BEVERLY MEINZER: You could put shape notes to any song.
You could write shape notes for "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" simply because the line and space names of the clefs are the same.
You just have to know what key you're in and do becomes the key tone.
If you're in the key of C, do is on C. If you're in the key of E flat, do is on E flat.
Or A, do is on A, and so forth.
[fiddle music playing] [hammering] [birds chirping] [saw cutting] [train engine] The Ozarks is well known for its distinctive musical traditions.
One of these traditions is the singing school, which originated on the American frontier in the early 19th century when gospel music became very popular with early settlers in the area.
My guest today is Beverly Meinzer, manager of the Brockwell Gospel Music School in Brockwell, Arkansas, which has been teaching gospel singing techniques using the shape note music system since 1947.
Join us as we talk about the history of the school and its unique approach to teaching music to Ozarks students of all ages.
ANNOUNCER: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present OzarksWatch Video Magazine, a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.
Visit our website for more information.
Well, thank you for joining me today, and we're going to have a very interesting show.
Because I know absolutely nothing about music, and you're going to explain a whole bunch about it and everything else.
So before we get started and discuss the Brockwell School, why don't you kind of talk a little bit about yourself and how you ended up there.
OK, well my name is Beverly Meinzer and I live in Mount Pleasant, Arkansas.
My mom, Anna Floyd, and her family was instrumental in helping get the music school started in 1947, along with Orgel Mason and several other people that we'll talk about in a little bit.
But my mom taught in the school when I was a young girl.
And my brother and I would go and we would spend-- then we would spend three weeks.
The music school was held in July for three weeks, and we would spend those three weeks with my grandma and go to the music school.
And all of my cousins from out of state would come and we'd all bunk in with grandma and play in the Creek and climb trees and all kinds of things that city kids don't normally get to do.
So that was my first experience at the Brockwell Music School.
I think I was about eight when I first went to it all the whole day.
So that's how that happened.
And then I just kept going until I graduated high school.
And in college I couldn't go a whole lot and graduate school.
And then in 2015 I moved back to the area and the board asked me to be manager.
And since that time, I've been the manager and made sure it happened and with the board of directors, made sure we had a songbook to use, had teachers to teach, and things like that.
So and when did-- there was a name change.
I guess it started off as Brockwell Music School and then you added the word gospel into that.
When did that take place?
I think we've always been called the Brockwell Gospel Music School, but I think for short people would say Brockwell Music School or just music school, or singing school.
A lot of people call it singing school because we sing a lot.
One little guy this year, he was in kindergarten, cute little guy, and he said his parents asked him how he liked it and he said, not very much.
All we do is sing.
And he was like in kindergarten.
But anyway, it was really cute.
And he had a good time while he was there though.
Why don't we talk a little bit about kind of give the history of the singing-- kind of singing school tradition.
And then lead kind of into the shape notes.
OK, well the Izard County Singing Convention began in about 1903 with Dr. Steve Jones, Jeff Cooper-- I'm remembering the names here.
Leeman Bone, the Brockwells, Thomas Brockwell family, Jeff Cooper, and several other people in the area, Lindsey Floyd was one of those folks.
And they had a singing convention.
And they would meet monthly and sing out of what we call convention books, and using shape notes, do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, and then do the eighth note there to make an octave.
So as time went on, people were singing and enjoying that music.
And eventually, there were singing schools in the area, music schools in the area.
Mount Pleasant had some, Calico Rock had some, just all around, and those were mostly held in churches and for every evening for, say, two weeks or something like that.
And then people in the Brockwell area began to want to have a music school on the premises with buildings and land that was owned by the music school.
So a lot of time passes before 1941, because that was when Dr. Steve Jones passed away, and he was actually a medical doctor.
He contracted TB while treating patients and then passed away from that.
But he also taught singing schools in the area.
So he was one of the folks instrumental in that.
And Lindsey Floyd, my mom's dad, was instrumental in helping Orgel Mason start the music school at Brockwell in 1947.
