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.

DULUTH — Once a month, typically on a Sunday afternoon, the Friends Meeting House is filled with voices singing together. It's not a performance because everyone present is involved in the singing.

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 ...

In shape-note music, the notes are the same as in conventional music, except that instead of an oval, notes have different shapes — a triangle, circle, square or diamond — which correspond to one of ...

MARS HILL - Western Carolina, and Madison County in particular, boasts a historically important and extensive musical background that dates back generations, chronicled in part by Cecil Sharp's 1932 ...

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 ...

Area singers find meaningful sounds in shapes Paul Waterman might not recommend sitting in a church pew for exercise -- unless you want to join him for a session of shape-note singing. Last week, ...

The Raleigh Shape Note Singers meet every fourth Sunday from 2–4 p.m. at the Friends Meeting House, 625 Tower St. The Durham Shape Note Singers meet every second Sunday from 2–4 p.m. at the First ...