Songs of the Old Regular Baptists (Smithsonian/Folkways)

I spent one of the best summers of my life serving as an intern for the Smithsonian/Folkways label in Washington, DC. Part of the job entailed working as a field recording technician for the Festival of American Folklife, an event held annually on the National Mall designed to explore the arts and music selected regional cultural groups. A contingent of Old Regular Baptists was on the performance roster that particular summer and the music they shared had an unexpectedly metaphysical effect on my consciousness. Versed in a centuries-old style of European lined out hymnody and steeped in the pastoral climate of their Kentucky origins, the Baptists were like beatific delegates from another age. Everyone on the recording team expected them to keep to themselves*, but those assumptions were dispelled almost immediately as the Baptists mingled enthusiastically with the West African and Mississippi musicians who were also on the festival docket that year. Their music had a similarly immediate and inclusive effect on audiences, somber and mournful in one sense, joyous and celebratory in another, communicating ardent faith in often-otherworldly fashion. There really is nothing like it and it’s one of the rare assemblages of sound that can readily bring tears to my eyes. The faith-based verses, sounded first by leader Elwood Cornett and answered in heterophonic fashion by the congregation, may not resonate in terms of meaning, but the angelic mass of shifting meters and inflections burrows straight to an emotional core. Released the same summer, this recording doesn’t do the live experience of the Baptists justice, but as a memento of a pivotal time in my life it’s still one I return to often.

*The cover graphic takes pains to sustain the Baptists’ anonymity as per their mandate. Similarly, no liner photographs are included.