Songs of joy and lamentation, sometimes majestic and soaring, often deliberate and pining, have made their way through a dry land, away from the spotlight of whatever music the world was singing. Time and faith brought together a diverse group of people who, each in their own way, believed. They believed not only in these particular songs and in the artist who wrote them, but also in the heritage of music and faith that inspired the folk singers at Newport, the hymn writers of England and early America, the blues and jazz performers of Memphis and New Orleans, and the world-beat of Austin and Cape Town. Men and women have always sung songs of war and peace, labor and liberation, passion and prejudice. These songs are a small link in the chain of writers seeking the God who is seeking man; hoping, in the end, to make right what is wrong, make pure what has been sullied, and make beautiful again those things we've all forgotten.