Together Let Us Sweetly Live: The Singing and Praying Bands focuses on a lesser-known sacred African American tradition. This tradition thriving inside the Chesapeake Bay area, specifically the tidewater communities of Maryland and Delaware, is an outgrowth of the African “ring shout,” a sacred circular ceremony that permeates Africa and the African diaspora. Indeed the spiritual singing and rhythmic marching bear strong resemblances to the danced ceremonies practiced by plantation slave congregations in the “praise houses” described by Dena Epstein, Sterling Stuckey, and other scholars. Variations on the basic ring shout theme are still alive in other regions of the country including Shouters in McIntosh County, Georgia, and the Easter Rockers in Franklin Parish, Louisiana.
Jonathan C. David’s introduction gives a succinct account of the bands and the tradition to historically and ethnographically contextualize it within the folk community, other similar African American rituals, and the Methodist evangelical phenomena. In working with the bands, David advises us that he was able to focus on two major factors that have shaped American culture as well as himself: “first, the legacy of slavery that continues to distort all of American society, and second, the significant influence that evangelical Christianity has had on the American consciousness.” Ultimately, David’s purpose is one of representation. He illustrates how the “traditional band service represents a cultural commitment to mutual aid, called ‘help,’ operating as a system of social reciprocity, as a performance aesthetic, and as the foundation of community spirituality.”
Following the introduction, the book is divided into nine chapters, each for a different practitioner, except the eighth chapter, which features two participants. Therefore, the book offers an overview of the inner workings of the singing and praying band tradition from the perspective of the practitioners themselves.
Each interview excerpt was chosen because it explains and illuminates the tradition in some capacity and is a continuing historical, ethnographic, and musical account of the singing and praying bands. Musical performance is so central to the singing and praying band tradition, that it deserves extra attention, and each practitioner’s version of the story and the song has its own flavor, coming to life with the storyteller’s own style. For example, Mrs. Mary Allen’s story incorporates the core sacred qualities of improvisation and transformation into the spirit, and participant corporation, illustrating the skills practitioners need to be good song leaders. She also gives an explanation of the types of songs (e.g., “straight hymns and give-out hymns”) and when and how they should be performed. Although the practitioners refer to all songs as hymns, not all of them have the hymn format. However, Mrs. Allen’s accounts as well as others reflect the value practitioners place on the improvisational agility and their respect for the spiritual and communal power of language, music, and dance.
I especially appreciated the added feature of including the actual songs and prayers. David includes song lyrics, musical notations, commentaries, and prayer text. In addition, a CD accompanies the book, inserted into the back cover. It contains three hymns and two prayers that provide the reader an opportunity to actually hear performances of both. Another feature is Richard Holloway’s collection of photographs that accompany the stories. These images help bring the stories to life.
Not every excerpt has the polish of a story told two to four times, but each reiterates the traditional practices or advances the history. Some topics appear more frequently than others, a reflection of their cultural significance, so the reader can expect some repetition. For example, conversion stories are so crucial to the tradition that they cannot be covered by a single person or version.
These stories come from interviews that took place over the past twenty-plus years. Most excerpts are taken from the speakers’ own accounts, though I take issue with and question aspects of David’s editing techniques. He explains that he developed his own technique, which is fine. He interviewed most practitioners from two to four times in different settings, asking the same questions. He placed similar accounts in response to one question together on one page and then began to edit the passages using the “same techniques I use when I teach college students how to edit their own writing: move this sentence here; make that dependent clause part of the next sentence; invert the next sentence. . . . I translated each and every sentence into Standard English, as I believe that individuals in the band wanted me to do.” First, I do not believe that practitioners wanted someone asking them the same questions four times in four different settings. Second, I doubt that all of the practitioners wanted him to “clean up” their Black vernacular English. Many African Americans, especially those who are elderly, in rural communities, and “in the church,” tend to be very welcoming, accommodating, and tolerant to visitors who come to the church to worship and/or to conduct research. Therefore, and more than likely, they were just being nice and accommodating to an outsider. So, in his “process of boiling down the raw material of the interviews into the refined product of the final narratives,” David also illuminates his inherently cultural imperialist position. Frankly, I would have loved to read the book as a primary, unfiltered source instead of portraits that the folklorist painted with his editorial brush.
Nonetheless, the stories taken together provide a panorama of history, showing the singing and praying band tradition from the insider’s perspective, focusing on personal relationships, folk traditions (e.g., folk pageants, yard art, oyster tonging, trickster and magic stories), and the ties that bind the practitioners and the community. Other stories portray events, such as watch-night meetings and other events that have largely disappeared from African American life in the region.
This tradition has remained a continuous, albeit evolving, musical and ritual component of African American sacred community events for many years. The practitioners represent the tradition in the broadest sense, encompassing males, females, old and young, and individuals whose musical inclinations are known only to family and church community. Collectively the stories synthesize what it means to be a regular participant in the community of singing and praying bands and form an account of one of America’s lesser-known sacred expressive forms.
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[Review length: 1037 words • Review posted on August 25, 2009]