So it began with just a brush arbor type building, a roof and wall-- no walls really, just poles for walls.
And as time went on, the walls were closed-- or excuse me, walls were made.
And then eventually, we put air conditioning in that building.
We purchased another building.
We now own I think six buildings on our campus, and we are debt free.
We're very thankful for that with our benefactors have helped us get debt free.
So the singing school came about from the singing convention.
If there hadn't been an Izard County Singing Convention we probably would not have a Brockwell Music School, Brockwell Gospel Music School.
And several men in the area were like, well, our churches need a piano player, a song leader, someone who can read music, who can start us off singing, and then help us sing songs throughout the church service.
So the first music school, as I said, was held in 1947 in July.
The home state quartet of Little Rock came and were some of the first teachers in the school along with Orgel Mason.
And I think they just taught one year.
There wasn't a lot of money in that.
And Brockwell area is in a rural area of Arkansas, and people didn't have a lot of money to put into that.
And so it wasn't a very moneymaking project, if you will, for a teacher to come from out of town.
So before the permanent place there was just like an itinerant kind of a group of people that would travel from one community to community and teach?
Exactly.
And that was all part of the singing school tradition?
That was all, yes, all part of the singing school tradition.
They were called normal schools, like model schools from the French word, I understand.
And so people would go and have, like, a two week in at night music school.
A lot of those were held in July after the crops were planted and laid by until harvest.
So people had nothing much to do, so it became a social occasion.
They could also learn to read music and sing songs.
And every year a new songbook was published.
Places like Stamps-Baxter music and printing company, Hartford music and printing company, those are no longer in business.
There are actually now four songbook publishers.. Jeffres/Philips Music Company in Crossett, Arkansas, Cumberland Valley Music Company in Tennessee, "A Book Called Do," is its name from Seven Shape Music in Alabama.
And then the Leoma Publishing Company publishes a songbook.
So those four are still in existence today.
And so the whole purpose, I guess, for shape notes was that you could speed up the process of learning how to not necessarily read music, but to understand the notes?
Yes.
So-- Kind of explain how that all operates.
OK.
So early on, before 1846, there were four shapes that were used, fa, so, la, mi.
And those repeated and it was very-- it was acappella, no instrumental music going on.
And so that came over from England.
In about 1846, a fellow named Jesse Aikin introduced the seven shape system, do, re mi, fa, so, la, ti.
And each syllable has a shape.
Do is a triangle, re is, like, a wash pot, a wash kettle used to be called.
Mi is a diamond, fa is a flag, so is a circle, la is a box, ti is an ice cream cone shape.
So that's easy to remember.
So those shapes are each a certain amount or a certain interval apart on the scale.
So do to re is a step, re to mi is a step, mi to fa is a half step.
And that then repeats three steps and a half, so it's two steps and a half, three steps and a half for a major scale.
Are you lost yet?
JIM BAKER: I am.
OK. All right, we'll try and help you out.
So the shape do is moveable.
So on the treble clef, for your listeners that may be familiar with music, on the treble clef there are five lines in four spaces.
The bass clef also has five lines and four spaces.
On the treble clef, the first line is E, and the second line is G, and so forth and so on goes on up alternating.
So do, the shape do, is movable.
It can be on any degree of the staff.
It can be on middle C for the key of C, it can be on E for the key of E, and so forth.
Wherever do is, it made it easy for the person to get their pitch.
So if you know do sounds like-- (SINGING) Do, do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, ti, la, so, fa, mi, re, do.
And if you went to a different key you could go-- (SINGING) Do, re, do, do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, ti, la so, fa, mi, re, do.
So do being movable made it easy for-- to teach people how to read music, how to sing better, or more easily, I guess we could say.
The line or space name doesn't change and the flats and sharps are still on a certain degree of the staff.
OK, now I'm thoroughly confused, but that's OK. No, that's very nice.
So the process of that, though, is well, obviously, it'd be more it's quicker than trying to do formal studies of music.
