This story was updated on Thursday, May 29, 2025, at 7:52 p.m.
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” and its music notes shaped like triangles, ovals, squares and diamonds.
In four-part harmony, they sing together for hours, carrying on a more than 180-year-old American folk tradition that is as much about the community as it is the music.
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