I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say · The United Southern Prayer Band (amazing stuff I'm hearing thanks to reading through William T Dargan's book on the lining hymn tradition in African American churches)

For Blind Willie Johnson fans you'll already know "I heard the voice of Jesus say ... " as a text from his song repertoire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I_6VJb5Q7M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlhVEEPtytw

and you will also know that "Dark Was the Night" is an instrumental adaptation of the lining out hymn singing tradition.  But in case you've never heard what that singing tradition among African American churches actually sounds like, well, then you need to listen to this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyuAZGs62c8

Wade in the Water, Vol. 2: African-American Congregational Singing

℗ 1995 Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

You can hear the song leader/deacon "deaconing" the words for the well-known lyrics before each wave of  responsorial heterophony.  Dargan put it well saying that it's neither a prescribed harmonic pattern nor a simple unison melody.  It most certainly sounds nothing at all like the tune Blind Willie Johnson famously recorded and Dargan explained that there's a propensity to "flatten out" melodic contours along a series of revolving and recycling melodic tropes which you can vividly hear in this remarkable performance.

Because it's an old lo-fi recording you might not hear the foot stomping and hand clapping rhythms at first but that's another element that you can hear in this tradition where a completely non-measured set of congregational phrases emerge and are progressively given firmer rhythmic accompaniment that has a tempo shift about half-way through. 

I learned of this album from William T. Dargan's book

Lining Out the Word: Dr. Watts Hymn Singing in the Music of Black Americans

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520234482/lining-out-the-word

and if you want an even more radically different variation on a popular text from the African American Christian music traditions check out this recording by Doris Akers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAx1_P8SONw

I'm still working through Dargan's book but I intend to blog about it once I'm done.  Meanwhile, I can't resist sharing tracks from albums he recommended for listening.  Fortunately the Wade in the Water series is Smithsonian Folkways which means it's not some wildly out-of-print thing you'd have to impoert or order from a university press you might not have heard of before like a couple of other albums Dargan recommends.  

The McIntosh County Shouters, "Lay Down Body"

As I've been working through William T Dargan's Lining Out the Word I've been enjoying the music he mentions in the discography.  So I want to share a tiny sample of what I've been listening to as I keep reading up on the history of lining hymns, the ring-shout tradition in African American churches, and associated history of how they developed and expanded on customs and norms available within the low liturgical options of the American scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-shAWTCA16U

Part of the joy of this performance is how the people start off in one key and rapidly (!)  microtonally shift up a whole step.  I've been in choral performances where in the excitement of singing together the key veers way off from the starting pitch (shooting upward). I've also been in lethargic performances where we started in C and ended the song (where no modulation was supposed to happen!) in A flat.  

It's especially common in no-instruments vocal performances and it's interesting to consider how in many church traditions instruments are not allowed either because of a strict regulative principle (which shows up in the Reformed traditions, especially some old-line Baptist); lack of resources (ditto, though separate); or custom (the Orthodox liturgies ban instrumental accompaniments which was why Stravinsky made his Mass for Catholic rather than Orthodox settings).