When Diane Ober sings shape-note music, she does it not to be heard, but to be singing. "You sing at the top of your voice, with your whole being," she said. "It's not meant to be a performance; it's ...

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 ...

Shape note singing is one of the oldest musical traditions in this country. It’s a practice that began in colonial America, and after centuries of ups and downs in ...

BREMEN, Ga. — “The Sacred Harp” is a pre-Civil War compilation of sacred songs that uses music notes shaped like triangles, ovals, squares and diamonds, and it is getting an update. Sung in four-part ...

Standing inside the Laurelhurst Club in Southeast Portland, Karen Willard said some of her family members believe she’s in a cult. It’s not hard to see why. She and hundreds of others have arrived to ...

The Sacred Harp, a book of religious tunes first printed in 1844 is getting an upgrade. And shape note singers who use it are very excited. People who perform a traditional style of American music ...

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 ...

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 ...

MALVERN-based choir Vital Spark will be performing a selection of West Gallery and shape note music at a charity concert in Malvern on Friday, June 11. The choir will be joined by Luke Leighfield and ...