Awake My Soul: The Story Of The Sacred Harp

Over the course of 7 years, Atlanta filmmakers/ Sacred Harp singers,Matt & Erica Hinton, created Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp,the first feature documentary to explore the history, music, and traditionsof Sacred Harp singing, the oldest distinctively American music. Thishaunting music has survived over 200 years tucked away from sight inthe rural deep South, where Sacred Harp singers begin each song byintoning syllables which are represented by each "shapenote" in theirhymnal: fa, sol, la, and mi (triangle, oval, square and diamond). To thecasual observer, it is some foreign, unintelligible language, but to theseSacred Harp singers, it is the key that unlocks mysteries: songs of bothbeauty and sorrow, of life and of death, songs that cause feet to stompand tears to flow, often at the same time. Awake, My Soul has airednationwide on PBS and has been featured in TIME, Paste Magazine, NYTimes, Pitchfork, SPIN and on NPR.