Sacred Nine Project: Demon in the Glass
or, the melodrama of the American Temperance Movement
projected for 2023

Oh the melodrama! Prodigal Sons! Wandering Boys! Drunkard Fathers! Dead Mothers! It seems American Popular Music was giving way to vapid sentimentality in the late 19th century. What a perfect time to write music that tapped into the “moral suasion” of the time: trying to appeal to the emotions to inflict shame, and to convince others that the “Demon in the Glass” (a title of a song we will perform!) should be prohibited.

A tangential but important issue here is the shame-based approach of the Temperance Movement. We might reference this and compare it to the shaming that happens today, especially among conservative evangelicals who belittle or vilify the LGBT community, for instance.

We will offer many stand-alone songs, as well as songs from original Temperance collections, including the Anti-Saloon League Song Book (1915), and may even tackle a scarce Temperance cantata, entitled The Revellers, by John H. Hewitt (1874).