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The movie Cold Mountain (2003) includes a brief and powerful introduction to the world of Sacred Harp singing, provoking many viewers to ask where this music originated. In the space of seventy-five minutes, Matt and Erica Hinton provide the answer, offering an insider's view into this rich community and musical tradition in their documentary, Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp. This documentary applies twenty-first-century multimedia technology to an over two-hundred-year-old American musical tradition, illuminating its democratic foundations. The project preserves the voices of many of the music's stalwart champions, who passionately nursed it back to health through cultural upheavals that sounded the death knell to other traditions. In addition to the reflections of a number of singers and scholars and a tour of historic singing sites, this work captures the delight singers experience in the renewal of friendships over the "covered dish" dinner on the grounds, a feast often reflecting the diversity of American culture but undergirded with longtime southern favorites such as fresh creamed corn, corn bread, fried okra, and black-eyed peas with snaps. For one who wants to experience Sacred Harp singing, the best option is to attend an actual singing. The next best choice is this film.
Awake,...