Project Overview
The Azariah narrative explores prophecy and the power of singing in the context of New York's Burned-Over District (so called because the fires of evangelism had so thoroughly scorched the local population). The story follows a young man named Azariah, a member of the Millerite sect – a group that believed Jesus would return to earth by October 22, 1844. After the prophecy failed, during the "Great Disappointment" that followed, Azariah begins to have visions, in which he meets strange prophets who speak to him through song. The narrative follows Azariah as he seeks the prophets during increasingly lengthy forest walks. At the story's end an entranced Azariah dictates the prophets' songs to his mother.
The songs are in the form of shape note music, an a cappella community singing style popular in Upstate New York in the early 19th Century, and presently experiencing a revival throughout the Northeastern United States. The songs sketch a picture of Azariah's attempts to find meaningful experience in the wake of the Disappointment, telling of his meetings with the prophets, and forming the foundations of a new belief system around the activity of community singing.
For my MFA Thesis, I presented the Azariah story as participatory singing event, molded after a shape note singing convention. Shape note conventions are day-long events featuring impassioned – often raucous – non-stop singing. With no audience, singers face each other in rows of seats arranged in an inward-facing hollow square. Singers take turns standing in the center of the square, leading songs from The Sacred Harp tunebook. The Sacred Harp was initially published in 1844, but features tunes written in the shape note style from as recently as 1990, revealing the extent to which shape note singing remains a live and growing tradition.
At the Azariah singing, shape note singers joined with other attendees, many of whom had no singing experience. Each participant received a hand bound, limited edition artist book I had designed, featuring a set of original texts and shape note songs telling the Azariah story. Experienced singers assigned participants to one of the four voice parts in the shape note music tradition, and directed them to sit on the appropriate side of the hollow square. Acting as Azariah, I set the scene by describing the night before the Great Disappointment. Next came a few minutes of singing instruction followed by an hour-long mixture of shape note convention, performance art, and storytelling, singing through the tunebook to transmit the Azariah narrative.
Read the texts and poems from Azariah.