The crowded room echoes with lilting voices raised in a simple, timeless song. There are no instruments, no audience. Just a chorus of four-part harmonies sung from a book that's as thick as a Bible.

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 ...

A previous version of this story incorrectly identified where Dan Patterson was a professor. He taught at UNC-Chapel Hill. Nearly 50 years ago, John Feddersen heard what he described as “stark, just ...

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 ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Dec. 24—As haunting harmonies drifted through the rafters of the third-floor attic chapel, echoes of the past rose and fell with ...

If these singers were in a sanctuary or on the church grounds, you'd think you were at an old-time revival. But these voices, distinct in tune but united in harmony, are singing shape-note music, a ...