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Access to audio materials may require production of listening copies.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Diane Sasson field recordings of religious songs from western North Carolina #20143, Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Acquisitions information unknown (Acc. 20201113.1).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Anne Wells, November 2020

Encoded by: Anne Wells, November 2020

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

Archival processing of the Diane Sasson Collection was made possible through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Buncombe County (N.C.)--Songs and music.
• Cherokee Indians--Music.
• Cherokee Indians--North Carolina.
• Cherokee Indians--Songs and music.
• Gospel music--North Carolina.
• Graham County (N.C.)--Songs and music.
• Religious life and customs--North Carolina.
• Sacred music--North Carolina.
• Sasson, Diane, 1946-
• Shape-note singing--North Carolina.
• Songs, English--North Carolina.
• Spirituals (Songs)--North Carolina.

• Southern Folklife Collection Field Notes #30025
• Laurel Horton and Diane Sasson Field Recording of Sarah White #20090

Diane Sasson received her doctorate in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of The Shaker Spiritual Narrative (1983), Yearning for the New Age: Laura Holloway-Langford and Late Victorian Spirituality (2012), and various articles on American folklore and communal societies. She was Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program at Duke University; served as President of the National Association of Graduate Liberal Studies; and was a faculty member at Vanderbilt University. She now resides in North Carolina with her husband, Jack M. Sasson.

Field recordings of various versions of the religious song, "Looking for the Stone," and other religious songs recorded in western North Carolina, including Buncombe County, N.C. and Graham County, N.C. Diane Sasson, a white author and educator, made the recordings for her term paper on the song "Looking for the Stone" when she was a student in a southern folklore course at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The audio recordings feature various musicians in Asheville, Buncombe County, N.C. and West Buffalo, Graham County, N.C. Of particular note is a field recording of a Cherokee church service in Graham County, N.C., which includes a gospel song, "Children of the Heavenly King", and an early shape-note tune from the Cherokee oral tradition. The recordings also feature, Lynn Trull, a male vocalist with the Copper Basin Christian choir singing "Heaven is My Aim," a camp meeting spiritual, and a recording of the congregation of the Cedar Cliff Baptist Church, both in West Buffalo, Graham County, N.C. The collection also contains supporting documentation, including a cover sheet prepared by former North Carolina Folk Music Archives staff, as well as sheet music for "Heaven is My Aim". Recordings are on 1/4" open reel audio. According to supporting documentation, these open reel tapes may be dubs from Diane Sasson's original audiocassettes.

• Audiotapes (FT-1809-1811; FT-6269)
• Field Notes (Folder 656), Southern Folklife Collection Field Notes #30025