Sacred Harp singing is a folk tradition that had its origin in the southern United States during the nineteenth century. Named after the most successful of the numerous shape-note tune books that were compiled in that region and period, The Sacred Harp (1844), the tradition as practiced in the South includes a number of time-honored customs such as opening and closing the session with prayer, shared leadership, arrangement of the singers into a “hollow square” with the leader in the middle, and singing the tune using solmization syllables before performing the words.

These practices have been well documented elsewhere. Less widely discussed has been what Kiri Miller calls the “Sacred Harp diaspora,” the spread of the tradition into such far-flung locations (both geographically and socially/politically) as Massachusetts, Illinois, and California. This diaspora forms the subject of Traveling Home. Miller's focus is not on the local Sacred Harp sing “where most participants are related by blood or marriage” but on the “Sacred Harp convention that draws many travelers from far-off places” (28) and that are usually at least two-day affairs. Further, her emphasis is not principally on the texts or music of The Sacred Harp—though there is discussion of both—but centers “first and foremost on the ethnography of a musical community,” reflecting “themes that are of burning importance in both American cultural studies and on-the-ground American politics: tolerance, voluntary association, diaspora, pluralism, authenticity, stereotype, and nostalgia” (20).

The author draws upon a wide variety of sources, including scholarly works on shape-note and folk hymnody, personal interviews with and questionnaires completed by singers, personally overheard comments at Sacred Harp sings, regional and state Sacred Harp newsletters, and perusals of listservs devoted to Sacred Harp singing. (The irony of the last-named as a means of communication among “traditional” singers should not be overlooked).

Southern Sacred Harp singers have generally viewed the diaspora as a positive development, one that helps keep alive what once appeared to be a dying phenomenon. At the same time, however, Miller points out that the diaspora has created certain tensions within the Sacred Harp community. Southern singers worry that newcomers and those outside the central tradition may not fully understand or practice the heritage in the proper way. The diaspora folk, on the one hand, have their own ideas and contributions to make. For example, the Sacred Harp was compiled and published in the South by southerners, and the tradition of shape-note singing was kept alive there after it had gone out of fashion in the North. On the other hand, much of the music in the tune book was written by Yankee tunesmiths of the late eighteenth century and shape-note notation originated in the Middle Atlantic states; thus, some northern singers claim the tradition as their own as much as do southern singers. There are further divisions between those who maintain the tradition from a Christian perspective—thus as part of a religious heritage (Sacred Harp texts are almost exclusively sacred in orientation)—and those who hold atheist, agnostic, or social views that are at odds with typical southern religious belief, approaching the singing mainly from the perspective of folk music enthusiasts (much of the music in The Sacred Harp derives from oral tradition).

Miller points out that dichotomies such as these are seldom openly expressed at actual singings, and that when they are, they are usually frowned upon. The general spirit is one of toleration and unity around a beloved book and tradition: southern singers are respected in the diaspora as the authentic transmitters of an unbroken tradition, and the encouragement of diaspora singers by southerners is a necessary component of the increased use and popularity of the shape-note idiom. Essentially, the two groups need each other, and Miller's treatment of both is fair and evenhanded. Still, the tensions remain.

Those who have no acquaintance with the Sacred Harp tradition might first want to read Buell E. Cobb, Jr.'s The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and Its Music (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989) as an introduction to the subject, then read Miller's book to see how the practices and principles described by Cobb are carried out in the diaspora. Of course, the best way to understand Sacred Harp singing is to do it; over and over in both Miller's book (including comments quoted from the singers themselves) and in other sources it is described as “not listener's music” but as something in which the only real benefits come through participation. But for those who are not able to attend singings in the Sacred Harp diaspora, Kiri Miller has done an excellent job of describing and evaluating the current scene in one of the most distinctive traditions of American sacred song. And for those who are able to attend such events, she has provided a good discussion of the issues and rewards to be found in the spread of this unique phenomenon.