So the idea was that when you're in these rural communities and different places, you just wanted to train people to be able to essentially sing well and to do whatever they need to do in church or whatever.
BEVERLY MEINZER: That's true.
But our students who've come through the school and then majored in music at college have not had to learn anything new until about their third year of college work.
So we start at the very beginning of music theory, teaching the lines and spaces, the clefs, time signatures, note values and lengths, rest values and lengths, rest names and lengths.
And so we teach people how to read music.
We just use shape notes instead of that line notation system where you have to know C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, we use that shape.
JIM BAKER: So the process, everything is the same, except you're just using different notation?
BEVERLY MEINZER: Exactly.
Essentially?
Different syllables.
It's called solmization, singing the syllables.
Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti.
A lot of times I think shape notes is really kind of you think about gospel music generally, but there's also secular music that you can do with shape notes, right?
You could put shape notes to any song.
You could write shape notes for "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" simply because the line and space names of the clefs or the same.
You just have to know what key you're in and do becomes the key tone.
If you're in the key of C, do is on C. If you're in the key of E flat, do is on E flat, or A, do is on A, and so forth.
So back to the Brockwell School, you say you have, like, a board of directors?
And is-- BEVERLY MEINZER: We do.
Is that-- is that set up, like, as a not for profit organization?
Or how do you operate?
Yes, we are not for profit organization.
We operate strictly on donations from people in the community.
Churches, especially, include us in their monthly budget.
We have some alumni who actually make sure we have a nice donation at the end of the tax year, and we appreciate that a whole lot.
So and so you're the director of the school, and then you report to a board?
BEVERLY MEINZER: Right.
How is the board selected?
Is it just local folks mostly?
Local people, people that are vested in the school.
All of our board except for one has attended the music school as a young person or-- and are teachers in the school now.
They live in the community, so they know the community pretty well, or they're from the community.
And they have a vested interest in helping the school succeed.
We've just celebrated our 75th anniversary of the music school.
And then they're excited about the next-- going to the next 75 years.
Yeah, so how did-- how did-- like, so when the students come, where do they come from?
Most of our students come from the area.
We are not a residential campus.
So, like, I came as a young person from the state of Oklahoma and stayed with my grandmother.
Other students come and do that or stay with uncles.
Some of my cousins come and stay with my mom.
Others come and rent a cabin on the river at Calico Rock and stay for the two weeks, or if they can't come but one week they stay a week.
Others come from the local area there.
I send a-- I get a postcard ready with the dates and times and information about the school and take it to our local secondary schools in the area, and they're very kind to give that out to all the students.
We have one teacher who's a music teacher in one of our area schools and she makes sure her students know and she brings a busload from her church.
Other churches bring a busload from their church.
JIM BAKER: And so is it always it's a standard two weeks?
Is that pretty much-- It is.
Back in the early days when it began it was held in July after the crops were laid by, because we had nothing to do until harvest.
So it was held for three weeks.
As time went on and our society changed, people were beginning to work more in an 8:00 to 5:00 job and not so much on the farm.
So the board of directors at that time decided to move it to two weeks in June.
June was cooler weather.
People could take off two week vacation usually from work and come and help or bring their families to the school.
Now that we have air conditioning, it doesn't really matter what time of year we have it.
And you chuckle when I keep talking about how it's nice to have air conditioning.
But when I was a student there, if you're familiar, we had a large chicken house fan in the back of the auditorium.
And it ran all the time to cool off.
We weren't supposed to, but we'd throw water in it.
You get one guy to throw water through it and you'd stand on the other side and it was just like automatic air conditioning.
So that was really great.
We also did not always have indoor plumbing, and so that was an experience for people like me who lived in the city usually and then came over there.
But now we have indoor plumbing.
It's wonderful.
I laugh every time I start cleaning the bathrooms.
I wonder if our founding fathers ever realized we'd have such nice facilities, you know.
It's just a lot of fun.
You know, the reason I laughed about the air conditioning is as a kid growing up in Kentucky without air conditioning I understand fully-- BEVERLY MEINZER: Exactly.
