Harmony is serious business where the Dedicated Men of Zion come from. For their eldest member, Anthony “Amp” Daniels, it was so serious that every day his mother would call her children inside, turn off the television, and make them sing in harmony, talk in harmony, do everything in harmony. Singing well together was a virtue that she and her sisters had learned from their own father, and Anthony gave it to his children in return. Older folks in the Black communities of rural North Carolina relied on that singing for everything at a time when both respect and money were scarce. “That’s where that seriousness is from,” Daniels remembers. “They demand respect. They’re serious about what they do, and they don’t play with God.”

The Dedicated Men of Zion came up out of this environment in Eastern North Carolina, around the city of Greenville and its small neighboring town of Farmville. Each trained in the church and the home, and the group’s four vocalists—Anthony Daniels, Antwan Daniels, Marcus Sugg, and Dexter Weaver—share the bond of that upbringing. Theirs is a community dense with talent drawn from the origins of gospel, funk, R & B, soul, and jazz.