Gathered around the hollow square, their wide flat books propped in one hand to leave the other free to move and sway, the tenors intone the pitch back to the leader. Everyone hums; the altos, sopranos and basses sing the song’s first shaped note in a protracted, harmonic reverie of vocal tuning.

They hold the note a moment; two. Literally, and in mind, everyone’s on the same page now.

The singing starts. Hollow, open chords sung with a rough-hewn abandon bordering on hoarseness, words of praise — many of them austere by contemporary standards of worship — ring out in a stomp-paced din that possesses all the beautiful refinement of a freshly-split hickory log.

Sacred Harp singing is a musical endeavor that engages nearly all the senses, or seems to. For those whose young life was spent in the rural South half a century or more ago, the feel, the sound, the camaraderie, the message and the behaviors unique to the tradition are familiar — even though the practice of meeting to sing shaped-note songs of praise and admonition now occupies a niche role in the religiously fervid deep-south territory it once dominated.

The tradition does still live on. The Cullman County Courthouse has hosted an annual Sacred Harp singing for more than 100 years — the exact number is a matter enthusiasts are still researching. According to local singer Buell Cobb, this year’s singing likely represents the 114th iteration of the event in Cullman County.

“What I came across, just recently, was the minutes from the 1930 Alabama state [Sacred Harp] convention,” Cobb told those assembled at the courthouse last weekend. The annual courthouse Sacred Harp singing held its 33rd annual session at the courthouse at Cullman, Alabama on the 12th and 13th of July 1930…so, if we follow this, this session here today would be not the 118th but the 114th.”

The core of dedicated singers drawn to Sacred Harp is more mixed than it used to be — far more so.

Old timers and newcomers alike agree there’s one fundamental aesthetic that binds the spirit of Sacred Harp singing: If your heart’s not in it, you’re not doing it right.

So says young blood Alvaro Duarte, a 21 year-old Massachusetts enthusiast who swerved through Cullman last week to catch the courthouse singing as part of a trip down south to attend a Sacred Harp convention at Sand Mountain.

“It’s a participatory event where everybody comes, everybody sits; everybody has a book in their hand,” he said during one break between hour-long rounds of singing. “You have to let go and really become a part of it. Hugh McGraw, who’s one of the old patriarchs of singing — he has a well-known quote. He said,  ‘I would drive 80 miles to sing Sacred Harp, but I would not walk across the street to listen to it.'”

Pop culture helps revive the Sacred Harp tradition and breathes new life into its ranks. Duarte confesses that he became enthralled by the music after hearing it sung on the soundtrack to the 2003 film Cold Mountain.

“I heard it from Cold Mountain, and that’s how a lot of northern people came to it,” he said.  “I saw the movie, listened to the songs, and got into some contact with some people over the internet. I listened to Sacred Harp about a year before I jumped on board singing, just to get accustomed to the sound. There’s not a lot of strong singings in the North like there are here — here, almost every weekend there’s a convention somewhere in Alabama or Georgia. I really wish I had been able to grow up with it.”

Back when Sacred Harp didn’t depend on blips on the entertainment radar to thrust it into public consciousness, back in the older South, the singings weren’t just pleasant little affairs one might stumble across by accident — they were well-anticipated and major community events you couldn’t miss.

“This used to be a major thing; there was a singing in 1935 right here in Cullman, where the old courthouse used to be, and the entire courthouse was filled,” said Susan Cherones of Mentone. who came to Cullman’s singing with her niece Jessica.  “They had people streaming out into the hallways and out into the street. This was a big event, and everybody knew about it.”

Even today, the singings aren’t all about the music. Well, no – they are. But the music brings the people together, and these are people who know how to get together. They can turn a sterile, fluorescent-lit, white-walled courtroom of artless 1960s design into a fellowship hall where potluck food, chatter and even the music — especially the music — all serve as conduits that connect people.

There’s an invisible interaction among the singers — many of whom may be meeting for the first time — when a song gets underway.

Participation is key to Sacred Harp, and for onlookers it can be hard to tell — with apologies to Mr. McGraw — whether it’s the listener or the singer who’s really more under the music’s spell.

Done right, the singing almost always proceeds from people who seem to have lost themselves; to have succumbed to a seemingly ancient, inherited form. Each seems rapt in his attentiveness to the part he plays, but all somehow manage to create a unique way of carrying out a song that’s been sung ten thousand times before.

They’re on the same page, in every sense.

* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com, or by telephone at 734-2131, ext. 270.