More singing, more saying

“Words make you think. Music makes you feel. A song makes you feel a thought.” -- Yip Harburg

“He who sings scares away his woes.” -- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

"Anything that divides people, you leave at the door of a singing." -- Warren Steel

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano. These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you.” -- Mary Rose O'Reilley

“I believe that every living word in that there book [The Sacred Harp] is as true as the gospel.” -- Alabama Sacred Harp singer quoted by Alan Lomax, 1959

"Get enough people singing weird harmonies at the top of their voices and you start feeling a little sorry for the devil." -- Joe Dempsey, from a Washington City Paper review of Awake My Soul

"Preservation is one thing, but raising the dead is a different trick entirely." -- Mike Powell

"Sometimes you get into a spiritual mood that raises the hair on the back of your neck." -- Wesley Haley

“There are three things I like about Sacred Harp: I like the songs they sing; I like the way they sing them; and, most of all, I like the folks that sing them.” -- Curtis Owen