Sacred Harp singing is a uniquely American synthesis: religion and release, the loud sound of olden times and the joy in the ever-present now, traditional practices that hold together hundreds of raw, raucous human voices. It's sometimes asked, "Why does the Devil get all the best music?" In this case, God (or as author Th.

Metzger claims - the gods) gave to America a wild gift. Birthed before the U.

S. was a nation, ebbing and swelling across the centuries, Sacred Harp singing is not just a collection of old hymns, but a vibrant social phenomenon, drawing in singers from far beyond the church.

Driven into rural backwaters, where it hung on during its lean decades, in the twenty-first century, it is experiencing a renaissance, after northerners ventured to get the taste and feel, not just the sound, that has survived in pockets in the Deep South. Free and democratic, this is music for amateurs in the truest sense, that is, for those compelled by love, rather than a desire for money or accolades.

Underneath the thin veneer of piety, singers - both old and new - feel a powerful, insistent, heartbeat. Strong Songs of the Dead is the tale of a journey, not a mere travelog, but venturing back into ancestral time, to that place called by some "That Old Weird America.

" Th. Metzger goes in with eyes and ears wide open.

And he goes deep, in more than one case singing in the heart of the earth, as though to discover the secret subterranean well-springs of the sound. The living and the dead, the lost and the found, strangers and dear friends, join him on this journey.

A current of darkness runs through Sacred Harp singing; and neither does Strong Songs of the Dead shy away from grief, loss, and longing. Like the songs at the heart of the story, the chapters of Metzger's memoir are short, plentiful, and unrestrained, yet they all lead to themes of heartfelt living and holy dying.

There is tragedy here, but through all that pulses a passionate vitality, an irrepressible cry for life. .