Background

The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming – or "Shakers" – began as a small movement led by "Mother" Ann Lee who came to the United States from England in 1774 to escape persecution for their radical beliefs. The group settled near Albany, NY, and quickly began to gather converts, particularly from among nearby Quaker settlements. Their practice of dancing, stomping, and whirling during worship led to their being nicknamed "shaking Quakers," a term that soon evolved to "Shakers."

Shakers in the "West"

The Shakers quickly established several communities in upstate New York and nearby New England. In 1805, upon hearing news of the "Great Kentucky Revivals" that were underway in northern Kentucky and were producing a virtual firestorm of religious conversion on the young America’s frontier, the Shakers sent a group of missionaries in hopes of gathering converts in what was then America’s "West." They were successful, and Shaker settlements were soon established in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana.

Villages in the Shaker West included the following:

Shaker Village Nearby Town

North Union Shaker Heights, Ohio

Union Village Lebanon, Ohio

Watervliet Dayton, Ohio

White Water Cincinnati, Ohio

Pleasant Hill Harrodsburg, Kentucky

South Union Bowling Green, Kentucky

West Union Terre Haute, Indiana

The Shakers were a utopian, pacifist, and millenialist sect that believed in communal living separate from the social mainstream. They also practiced celibacy. Converts lived in gender-separated dwelling houses, and children were raised communally. Their communalism, pacifism, and celibacy, together with their exuberant dancing during worship, provoked reactions from outside observers ranging from mild curiosity to suspicion and bitter criticism.

Shaker Music

Among the most important legacies of the Shakers is the enormous body of music composed or divinely "received" by Shaker worshippers. Shakers (both women and men) composed literally thousands of songs, ranging from simple wordless chants to highly poetic devotional hymns, harmonized anthems, and lengthy narrative songs that tell stories from Shaker history. Among the most prolific composers was Issachar Bates, a Shaker who was among the first team of Shaker missionaries to come to the West and who eventually led the Shaker village of Watervliet near Dayton, Ohio. Countless Shakers composed or "received" songs, including many, many Shaker women.

Today, several excellent CD recordings of Shaker music are available. In addition, the Enfield Shaker Singers of Enfield, NH and the Western Shaker Singers of Cincinnati are singing groups dedicated to preserving and perpetuating both the songs and the performance styles of the Shaker tradition.

Why Dancing?

In contrast to many other Christian sects and denominations in early America, the Shakers believed that being physically rigid and unbending was NOT indicative of moral rectitude, but rather it suggested that a person was held in bondage to sin and evil. Freeing oneself from sin and opening oneself to the influence of God’s spirit required free motion. In fact, the "devil" was sometimes called "old Stiff" in Shaker texts! Thus, dancing was an intrinsic part of the Shaker worship. Dancing took many forms, from frenzied and ecstatic spontaneous motions to orderly and choreographed dances to hand motions accompanying private prayer. Stomping usually accompanied spontaneous and ordered dancing. The percussive and physically emphatic action of stomping was a noted feature of Shaker worship services, which could often be heard from great distances!

Why a Lost Music?

Other than the Shaker dance tune commonly known as "Simple Gifts," which was memorably incorporated by composer Aaron Copeland into his symphonic suite "Appalachian Spring," the vast Shaker repertoire remains a highly obscure body of American spiritual music. Several factors probably contribute to its obscurity. Other than a few hymnals that the Shakers published in standard music notation, the Shakers mostly document their songs using "letteral" notation. Shakers set up their communities to be separate from the Christian mainstream, and Shaker converts were expected to leave behind the music of their previous faith traditions. Shakers were widely perceived as social radicals; and many mainstream Christians objected to such Shaker practices of celibacy, their embrace of socially progressive ideas about pacifism and gender and race equality, and their use of dancing. Some Shaker song texts contained references to theological ideas that some mainstream Christians found bizarre. Thus, Shaker music remained a largely isolated musical genre.

Still in Use by Today’s Shakers

Shaker music is not only a historical relic. A small but active group of Shakers remains in Sabbathday Lake, Maine. They continue to use the music repertoire in their weekly worship services, which are open to the public.

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