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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶
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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶

Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: Faith and Foodways in Alabama

ORAL HISTORY

David Ivey

Camp Fasola

David Ivey, born in 1955, grew up on Sand Mountain in Northeast Alabama. He often says he started singing Sacred Harp before he was born. Ivey attended his first all day singing before the age of one. His love for the singing tradition grew from there. He and his wife Karen attend singings in Alabama most weekends.

Ivey studied Computer Science at Auburn University and is the Program Director for General Dynamics Information Technology. He and his wife live in Huntsville, Alabama. The Iveys helped establish a Sacred Harp singing school, Camp Fasola in 2002, held each summer in Double Springs, Alabama. Ivey is the president of the Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association and serves on the committee working to revise the Sacred Harp songbook.

Date of interview:
2019-09-12

Interviewer:
Michelle Little

Photographer:
Cary Norton

Download Transcript

“

"We’re storytelling people, certainly that. We probably don’t have enough people telling stories. And we talked about eating and having dinner on the grounds that you know certainly almost any time when people . . . have a need and they want to do something together they often are eating. And so we do both, singing and eating and we do a lot of it.” - David Ivey

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