“Coming from this family, we didn’t have any choice but to sing,” says KeAmber Daniels, one sixth of North Carolina’s Faith & Harmony. “It’s something we were born into, and we’re very excited to follow in the footsteps of our grandparents and parents. But most of all, we just have a lot of fun singing together.” Their family is full of pioneers who’ve defined the raw energy and heavenly harmonies of Eastern North Carolina gospel. They’re the granddaughters of Johnny Ray Daniels and Dorothy Vines, who founded the legendary gospel act the Glorifying Vines Sisters in 1958. Their brothers and male cousins sing in the group Dedicated Men of Zion, and their great uncle, Freeman Vines, is a celebrated folk artist who constructs beautiful guitars out of wood from a hanging tree.

These sisters and cousins—Daniels, Andrea Edwards, Christy Moody, Kadesha Speight, Alexandria Sugg, and Tinesha Weaver—honor that tradition, but they also make it their own, putting their own spin on these sounds and styles. They preserve, but also innovate. “I don’t even call it gospel,” says Edwards. “When we sing, people are jumping around dancing. They’re doing the Twist. We call it Inspirational Beach Music. Or Sacred Soul. Those are better descriptions of what we do.”

Drawing deep from their church repertoire and adding a few well-chosen covers and an original by Daniels, I Heard the Voice showcases six indelible personalities whose voices melt together in joyful harmony. “We all grew up together and we all spent time apart,” says Speight. “But when we get together, you wouldn’t know we were ever separated. It’s just who we are. It’s definitely stronger than just people singing together, because we’re all family. It’s in our blood. We bleed it.”

They learned to sing at the Union Grove Baptist Church in Farmville, a small town of a few thousand souls outside of Greenville. “We were going to church all the time, practicing with my dad,” says Daniels. “That’s what made us fall in love with music.” They first sang together as a group in 2012, during a church ceremony honoring their grandfather, and the joy and strength they felt in that moment inspired them to keep singing. Says Sugg, “The way we chose our name is, we opened up a hymnal to the index in the back, and we just went through the list of words until we stopped on Faith. Then we added the Harmony because that’s what we love to do.”

As they grew up and started families of their own, they weren’t always able to gather and perform as often as they wanted, but the bonds of blood connected them. “When we started, we were really young and unsure about things,” says Edwards. “When our kids got a little older, we were able to go out and travel more and accept more engagements and explore the possibilities of what Faith & Harmony could be. We did some festivals around North Carolina and down in Florida. We’re used to singing in churches, but we’re open to trying new things and new places.”

“To look out there and see people dancing to your music and enjoying what you love to do,” says Weaver, “that puts an irremovable smile on your face. All of us love to sing. I don’t think there’s one day that goes by when we don’t sing while we’re cleaning or cooking or bathing the kids or just doing our hair. We sing every single day of our lives.”

In early 2023, the group traveled to Memphis to record their debut for the Sacred Soul label Bible & Tire Records (which has released albums by Daniels and the Dedicated Men of Zion). “Our family tried to get us ready,” says Christy Moody. “They kept telling us: Okay, you’re gonna have to do this and you’re gonna have to do that. We were a little bit nervous going into it, but once we got there and started singing, we thoroughly enjoyed it.” One of the most encouraging members of their family was Dorothy Vines herself, who was excited that her granddaughters were carrying the family tradition forward. Sadly, she passed before she got to hear the final album.

“We’ve been singing some of these songs for a while,” says Daniels. “Some of us brought new songs to the group, and Bible & Tire sent us a couple of ideas. We all chose what we liked and talked about which songs would sound good with which voices.” One of the label’s suggestions was the title track, a funky, psychedelic number originally recorded in 1972 by the renowned Elizabeth King (their new Bible & Tire labelmate). “When I heard that song, I definitely thought it could fit with our group,” says Speight. “We could put our spin on it, and we thought Tanisha could really do a good job with it.” On their version, they emphasize the ecstatic explosions of harmony that herald the main vocal melody—ooh-ooh-ooh waah!—and turn Memphis gospel into a beach music raver.

“It’s more than just us girls singing,” says Weaver. “There’s something greater than each of us in this group. We do spend time with each other and we can act silly together and be very serious together. We do have moments when we butt heads, because one, we’re all human, and two, we’re all women. But we can be honest with each other in our singing because we’re honest with each other in our day-to-day lives. We support each other when life happens.”

Sometimes supporting each other means gently pushing them to try new things, to take a risk with their voices. Moody was initially reluctant to sing lead on “Crying in the Streets,” a deeply moving number that conveys immense empathy for the poor and unhoused. It’s a feat of control and expression: Every note sounds like she’s holding back tears, as though the pain of the world is too much to bear. “They kept telling me I’d sound really good singing this song. I played it in the car and my husband heard it and said the same thing. I didn’t really feel like I could go anywhere with it, but they wouldn’t let me give up on it. I was just being hard-headed, and now I’m so glad we kept it.”

For many family groups, the demands of touring, recording, and performing can rend even the strongest bonds, but with Faith & Harmony, the kinship between these women only makes the group stronger, the harmonies more glorious. “I think we’re able to hold together because we really want to be around each other,” says Daniels. “Outside of singing, we’re already honest and open with each other, so we don’t just depend on each other for singing. We depend on each other in every way as mothers and as sisters and as cousins who feel like sisters.”

-Stephen Deusner