The introduction and first chapter of Kiri Miller's Traveling Home provides a brief overview of the history and modern landscape of Sacred Harp singing. Originally part of a movement of democratizing musical training across the United States, Sacred Harp singing eventually found its stronghold in the rural south, where it became associated with poor, white, Scotch-Irish populations. Today, as singing spreads to more diverse urban populations across the country, the historical, racial, and regional origins of this music culture have a number of implications. Among Sacred Harp singers, nostalgia and reverence for a disappearing era, an agrarian "medieval" South clashes with the invention of tradition in contemporary diaspora communities. These diaspora communities have a number of distinctive features that are having widespread affects on the practice of Sacred Harp singing. Pilgrimages to faraway conventions, particularly to those in the South, are an important aspect of joining this community to a number of members of these new diaspora communities. People are no longer motivated primarily for the sake of worship within Southern Protestant systems, but have a number of reasons for singing, including emotional expression, musical appreciation, and more individualized forms of worship.
Discussion question: How is it possible that so many people can respond to Sacred Harp singing both with a fascination with its exoticism and "otherness" and also with its familiarity? How does this paradoxical state relate to other liminal or insider/outsider states that members of other music cultures, such as Deborah Wong and Kofi Agawu, occupy?
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