Cory Winters Sacred Harp Singers

Sacred Harp singing is more than performance: it is a community ritual. Singers gather in a hollow square, facing one another rather than an audience, with each voice section taking a side. The result is a powerful wall of sound that participants describe as much a spiritual practice as a musical one.

Cory Winters leads a Northwest Arkansas shapenote singing group rooted in the Sacred Harp tradition, an unaccompanied four-part American hymn style that traces back to early nineteenth-century New England and traveled south through the singing schools of Appalachia and the rural South. This Sunday-morning gathering brings the open-singing tradition to the People’s Stage, where anyone is welcome to take a seat in the square and join in.