#i'mgoinghome

Well I'm going home, Back to the place where I belong. And where your love has always been enough for me.

Line singing, from Thornton Old Regular Baptist Church, 1983, via the Alan Lomax Archive

Going back to the 17th century, and still practiced today in some parts of Appalachia, line singing is a kind of call and response - the song leader sings a line for the congregation to repeat, working line by line through the hymn.  Initially, it was created as a work around for illiterate parishioners, allowing them to sing freely without having to read or memorize lyrics.

It sounds hypnotic, slightly melancholic, but has a deepness.  Tough folks, leading hard, but true, lives, believing and singing about a better place.  The oldest soul music.

Elwood Cornett, Moderator (elected leader) of the Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptists, wrote: "We Old Regular Baptists are a peculiar people. We sing differently. Some say our worship has a sad and mournful sound. But I've never heard a more beautiful melody, and the sound of the worship causes my heart to feel complete."