Shaped note hymn, Babylon

great stuff

I never would have figured you to be knowledgeable about shape note singing, gunga. I'm favorably impressed.

wonderful!

"Although seven-shape books may not be as popular as in the past, there are still a great number of churches in the South, in particular Primitive Baptist, Independent Fundamental Baptist, and Churches of Christ, that regularly use seven-shape songbooks in Sunday worship. These songbooks may contain a variety of songs from 18th century classics to 20th-century gospel music. Thus today denominational songbooks printed in seven shapes probably constitute the largest branch of the shape note tradition." Wikipedia

My two favorites of these are Babylon and a song known variously as "Hail the blessed morn" or "Brightest and best of the sons of the morning".

And a whole lot of folkies around the country who didn't grow up Southern Baptist but love the music and the communal singing and have frequent gatherings.
The video guys are obviously Brits from their accents. Check out the Watersons and Martin Carthy, and the Young Tradition (now thirty years or so defunct) for other British singers in somewhat similar harmonic traditions (I don't know if there are any videos of any of them, I guess I'll have to check,probably someone was there with a digicam or an iphone at one of their shows somewhere).

And check out the Revels. Starting in Cambridge, they do Yule and May or Summer Solstice and Sea celebrations with traditional music and dance, Morris dancers, shape note hymns, folk stories, and a whole lot of joy, for going on forty years now. And they're always looking for singers and dancers (it's volunteer). They do group song sessions too. They have organizations in WA, CA, CO, OR, TX, DC, NY, MA, NH. If you're near any of those, check them out (They've done "Brightest and Best" in some of their shows I've seen, gunga)
http://www.revels.org/

oh, damn, I just googled Swan Arcade and found their founder, Dave Brady, died in 2006. They were Yorkshire, didn't sound like Londoners. You did good, Dave, RIP. Thanks for finding them, gunga.
http://www.answers.com/topic/swan-arcade