Jesse B. Aikin

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Jesse B. Aiken was a shape note "singing master", and compiler of the shape note tunebook The Christian Minstrel. Aiken was the first to produce a song book with a seven-shape note system. He vigorously defended his "invention" and his patent. The system used in Aiken's Christian Minstrel eventually became the standard of the shape note music industry. This owes much to the influential Ruebush & Kieffer Publishing Company adopting Aiken's system around 1876.

Aiken lived near Yellow Spring in the Capon Valley of Hampshire County, Virginia (now present-day West Virginia).

[edit] Aikin's shapes

[edit] References

Sing with Understanding, by Harry Eskew and Hugh McElrath, Broadman Press.
White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, by George Pullen Jackson, University of North Carolina Press, 1933.