DULUTH — Once a month, typically on a Sunday afternoon, the Friends Meeting House is filled with voices singing together. It's not a performance because everyone present is involved in the singing.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Laura Atkinson and Justin Hicks of Louisville Public Media about shape note singing and its influence across the American musical tradition.

PITTSBURGH – Alexa Kay is a Quaker, a denomination which has embraced simplicity and shunned more extravagant forms of worship, even singing. Nevertheless, Kay likes to sing, and that’s what led her ...

The crowded room echoes with lilting voices raised in a simple, timeless song. There are no instruments, no audience. Just a chorus of four-part harmonies sung from a book that's as thick as a Bible.