Shape Note Singing in Florida

David Lee singing school at the 2000 Florida Folk Festival

The Lee family occupies a unique place in the national Sacred Harp singing community. Their unique “Hoboken-style” of singing from the Okefenokee region of southeast Georgia and northeast Florida dates back to the mid-1800s.

Outside of performances led by Silas Lee (1912-1997) at the 1957 and 1958 Florida Folk Festivals, the Hoboken-style remained largely unknown until the 1990s, when members of the Lee family launched an effort to engage with other singing communities.

As part of that effort, David Lee, Silas Lee’s great-nephew, began conducting singing schools around the country, including one at the 2000 Florida Folk Festival. There, he taught participants the fundamentals of shape note singing, including pitch and time, as well as five tunes from the Revised Cooper Edition of The Sacred Harp.

His explanation of shape note singing focuses on the history of The Sacred Harp and its foothold in Okefenokee regional culture. Most singers learned to sing through aural transmission from generation to generation. Lee goes on to give a description of the four shapes (fa, sol, la, mi) and how they correspond to the major scale, followed by a demonstration. After clarifying how singers keep time and stay on beat during the song, he explains how beats can be grouped together in common, compound or triple time.

As a synthesis of the lesson, Lee leads the class in “Mear,” a slow folk hymn in triple time with text by hymnwriter Isaac Watts (1674-1748). The song made its first appearance in A Sett of Tunes from 1720. Lee’s incantation of the first two beats of the time at the beginning of each verse is unique to the Hoboken-style of shape note singing. 

A complete record of David Lee’s singing school at the 2000 Florida Folk Festival can be found in the Florida Folklife Collection (S1576, Container 84, Digital Audiotape D00-35b).