In a disused chapel in Gateshead, the chairs have been set out for an unusual form of service. Members of the congregation sit on four sides of a square, facing each other. Anyone is free to walk to ...

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 ...

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 ...

Isaac Green, 34, flips through his personal copy of "The Sacred Harp," a shape-note hymnal linked to a more than 180-year-old American folk singing tradition, at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church ...

Open to all. Pizza and salad at the dinner break for the first 40 participants. The library singing offers a chance to experience this joyful, democratic, welcoming, inclusive, and uniquely American ...

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 ...

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 ...

An old religiously inspired songbook that uses shape notes for people who can't read music got a major update and is attracting younger singers. Hundreds of singers from all over the world gathered ...

Tim Eriksen explores the American choral tradition of shape note singing, sung a cappella in four-part harmony. Show more Sacred Harp pioneer and former punk frontman, Tim Eriksen, takes us into the ...

“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 harmony, “The ...