Community Event: Shape Note Singing

The Duluth Folk School is welcoming the Duluth Shape Note Singing Group into our space, after the next Folksing!

Shape note music is authentic American Roots music with its origins in New England in the mid-1700s. It’s called “shape note” because the note heads are different shapes, an innovation intended to help unschooled singers read the music more easily.

This style of singing has a very distinctive old-timey sound, with four-part harmonies, strong rhythms, and full voices.  “You’ve got everything in here,” Tim Eriksen says, “Lutheran hymns, Scots jigs, Irish reels, field hollers, a smattering of Handel and Haydn: it all went into the meat grinder.” This style of music was featured in movies like Cold Mountain and Lawless.

Please visit this website for information about shape note singing: http://www.sacredharpbremen.org/

On this website, you can search the name of these songs in upper right corner to hear each of the four harmonies separately and see which range is best suited for your voice and there are also links to videos of these songs.

Here’s the songlist for the evening:

Hope to see you here!