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Artist
United Sacred Harp Musical Association
12+ albums
gospelsacred harpshape note
about
Alan Lomax and George Pullen Jackson first documented the Sacred Harp singing tradition in a 1942 Alabama recording for the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song. In 1959, Lomax returned to Alabama to record the United Sacred Harp Musical Association Singing Convention. These digitally remastered re-releases reveal a genre steeped in the cultural politics of a nation continuously reinventing itself in the face of an uneasy social past and an uncertain future. In contrast with African-American sacred expressive traditions, many have seen Anglo-American religious folk song as austere and devoid of emotion. Yet against its terse, scripture-based patrimony, Sacred Harp or "shape-note" a cappella singing reveals a lyrical, rapturous spiritual passion. As such it perpetuates the insurgent vitality of rural religious song in the 18th-century British Isles, the baroque polyphony of northwestern Europe (as heard in the "fuging" counterpoint of many Sacred Harp tunes), and the dissident psalmody of the early Calvinist Reformation. Embracing those influences, New England hymnody reemerged in the late 1700s as itinerant singing-school masters helped spread an American religious revival promoting the individual's direct personal relationship with the divine, free of intervening Church authority. Using the shape-note system invented to simplify sight reading for the musically untutored masses, Sacred Harp promoted a participatory democratic ideology of individualistic faith
top songs
albums
In Sweetest Union Join
United Sacred Harp Convention: The Alan Lomax Recordings, 1959
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United Sacred Harp Convention - The Alan Lomax Recordings, 1959
Root Hog Or Die: An Alan Lomax Centennial Tribute
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The Alan Lomax Recordings, 1959
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Songs of Christmas, Midwinter & New Year
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United Sacred Harp Convention: the Alan Lomax Recordings
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Worried Now, Won't Be Worried Long: Alan Lomax's "Southern Journey," 1959–1960
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I'll Be So Glad When the Sun Goes Down: Alan Lomax's "Southern Journey," 1959–1960
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United Sacred Harp Musical Association: The Alan Lomax Recordings, 1959
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United Sacred Harp Convention∶ The Alan Lomax Recordings, 1959
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Southern Journey, Vol. 10: And Glory Shone Around