--sitting in a room.
You understand sweating through your clothes.
JIM BAKER: Oh, man.
And all of that stuff.
Yes.
It's a character building experience.
We should have to experience that a little bit every now and then.
I don't know if it helped me or not, but it was definitely character building.
So on a typical year, how many students do you-- do you have?
We usually run around 100 students of all different ages.
We set a limit a few years ago.
We asked people to have their children to have finished kindergarten.
They can kind of take care of themselves a little bit and help us because we're not equipped to be a daycare facility or anything like that.
But students as early as kindergarten-- completed kindergarten on up through 85 years old or so come.
And we often have grandparents bringing grandchildren or great grandchildren and experience the school with them.
So this year we had some students come and they are a fourth generation student to come to the music school in their family.
JIM BAKER: So do students, do they have to pay or?
BEVERLY MEINZER: There's a small tuition cost.
This year it was $50 for the two weeks, and that includes all of the day long instruction in music, theory, rudiments of music, sight reading, sight singing, ear training where we play some notes on the piano and ask you to pick those out, as well as two books, a brand new songbook of new songs and what we call a manuscript tablet that has the lines and spaces written on it.
You would take notes on that in your classroom.
Now, do students come back more than one year?
Or is it they can come back?
They can come back multiple times.
We do have beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels of instruction.
Usually, a person in the beginner class if you start out in kindergarten you might be in the beginner class level for two or three years, and then pass that little test and move up to the intermediate level where we continue talking about theory and rudiments of music.
But we also start teaching you beginning harmony where you can learn to harmonize a baseline with the one, four, and the five chord in major scale of music.
So students usually spend two or three years at that level and then pass a test and go on to the advanced level of music, where there's a little bit more music theory, but also helping you to write songs with poetry, setting your poetry to music, and then harmonizing that.
So is there different kind of textbooks or different books at different levels for the-- because I guess my vision is just shape notes on bars.
Well, it is shape notes on the lines and spaces.
We have a-- I have a book of our it's called "The Modern Music Reader."
It's no longer in print, but we use that to help students learn sight singing, what the note sounds like.
Like, do always sounds like-- (SINGING) Do, mi.
Always sounds like mi, kind of like that.
So we have that.
We also have, like I said, a new songbook each year.
We have a beginner rudiments of music book that we follow, Vaughan's Rudiments of Music.
And then we have a book called "The Eureka Harmony Method" that we use to help teach our harmony class.
And then so you change song books every year?
We do.
We get a brand new songbook every year of new gospel songs from writers all over the South.
We have a writer from West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and other places, Georgia.
And they send their songs into a publisher, and the songs are then chosen for a songbook.
JIM BAKER: Is there a real purpose behind that other than just keeping everything fresh for the students that happen to come back?
Or is it just that you have new material that people-- Well, one there is new material that people write.
Inspired-- songs are inspired by people's experiences.
And it's also much easier to learn to read music if you don't already know the song.
If you take a song that you already know, even though the notes and things are there on the paper and the rest are there in the music, you may not follow them.
You may just sing it like you've always heard it sung.
JIM BAKER: It's like learning a foreign language.
Yes, I understand that.
You have to get rid of the other one first.
BEVERLY MEINZER: Yes, you just start from scratch.
And so I spend when we first get our songbook usually in March, sometimes early as February, I start at the beginning of the songbook and try to learn them all at least a little bit so I'm familiar with them.
Some are good what we call first day songs, because on the first day you don't know how many students you have that are capable music readers.
And then there are some that are better for the last of the first week.
And then we work on songs in the second week of the music school to perform.
In addition to our classroom work, we learn songs for class singing.
So every age group learns a song.
Our kindergarten and first grade class traditionally learns how to direct by moving their hand.
The choir in singing the do, re, mi, shapes.
And our theme song called, "I Have a Talent, and I Use it for the Lord."
Oh, do you break the students into skill level groups, or is it by grades of school?
Or how do you separate?
