C. Leonard Raybon - The Sacred Nine Project: Regret, Repent, Rejoice (2021)

This is an album of classic works collected in the classic book, "The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion," compiled by William Walker in 1835. This is a truly amazing compendium of these classic pieces, in beautiful arrangements. Curtis Leonard Raybon writes of this project: “The Sacred Nine Project presents problematic works from American music or poetic history and asks the audience to consider what we can learn from them today. It all started when I, trying to avoid copyright issues, sought out an original source for my HOLY MANNA arrangement. I found a facsimile of Southern Harmony, and was delighted to leaf through its virtual pages. There I saw the usual and welcomed suspects like “Amazing Grace” and “Wondrous Love.” However, I was alarmed to find many tunes that not-so-subtly advanced the shame-based theology of the time. In each Sacred Nine Project so far, I revive works that have fallen out of use. If these disturbing musical and poetic pieces did not survive the natural selection, then good! Why revive them now? Well, the takeaway is often thus: the initial audience reaction may be to be self-congratulatory: Look how far we’ve come! But when we really stop to think, we see that the more austere and primitive texts we sing are dead and buried, but the sentiments they represent are alive and well. Religion is still shaming people (“RRR” and the upcoming “Conversion”). Well-meaning white people from centuries past are complicit in today’s insidious racial unrest (“Cora L, Imposter,” and the upcoming “Saints Bound.” The Sacred Nine Project opens old wounds to help heal fresh ones.”