White Spirituals From The Sacred Harp

White Spirituals from the Sacred Harp Excerpt from liner notes by Alan Lomax Many listeners will be surprised to learn that this fiery choral sound comes not from somewhere in eastern Europe but from a rural white singing convention in northern Alabama. Even more astonishing is that the hundred-odd farmers, country lawyers, tradesmen, and wives and children were sight-singing this counterpoint from printed scores compose d in some cases by members of the chorus. They were using the Sacred Harp, a compendium of 573 four-part folk hymns, which has been the bible of the southern rural singing-school movement since 1840. During the 1940s I had tried and failed, as had many others, to record this music monaurally. In 1959 I returned to the South with a modern stereo machine, hoping that with this equipment I could finally do justice to the haunting beauty of southern congregation singing, black and white. My old friends invited me to a weekend singing convention in a country church in Fy