I haven’t read the book Cold Mountain, nor have I seen the movie, but I do know that its soundtrack has some great Sacred Harp music on it!

In a nutshell, Sacred Harp is the degenerate, revolutionary child of English choral music. It’s raw, it’s rough, and it’s definitely not cultivated. But it’s beautiful in its own way, and the passion in which it’s sung makes it powerful to hear.

Cold Mountain is set in the heyday of Sacred Harp singing, the American Civil War. Some musicians criticized the movie soundtrack because it uses trained singers instead of the “authentic”, untrained amateurs that are associated with this tradition. Authentic or not, the music and text have the strength to really hit home.