Singing The Shapes

Last night I watched Matt & Erica Hinton's captivating documentary Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp. The film tells the fascinating tale of the first American music, and how our country's "earliest songs were not preserved by the academies and institutions, but by unschooled rural southerners." Awake My Soul's a cappella spirituals are sung in choral round, and use a system of shape-coding notes to demystify traditional musical notation for the worshiper. The results are haunting and beautiful. This film belongs in your netflix queue.

*If you're paying close attention, you'll see a familiar face in the minutes following 1:01:00: Amigo Basura and author of Ecce Quam Bonum: A Pictorial History of the University of the South, Eric Wilson!