NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Laura Atkinson and Justin Hicks of Louisville Public Media about shape note singing and its influence across the American musical tradition.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Laura Atkinson and Justin Hicks of Louisville Public Media about shape note singing and its influence across the American musical tradition. Shape note singing is one of ...