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 ...

Shape note singing is one of the oldest musical traditions in this country. It’s a practice that began in colonial America, and after centuries of ups and downs in ...

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 ...

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (AP) - On a quiet Saturday afternoon, eight people gathered in Christ Episcopal Church in Cape Girardeau to practice shape-note singing, a form of traditional music used in ...