Hugh Mc Graw - Leadership in The Sacred Harp Community

Leadership in The Sacred Harp Community

Sacred Harp scholars Buell Cobb and John Bealle, cited below, describe a Sacred Harp career containing several major accomplishments. McGraw helped stem the decline of Sacred Harp singing on its original home territory by offering a great number of singing schools, a practice he continues. He modernized the nonprofit company that publishes the "Denson" edition of the book, the Sacred Harp Publishing Company, and presided over the committees that created both the 1971 version and the current 1991 version of this edition (he was also a member of the 1960 committee). He led the Sacred Harp Publishing Company into the business of creating recordings of Sacred Harp music, made by groups of experienced singers and serving to this day as a valuable source of information on traditional singing practice. McGraw also made many gestures of friendship to newcomer singers, including those outside the South, and can be considered one of the factors responsible for the extensive geographic spread of Sacred Harp singing in recent decades.

Bealle notes that during the mid to late 1970s, McGraw repeatedly urged newcomer singers to adopt the traditional forms of the Southern singing convention, including the hollow square seating arrangement, rotating leading of songs, singing of the note names before the stanzas, dinner on the grounds, and public prayer. McGraw's efforts were successful, and with time Sacred Harp singing outside the South evolved from a kind of artificially-cultivated folk music performance into a more natural and spontaneous experience, in which procedure and performance practice are determined by well-established custom.