The Moving Star Hall Singers of Johns Island, Charleston County, are nationally recognized for their important contributions to African-American musical heritage. They are a multi-generational family group who belong to Moving Star Hall, one of the last remaining praise houses of the South Carolina Sea Islands. Here a powerful and distinctive form of worship developed during the mid 1800s. The Moving Star Hall Singers’ shouting style of praise-house religious song moves the heart and lifts the spirit.
Since the early 1960s, the Moving Star Hall Singers have performed throughout the United States, from folk festival to city concert hall, bringing the songs, games, stories, and occupational skills of Sea Island culture to a broad and appreciative audience. They have been the subject of numerous record albums, films, and books. The matriarch of the group, Janie Hunter, was recognized in 1984 with a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moving Star Hall Singers received the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Award in 1990.
