Listen!
Most Sacred Harp singers agree that you can't understand this music without singing it yourself. Until you have a chance to experience it firsthand, here are some sneak previews.

Media
In her October 31, 2004 article, "Shapes of the Heart," Inara Verzemnieks of The Oregonian writes of her first experience at a Portland singing:
Recordings
To hear it for yourself, below are some local (Portland) field recordings of Sacred Harp singing.  To hear recordings from elsewhere, searching the iTunes store for "Sacred Harp" will reveal a wide variety of recordings available for download -- both from the field and the studio. Some CDs are often available for purchase at our local singings.

We particularly recommend the 2-CD set Awake My Soul / Help Me to Sing. Awake My Soul is the original soundtrack to the feature documentary of the same name. Help Me to Sing is a collection of various contemporary artists performing songs from The Sacred Harp, including Jim Lauderdale, Richard Buckner, Woven Hand, Danielson, Rayna Gellert (Uncle Earl), John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), John Wesley Harding, Sam Amidon, Doc Watson, Tim Eriksen, Elvis Perkins in Dearland and more. It is available by clicking here and for digital download at iTunes and Amazon.com.

Norwich (362)
Edom (200)
Florida (203)
Martin (452)
Eternal Day (383)
Confidence (270)
Nearer, My God, to Thee (Cooper Book, 488 on the bottom)
China (163 on the bottom)
Panting for Heaven (384)
Exhortation (171)
Wood Street (504)
Green Street (198)

(Thanks to Steve Helwig of Eugene, OR and Sam Mowry of Portland, OR for lending their sound engineering talents to  these projects!)
"It was a strange sound, raw and wild and hoary, yet at the same time, familiar somehow -- a great, aching lamentation that stopped people walking by in the hallway outside cold.

It was as if voices from a previous century had started speaking again."
The Willamette Week describes the "'penetrating sound that gets under your skin…that primal scream of music' that is Sacred Harp singing at its best." And The Portland Mercury calls it "six times better than a night at Chopsticks," "way more raw and rustic than gospel" and a "mind-bogglingly beautiful music style."
Our events have no membership requirement and no affiliation: religious, political or otherwise. For more information, email us.