Author: Rich Kirby

Publisher: The Institute for Southern Studies

Published:

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13:

Trying to describe the religious folk music of the Southern mountains is a little like trying to organize the church itself — songs, like people, just will not line up quietly in neat rows. Still, there are patterns in this varied and vital tradition, and searching for them reveals, as well as anything can, the intensity of religious feeling that has always been part of mountain life. Religious singing in the mountains flourished with the wave of revivals that has swept the region in the last two hundred years. The emotional intensity of these movements combined with the strong musical traditions of the area to produce some of America's most powerful music. It is true folk music — home-made music that people use in their everyday lives to express their deepest feelings.