Andy Ditzler stands in the center of a hollow square, "The Sacred Harp" formation in which singers organize into four voice parts and face each other to create an opening in the middle, at Holly ...

It’s one of the most distinctive sounds in country and bluegrass music. You can hear it in the singing of Patty Loveless, Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs. The way these Appalachian-born singers bend ...

BREMEN, Ga. (AP) — Singers at Holly Springs Primitive Baptist Church in West Georgia treat their red hymnals like extensions of themselves, never straying far from their copies of “The Sacred Harp” ...

Though Hawker wasn’t always singing the Primitive Baptist songs in religious spaces, she was careful to only bring them out when they’d get the reverence they deserved from the audience. “She said, ...