Generally on Sunday I try to highlight some kind of spiritual theme in a Bob Dylan-related piece of music. This week the relationship to Dylan is tenuous, but hey, I can do whatever I like, can’t I? A reader (and Bob Dylan fan), Don, recently sent me a link to a video he uploaded to YouTube of a Christian Harmony singing group — of which he is a member — performing The Penitent’s Prayer, and I found it both very listenable and quite inspiring. The performance features a kind of singing known as shape note singing (see Wikipedia here), whose origins in the United States date back to the late 1700s. I think that anyone who has enjoyed listening to old time bluegrassy gospel music — of the sort that the Stanley Brothers made, for instance — will recognize right away that that music must clearly have sprung in part from this. And hence the tenuous Dylan connection, since Bob is a fan of that kind of music, including to the extent of performing some of those songs in concert himself, in the days of the Charlie Sexton/Larry Campbell band.

So, click here or below to hear The Penitent’s Prayer.

The first “verse” which is sung is not actually a verse, but the notes themselves, as explained by Don:

The lead (or melody) is singing do mi la so do re
mi re do while the bass is singing do do do do mi fa so so do. And
the other two parts - alto and treble are singing their own notes by
singing the name of the note on its pitch.

This is how we learn unfamiliar songs, but we sing it on songs we
know, simply because it is a part of the tradition.

Then, the actual verses, known as the poetry, go like this:

Oh! thou, whose tender mercy hears
Contrition’s humble sigh;
Whose hand indulgent wipes the tears
From sorrow’s weeping eye.

And shall my guilty fears prevail
To drive me from thy feet?
Oh! let not this dear refuge fail
This only safe retreat.

From page 64 in William Walker’s “Christian Harmony.”

Shape note singing groups can be found in many places, although I was unaware of it until now.

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