hymnal. The old hymnals had been out of print for many years with no great torrent of grassroots demand for a new one. Many meetings had stopped singing hymns many years ago, either preferring to sing folk songs using books like Rise Up Singing or stopping shared singing altogether. A core group of Friends, however, were convinced that the right collection of songs would strike a deep chord among un-programmed Friends. Certainly, Friends had been singing lustily together at FGC gatherings every summer. Would the enthusiasm of singing at gatherings translate into sufficient sales of a new hymnal? Certainly no one could guarantee they would.
Nonetheless, a group was formed to begin the project. I personally stood aside at first in spite of warm invitations to take part. I had a hard time imagining that a committee could create an inspired song collection. I had visions (O, I of little faith!) in endless arguments over language, theology and musical style. Little did I imagine what the Holy Spirit could do with this project!
A selection team was formed (the infamous "Musewog" or Musical Selection Working Group). This team gathered for many long weekends of work, in spite of being scattered across the United States. And the Spirit certainly did guide our work. (I say "our" because I was unable to resist for long the possibility of taking part in such an important musical venture for Friends - I had too much investment in what songs I hoped we would be singing together in years to come!)
All of us, I think, who made up this extraordinary singing community had our own personal convictions about what songs worked and didn't, about how to best tackle controversial issues around theology. And yet the Spirit somehow managed to get beyond these personal biases and agendas and to plant conviction in our common hearts as to what songs were best to include and which (often with great regret!) to let go.
The new hymnal (entitled Worship in Song) was finally published in 1996. It has been a rousing success beyond the greatest hopes, I think, of those who brought it to life. Certainly there are those who must find it too Christian, too male in its images of God, or who prefer to stick to folkier songs or not to sing at all. Nonetheless, the great quality and diversity of the songs in this collection has appealed to a wide spectrum of Friends. Hymn singing has, as a result, sprung back into the life of many local meetings. I predict the hymnal will have as long and successful a contribution to our Quaker movement as the 1955 hymnal!
When Annie and I traveled among New Zealand for six weeks last year, many Friends there were used to referring to Rise Up Singing as "the Quaker hymnal". We took copies of Worship in Song with us and led singing with it at several Quaker gatherings. Friends were not at all used to doing hymn singing in Quaker settings but the hymnal got an enthusiastic response from many Friends and a few at least are now hold hymn sings using Worship in Song at their local meetings.
SINGING AS WORSHIP? The title of the new Quaker hymnal, however, is ironic, since it highlights the enduring ambivalence of un-programmed Friends towards shared singing during worship. Most Friends enjoy singing and find it spiritually uplifting. I think it is fair to say, however, that many FGC Friends feel very uncomfortable with the idea of group singing as worship. Friends may acknowledge the possibility that an individual Friend may be led by the Spirit to sing a song during Meeting for Worship - and feel moved and uplifted when this breaks into the life of a meeting. Questions begin to be raised when other Friends join in a song during Meeting. And probably most un-programmed Friends would have real problems with calling out hymn numbers - even spontaneously - during Meeting for Worship.
Most Meetings see singing, whether out of a book like Rise Up Singing or out of a hymnal as spiritually inspiring and enriching to the bonds that tie the meeting community together but not as worship per se. There are certainly ways the spiritual content of singing can grow deeper. Annie and I have led workshops at the Quaker Center at Ben Lomond, at FGC gatherings and elsewhere that essentially represent worship sharing interwoven with song. A participant "offers up" to the group a song that they feel led to request and the group leaves a period of silence where the requester and others present can reflect on the chords that that song resonates with within them. As long, however, as we put heavy stock on the idea that vocal ministry needs to spring from direct leading from God during Meeting for Worship, there is likely to be a certain gulf between group singing as a nurturer of the spirit and vocal ministry during worship in the fullest Quaker sense. This same ambivalence is evident among Meetings in Britain, New Zealand, and probably most un-programmed yearly meetings. This issue was discussed at some length during a recent retreat on the subject of Quakers and music in New Zealand.
In spite of this fact, I believe that the flourishing of group singing has had a major impact on the life of FGC and its meetings during the past century. It has knit our hearts together on First Days in our local meetings, at yearly meeting and national gatherings, in our schools, camps and on the picket or organizing meeting. Song has played an important role in a number of the social movements which Friends have been involved in, especially the union, freedom and peace movements. Song will continue to transform Friends hearts and fill us with hope and the energy to take on the forces of evil around us for many generations to come.
© 2002 Peter Blood. First appeared in the December 2002 issue of Friends Journal.
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