-
For those of us who are engaged with the Sacred Harp tradition, the hollow square is where the magic happens—voices raised in four-part harmony, loud and unamplified. But the endurance of these 19th-century shape-note tunes often means they travel far beyond the singing school, finding new life in unexpected places. One compelling recent interpretations comes…
-
“Y’all sing like somebody gone to eat and not hungry.” That was the advice Hugh McGraw gave a group of music majors in North Fulton over 40 years ago. This transcription from a 1979 edition of The Atlanta Journal reminds us that while pitch is important, the spirit is everything. Read on for a classic…
-
I’ve been conducting increasingly deep research into four-shape shape-note tunebooks. As the project has grown, I’ve realized that the sheer volume and granularity of this material requires its own dedicated space. To avoid overwhelming SingLoud.org and to give this research the focus it deserves, I am launching a new, free publication on Substack: sacredharp.substack.com I…
-
Step inside the world of The Sacred Harp—a 19th-century tunebook kept alive in communal gatherings of unaccompanied, full-voiced singing. Singing the Shapes invites viewers into this radically participatory tradition, where anyone who shows up can lead, and the boundary between singer and audience disappears. Filmed across the South, Midwest, and beyond, the documentary captures the…
-
Jeremiah Ledbetter has made a three and a half hour long mix of selected recordings of the 100 least led songs in The Sacred Harp that have been carried forward to the 2025 edition. This was determined by taking the overall rankings from 2015-2024 minutes and excluding ones that were either removed in the new…
-
Publisher of The Trumpet explores the life, theology, and poetry of a foundational hymnist. Will Fitzgerald—compiler of the serialized four-shape tunebooklet The Trumpet, writer at entish.org, and speaker at the recent “Revising The Sacred Harp” Symposium launching the 2025 Edition—has recently published a five-part series exploring the life, work, and theology of Isaac Watts. These…
-
A short (1:59) film introducing Sacred Harp singing, produced by Two Egg TV, was recently uploaded to YouTube. The class sings verses one and three of 36b “Ninety-Fifth Psalm” from the “Cooper Book” edition of The Sacred Harp. Dothan is the historical home of the 1902 revision by W.M.Cooper, and the singing took place at…
-
In the mid-nineteenth century, comic songs circulated alongside serious hymns, often poking fun at doctors, preachers, and other figures of daily life. One such piece is “The Botanic Doctor” by Edmund Dumas (1810–1882), printed in The Organ, a short-lived periodical edited by B. F. White, compiler of The Sacred Harp. The song lampoons the practice…
-
We’ve placed this post in the theme of “preserving the cover”, really it is about how people are marking books to show they are loaners used at their regular singings. This design will not protect the most outer edges of the left and right side of the front cover design, but it does add very…
-
During the very first introductory singing with the new Sacred Harp: 2025 Edition, many singers noticed that the gilt lettering and decorative elements on the front cover began wearing off—my own copy included. For a book that will see years of heavy use, this was surprising and disappointing. The cloth material chosen for the cover,…