The a capella music, based on a 19th-century hymnbook, has flourished in the South Anyone can sing Sacred Harp music, says photographer Johnathon Kelso, who started singing it himself just a few years ...

Liberty Baptist Church, in the northeast Alabama town of Henagar, has cradled the sound of Sacred Harp singing for 110 years. There's no harp in Sacred Harp singing -- no instruments at all. Just the ...

Groups of Sacred Harp singers are working together to revise their hymnal The a capella tradition uses shape-note music to sight-read songs from the hymnal's 554 options Families pass the musical ...

In the movie Cold Mountain, news that the Civil War has started comes as residents of a small North Carolina town are charging through I'm Going Home in the music's rough-edged vocal style. American ...

The 200-year-old Early American tradition of shape-note singing is experiencing a resurgence in popularity. Singers of all ...

Surrounded by other singers arranged in a square, Judy Hauff rocks her feet heel to toe, rhythmically slashes the air with her arm and sings “Fa la sol la sol.” This is “shape note” music, an a ...

Singers at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in West Georgia treat their red hymnals like extensions of themselves, never straying far from their copies of “The Sacred Harp” and its music notes ...

In 1844 a singing teacher and newspaper editor from Georgia named Benjamin Franklin White, "having passed the meridian of his life," got it in his head to publish a songbook. He called it "The Sacred ...

BREMEN, Ga. (AP) — “The Sacred Harp” hymnal is beloved by those who sing from it, carrying on the Christian songbook's more than 180-year-old legacy. They are young and old — and all ages in between.

You knew Chicago was a sanctuary for blues and gospel, but you’ve probably never heard of this rural-born musical tradition—even though it was probably America’s first ever. Sacred Harp music was a ...

Observing a Sacred Harp singing session is quite different from any other performance experience. Singers are seated in a large square facing each other, taking sides based on their voice range as ...