Because I can imagine out of 100 students, some are a little bit more advanced, some are not.
And so how do you how do you make those determinations of where they go?
Understand, and that's a good question.
We start with the kindergarten and first grade beginner class, and then we have a second and third grade beginner, and fourth grade and up beginner class.
And we all start our beginner classes at the same level.
We even have what's called an advanced beginner class.
So let's say if you're 30 years old and you've never learned to read music, you would go to our advanced beginner class.
But there might also be a 15-year-old in that class with you who's come through the school or who this is their first time.
But we start beginners all at the same level, and it's just organized by age group.
Because our attention span changes as we get older and we might go a little bit further as we get a little bit older in that same beginner level work.
I suspect I'd be with the kindergarten kids.
That's where I would end up.
BEVERLY MEINZER: They're a lot of fun.
Let's talk a little bit about the-- we've got a few minutes left.
But let's talk a little bit about the campus itself and some of the facilities.
And it's mostly, there's no instrument-- is there any instrumental instruments at all involved, other than the human voice?
Or-- BEVERLY MEINZER: Yes.
How does that work?
Yes, we sing with the piano.
We also offer, for a separate fee of generally $40, a series of eight lessons in private piano, private voice, so you can learn how to sing better and carry yourself with your voice, guitar, or-- I've left something out here, ukulele.
There we are.
Some of our young people want to learn how to play the guitar, but their hands just won't go around the neck of the guitar.
So we start them out on a ukulele.
And they have really enjoyed that.
They've learned how to play "twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," "Working on a Building," and "You Are My Sunshine," things like that that work out pretty well for little hands.
JIM BAKER: Very good.
Now, one thing I was going to ask and I forgot, do you have full time teachers each year or how does that operate?
Do they change quite often?
Our teachers do sometimes change.
We have a lot of teachers who teach in the secondary school system so they're off in the summer, except for maybe a professional development workshop.
And they come back and teach.
And sometimes their situation changes where they're not able to come and teach.
So we just ask, we rattle the bushes a little bit and find some alumni that know what's going on and can help us teach.
We also for the kindergarten and first grade class in the afternoon we have a craft time, where they make a craft based upon a shape of the scale.
So like, on the day they study the shape ti, it's ice cream cones, the sugar cones that are shaped like the shape ti.
So that's a fun time.
But they learn about the shape.
So it's learning on their level then.
JIM BAKER: Yeah, very nice.
We only have a couple of minutes left, but I was kind of curious after 75 years, which is really an amazing accomplishment when you think about it-- BEVERLY MEINZER: We're thankful.
--to survive that long and to go through COVID and go through everything else, what's the plans for the next several years that as you look forward to what you'll be doing?
We plan to keep teaching shape note music, teaching gospel music with shape notes, for the next foreseeable future.
We're very thankful to have made it 75 years.
And I'm not sure our founding fathers would have ever imagined we'd be here at this time.
And having come through COVID, we actually had music school during COVID on our Facebook page.
JIM BAKER: Yeah.
So it's legitimately the 70-- was the 75th year.
I think that we want to continue to reach more people.
Our board of directors would like for us to have 200 students, which would be an amazing thing.
We would be probably full to capacity, but we'd just open up another building or we'd go out under the shade tree.
We used to have class under the shade tree as long as it wasn't raining.
And so we're just hopeful to share music and God's music with other people using shape notes for as long as we can.
Well, I thank you for being with me today.
BEVERLY MEINZER: Thank you so much.
And I congratulate you and the school for-- like I say, I'm very impressed that you've been in existence for 75 years.
That has to be a tough, tough thing to do.
And best of luck in the future.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
We'll be right back.
- ANNOUNCER: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present OzarksWatch Video Magazine, a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.
Visit our website for more information.
I'd like to thank our guest Beverly Meinzer for talking with us today about this unique and fascinating musical tradition in the Ozarks.
Thank you for watching, and join us again next time on OzarksWatch Video Magazine.
[fiddle music playing]
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