William Dargan's Lining out the Word breaks new ground in the scholarship on black sacred music. While there are many now-classic studies of black sacred music such as those done by John Wesley Work, Eileen Southern, Clarence Boyer, and Anthony Heilbut, Lining out the Word differs from these in important and contributive ways in terms of methodology, purpose, and focus.

The classic studies were primarily historical, tracing the development and social meaning of black sacred music starting from its African and slave origins. Dargan's book, however, crosses disciplines and methodologies and is as much a work of ethnomusicology and linguistics as it is history. Like the classic studies, Lining out the Word emphatically demonstrates the “uniqueness” of black sacred music, rooted as it is in the experience of what it means and has meant to be black in America. Yet Dargan takes this a step further, developing a theory of black sacred music and of an African American musical identity. He asserts that the writing of the book “arose from the felt need for a theory of music as an extension of language in African American culture” (16) and that the Dr. Watts hymn-singing style was “a seminal dimension in the evolution of black musical identity” (4). Most of the classic studies mention the Dr. Watts hymn-singing style, but Dargan makes it the focus of his book and gives it the fullest scholarly treatment to date.

Dr. Watts hymn singing has long been a central feature of the black sacred music tradition. Perhaps best known as “lining out,” it has also been called “deaconing,” “long-meter,” or “surge-singing.” The tradition is based on the English hymn, particularly those composed by Isaac Watts, and was the dominant form of worship music in the United States before the emergence of choir singing in the nineteenth century. It was especially popular among enslaved blacks for its accommodation to emotionality, illiteracy, or the absence of songbooks. It is perhaps the most fitting genre in which to make a claim about “change and non-change in African American music” (5), which is, as Dargan states, the central theme of the book. Dr. Watts hymn singing represents a “language contact” between English forms of speech and African traditional expression. It is a place where speech, timbre, and pitch connect with percussion, rhythm, and bodily movement, a place where North American language was modified without being fundamentally changed. Noting first that there is an important relationship between speech and movement—“speech is to song as rhythm is to movement” (10)—Dargan demonstrates that “hymn singing enriched an existing body of African American ritual practices and became a new entry point into English language performance” (9). That which was “inaccessible in outward form” became “knowable and unassailable in essence” (4).

This language contact provided black Americans with a common stock of phrases that are now traditional in black sacred performance. For this reason Dargan makes the claim that race, faith, language, and music “have created a distinctive religious culture among African Americans” (5). The “language contact” established by the introduction of English hymns into the black sacred music repertoire was so important, Dargan contends, that Dr. Watts hymn singing was “pivotal in the shaping of black people's identity” (104).

Dargan's emphasis on language is yet another distinguishing feature of Lining out the Word. Indeed, this emphasis may be the most significant contribution of the book. He reminds us that, fundamentally, singing is speech. As he states, there is “a persisting core relationship between language and music” (120). Dr. Watts hymn singing helped shape and reflected patterns of speech that became uniquely African American. Though different regions throughout the United States developed their own styles and expressions of the musical genre, for each of them Dr. Watts became a core feature of their musical and linguistic identities, and a “cultural site of self-definition” (11).

Lining out the Word is innovative, assiduously researched, and deeply textured. William Dargan has written a study that will be of interest to those in a range of fields and disciplines. It will be of particular use to ethnomusicologists, linguists, U.S. historians, cultural theorists, and black studies scholars. The book is a sensitive explication of the Dr. Watts singing tradition, particularly as it has been practiced in the black Baptist ritual. It is also a good example of the mystery of cultural transmission. As Dargan perhaps inadvertently shows, Dr. Watts hymn singing is learned, but it is not taught.

Ironically, the language of the book is a bit too technical for lay readers. Dargan often uses words, phrases, and concepts that only those trained in music are likely to understand. And he relied perhaps too heavily on recorded sources to which readers will likely have no access. But the contribution of this fine study far outweighs these criticisms. Lining out the Word adds significantly to our understanding that music and language have been key shapers of African American identity. African American identity has emerged in the contested space “between white control and black self-determination” (2), and bears witness to the wonders of “change and non-change.”