The crowded room echoes with lilting voices raised in a simple, timeless song. There are no instruments, no audience. Just a chorus of four-part harmonies sung from a book that's as thick as a Bible.

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 ...

PITTSBURGH – Alexa Kay is a Quaker, a denomination which has embraced simplicity and shunned more extravagant forms of worship, even singing. Nevertheless, Kay likes to sing, and that’s what led her ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Add doses of culture, conviction and tradition, all of which materialize as the Old Fields Singers’ All Day Singing on Nov. 5 at St. Paul’s A.M.E. Zion Church in Johnson City, Tennessee. Everyone is ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Dec. 24—As haunting harmonies drifted through the rafters of the third-floor attic chapel, echoes of the past rose and fell with ...

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.

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 ...

BRATTLEBORO -- When the Northern Roots Traditional Music Festival kicks off at noon this Saturday, Brendan Taaffe will be one of the first voices heard -- he shares leadership of the Song Panel with ...