19 June 2020. Fisk Jubilee Singers.
Fisk School, one of a handful of Southern colleges founded soon after the Civil War, took on the challenge of providing an educational setting for Black Americans who'd never had never had that possibility in times of slavery. ("The first stuydents ranged in age from seven to seventy, but shared common experiences of slavery and poverty...") A private missionary effort, finances for the endeavor were constantly a problem--but perhaps a choral group could be organized to perform and raise funds? The idea took off, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers have been with us ever since.
Their repertory included spirituals and other songs from the South--but for the first time the performers were Black Americans themselves, rather than their blackface caricatures (generally white performers) in minstrel shows. In other words, they sang the songs as they knew them--as they'd lived them. This made their versions distinct--and proved invaluable to the story of American popular music.
They Fisk Jubilee Singers also made some of the first recordings of this material. Take Swing Low Sweet Chariot, for example--a song we all grew up with and might think of as timeless. But in fact we have it in the form we do because the Fisk Jubilee Singers put it on a record in 1909.
There was no doubt some idealizing along the way (the group even performed a number of Stephen Foster tunes) and since audiences for their touring shows were drawn from the population as a whole, the songs were no doubt rounded off a bit--generalized, made appealing (think of Harry Belafonte's calypso for listeners who knew nothing of life in Jamaica.) But that always happens with popular music--that's why it's popular! And in any case, what the Fisk Jubilee Singers brought us--that they made these songs a part of American life--remains a gift, ongoing.
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Their repertory included spirituals and other songs from the South--but for the first time the performers were Black Americans themselves, rather than their blackface caricatures (generally white performers) in minstrel shows. In other words, they sang the songs as they knew them--as they'd lived them. This made their versions distinct--and proved invaluable to the story of American popular music.
They Fisk Jubilee Singers also made some of the first recordings of this material. Take Swing Low Sweet Chariot, for example--a song we all grew up with and might think of as timeless. But in fact we have it in the form we do because the Fisk Jubilee Singers put it on a record in 1909.
There was no doubt some idealizing along the way (the group even performed a number of Stephen Foster tunes) and since audiences for their touring shows were drawn from the population as a whole, the songs were no doubt rounded off a bit--generalized, made appealing (think of Harry Belafonte's calypso for listeners who knew nothing of life in Jamaica.) But that always happens with popular music--that's why it's popular! And in any case, what the Fisk Jubilee Singers brought us--that they made these songs a part of American life--remains a gift, ongoing.
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The name Jubilee was chosen to reflect the Jubilee Year in the Hebrew Bible--a time of release--including the forgiveness of debt and the liberation of servants and slaves--along with a general increase of righteousness in the world...
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Note: Fisk's "The first students ranged in age from seven to seventy, but shared the common expewriences of slavery and poverty--and an extraordinaery thirst for learniung."
Note on the rounding off process. Listen to a song like Oh Mary Don't You Weep, first recorded by the Fisk Singers in 1915 in an engaging uptempo version--one which no doubt inspired later recordings such as the Swan Silvertones in 1958, and soon enough, in a more-generalized-for-everyone treatment, became a standard in the folk revival (Pete Seeger taught whole auditoriums to sing along, often in harmony.) But at the same time there was a parallel church gospel version--incantatoryy, almost a different song--Aretha Franklin's in 1962 is a compelling example--or a more recent recording by the gospel group Trinitry 5:7. To my ear, at least, it's in these "church" versions that we get hints of what the song originally sounded like--and what it meant in the world it came from. But more on this in another post...)
Note on the rounding off process. Listen to a song like Oh Mary Don't You Weep, first recorded by the Fisk Singers in 1915 in an engaging uptempo version--one which no doubt inspired later recordings such as the Swan Silvertones in 1958, and soon enough, in a more-generalized-for-everyone treatment, became a standard in the folk revival (Pete Seeger taught whole auditoriums to sing along, often in harmony.) But at the same time there was a parallel church gospel version--incantatoryy, almost a different song--Aretha Franklin's in 1962 is a compelling example--or a more recent recording by the gospel group Trinitry 5:7. To my ear, at least, it's in these "church" versions that we get hints of what the song originally sounded like--and what it meant in the world it came from. But more on this in another post...)
