There was bit on the topic on NPR's Morning Edition this morning, concerning a conference at Yale Univerisity. The Appalachian white Primitive Baptist singing was brought in, but for the UK sources, still only the Scottish/Gaelic was mentioned.

The following is from the conference website:

Line Singing Conference and concluding "Singing Service" at Yale
May 5 and 6, 2005

Common roots of centuries-old psalm singing traditions in Scotland and among blacks in the Deep South, discovered by Willie Ruff, will be celebrated at Yale Conference Singers from the Scottish Hebrides, Kentucky, and Alabama will join scholars for two days of talks, demonstrations, and "A Jubilee Conjoining" May 5 and 6

The startling connection between a centuries-old form of psalm-singing in the Highlands of Scotland and a similar tradition among descendants of African slaves in America and the West Indies will be explored at a conference at Yale University on May 5 and 6, 2005. The highlight of the historic event will be a singing service, in which the practitioners of this musical form of worship from Scotland, Kentucky, and Alabama will join in "Singing the lines" from the Psalms of David. The featured singers include twelve members of the Free Church Psalm Singers of the Isle of Lewis, Scotland; twenty members of the Indian Bottom Old Regular Baptists of Southeastern Kentucky, and twenty members of the Sipsey River Primitive Baptist Association of Eutaw, Alabama.

The Yale Conference on Line Singing has been organized by Yale music professor Willie Ruff, who discovered the connections between the European and New World traditions. Ruff had been intrigued by stories shared by his old friend, the late jazz legend and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, that black slaves in North and South Carolina spoke and worshipped in Gaelic. In 2003, Ruff visited the Scottish Hebrides islands and found remote congregations worshipping in a manner similar to what he heard in Alabama as he was growing up. He asserts that Scottish settlers in America passed on their forms of worship and religious musical traditions to their slaves, with remnants of this tradition still heard among isolated congregations on both sides of the Atlantic. Consequently, "presenting the line," the unaccompanied singing of psalms in Gaelic by Presbyterians of the Scottish Hebrides, is itself at the root of "lining out," a practice found among many black congregations in the American South.

The connection between the Scottish and American traditions has stirred an enormous amount of interest in Great Britain and the United States. In addition to a number of newspaper articles, three television documentaries have already been made for Scottish television (one version in Gaelic), filmed partly during a visit to Alabama by Scottish line singers last year.

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~ Becky in Tucson