Singing, Singing...

Jamie Music History #4

I am told that I could carry tune from the time I could talk. The first time I ever sang a solo I was probably six years old, and it was likely in church. I have been on stage singing for about as long as I can remember.

I grew up with a hymnbook in my hands. We sang hymns from that book every Sunday. If I did not learn how to read the music that was there, I did learn enough that when I was taught music theory much later, sight-singing from the hymnbook became easy.

I recall attending a special service or services at the church, where a man from either the E-Free denomination or from the hymnbook publisher came and sang a whole bunch of the songs with the congregation. He started at the start of the book, and every time we met a song we didn’t know, he would walk us through it. I remember we learned a bunch of new songs because of this. It was a great idea.

I learned to love the hymns of the church. I grew up in the failing tail end of a long era when the hymnbook was the primary catechism for the people of God, at least among my people. That was where we learned Christian theology. We had not heard of singing psalms, and nobody we knew or knew of practiced such a thing.