Querying the Past through the Minutes of Sacred Harp Singings, 1900–Present

Projects and Research

Projects

Fasola Minutes App

Minutes and Directory

Crop of the front cover of the 2022 minutes book, illustrating a typical cover of the contemporary publication.

Mapping Sacred Harp

Map visualizing locations of Sacred Harp singings in continental North America grouped by region.

Recording Identifier

A stack of amateur recordings of Sacred Harp singings on open reel tapes.

Elective Tempo in Decentralized Music Cultures

A colorful graph representing an autocorrelation tempogram from a Sacred harp recording.

Research

Watch the first public presentation featuring our team’s analysis of data from the minutes: “True Stories from the Minutes Books,” presented at the Camp Fasola Singing School in 2013.

Articles

Rees, Nathan K. “The Sacred Harp ‘Minutes Book’: Centering Tradition for an Expanding Community in the Digital Age.” American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism 30, no. 1 (March 24, 2020): 60–80.
Karlsberg, Jesse P., and Robert A. W. Dunn. “Mapping the ‘Big Minutes’: Visualizing Sacred Harp’s Geographic Coalescence and Expansion, 1995–2014.” Southern Spaces Blog, January 23, 2018.
Karlsberg, Jesse P., and Mark T. Godfrey. “Seasonal Songs.” Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter 4, no. 2 (December 31, 2015).
Karlsberg, Jesse P., Mark T. Godfrey, and Nathan Rees. “The Cold Mountain Bump: Hollywood’s Effect on Sacred Harp Songs and Singers.” Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter 2, no. 3 (December 31, 2013).

Presentations

Karlsberg, Jesse P. and Mark T. Godfrey. “Songs, Singers, and Singings During the 1991 Edition Period, 1992–2025.” Presentation presented at the Camp Fasola Singing School, Anniston, AL, 2026.
Karlsberg, Jesse P. and Mark T. Godfrey. “Greatest and Ungreatest Hits.” Presentation presented at the Camp Fasola Singing School, Double Springs, AL, and Anniston, AL, 2019.
Karlsberg, Jesse P., Nathan K. Rees, Mark T. Godfrey, and Robert A. W. Dunn. “‘In Sweetest Union Join’: Recovering, Identifying, and Sharing Historical Sacred Harp Recordings in Private Collections.” Panel presentation at the Association of Recorded Sound Collections Conference, San Antonio, TX, 2017.
Quinn, Ian. “Mapping Musical Taste in the Sacred Harp Community.” Presentation presented at the Analytical Approaches to World Music Conference, New York, NY, 2016.
Karlsberg, Jesse P., and Mark T. Godfrey. “Assessing Tempo in Practice: Analyzing the Correspondence of Sacred Harp Tempos to Historical Guidelines Using a Tempo Estimator.” Presentation presented at the Analytical Approaches to World Music Conference, New York, NY, 2016.
Karlsberg, Jesse P. “Querying the Sonic Past: Digitization, Data Design, and the Minutes of Sacred Harp Singings.” Presentation presented at the Inertia: Momentum Conference, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 2016.
Karlsberg, Jesse P., Mark T. Godfrey, and Nathan Rees. “True Stories from the Sacred Harp Minutes.” Presentation presented at the Camp Fasola Singing School, Double Springs, AL, and Anniston, AL, 2013.

Grants

Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network Seed Grant, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Project team: Jesse P. Karlsberg (project director); Mark T. Godfrey (technical lead); Erin Fulton (minutes transcription associate); Peace Cyebukayire, Brian Kim, Aman Shaik, Brian Tekadtuera (undergraduate AI associates); Nathan Rees (research associate).
- Amount and term: $4,775, 2024–26