BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) The archaic sounds that fill the historic former church sanctuary echo, hauntingly, like a whispering ghost from the past. Inside the 1902 building that once housed the Second ...

Shape note singing is one of America's oldest musical traditions, and it is having a bit of a revival now because of an updated songbook. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) SIMON: Laura Atkinson and Justin Hicks, ...

DULUTH — Once a month, typically on a Sunday afternoon, the Friends Meeting House is filled with voices singing together. It's not a performance because everyone present is involved in the singing.

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 ...

BREMEN, Ga. — 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 ...

Shape note singing is based on a notational system developed in New England by early Colonial immigrants. At that point few people had music reading or ear training skills that allowed them to follow ...

Shape-note singing is what democracy actually sounds like. Well, maybe anarchism, says Karen Stingle, who has sung with the Eugene Sacred Harp Singers since it started in Eugene in the early 1990s.

About 30 students, faculty members and Providence residents gathered in the Steinert Choral Room last Thursday. The singers sat in a square — one voice part on each side — facing each other, with the ...

A unique form of shape-note singing that’s been a tradition in the Blue Ridge Mountains for more than 100 years will be performed and taught in Henderson County again this year during an annual event ...

When I was a child of 5 or 6, I loved my little record player, but other than children’s storytelling albums, I owned only two albums, both gospel."Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash from The Holy Land.

All are welcome to sing shape note music on Sunday, May 17, from 3 to 5:30 p.m. at St. Michael's Episcopal Church, 16 Bradley St., Brattleboro. Shape note singing is powerful, a Capella singing in ...