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 ...

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 a rousing participatory style sometimes characterized as “the punk rock of Protestant hymnody.” Founded over 25 years ago by Smithies, the powerful sound of the weekly Tuesday ...

The Northwest Arkansas Sacred Harp Convention will feature something new this year - a singing school for people who might like to learn shape note singing. Dan Brittain, a member of the Shiloh Sacred ...

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 ...

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 ...