Sacred Harp Singing

Sacred Harp singing is the American tradition of singing hymns and fuging tunes from The Sacred Harp, the shape-note tunebook first published in Georgia in 1844 by *B. F. White* and *E. J. King*. Singers sit in a hollow square, one vocal part to each side, and sing the four shapes, fa, sol, la and mi, before the words, at full volume and without instruments, for the act of singing itself rather than for an audience. Kept alive in the rural South and revived worldwide, it is among the oldest continuous participatory singing traditions in the United States.