Tim Cook
My blogs
| Introduction | This blog was born out of desire to promote shape-note singing to the world. After I learned shape notes, I could do what I never could do with conventional round notes: sing music straight off the page at first sight. Doing that with other shape-note singers in four-part harmony is a joy and a blessing that can hardly be described. An ESL teacher by profession, I am a longtime shape-note singer from having lived 20 years in the homeland of shape-note singing, the American Deep South. My first singing in 1996, the monthly Sacred Harp singing in Alpharetta, Georgia, was like a bolt from heaven and I knew I had to do this. I can hardly hide my pride that the Alabama State Council on the Arts later designated me as a master folk artist for teaching shape-note singing, or as I like to say, teaching Alabamians their own culture. Since 2015, I have lived in Japan where a friend and I have started two monthly singings, one for singing the four-shape Sacred Harp and the other for singing Christian Harmony and other seven-shape music. Find us at http://tokyosacredharp.blogspot.com/ or on Facebook at "Tokyo Sacred Harp." |
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