Old Hundred by HarnessingHarmony published on 2020-08-20T01:21:28Z What could early American music sound like if it had been written and performed today? Can a sense of its appeal translate across time? We challenged ourselves to find out and are excited to present this album, which completely re-imagines historical music for the 21st-century. Composed by Running Notch and produced as an accompaniment to Billy Coleman’s book, "Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788–1865" (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), each track takes a song discussed in Harnessing Harmony and reinterprets it in an entirely new way. We do not attempt to recreate what these songs sounded like before 1865 (in an era before sound recording technology existed). But we do try to translate these “historic” tunes into pieces that make musical sense to modern ears. We hope that it may convey a certain essence of what could have made this music appealing and attractive to people in the first place. It is also meant to be plenty of fun! The soundtrack can be enjoyed in combination with the book or on its own. Either way, we hope it offers readers and listeners with an innovative connection to the past. It is free to stream or download from this website and elsewhere Check out www.harnessingharmonysoundtrack.com. Genre Soundtrack
