Many of the musical figures for this article can be viewed on our Web site at
This article is based in part on the experience of collaborative perfor• mances by the Chamber Singers of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Col• leges, directed by the author, with the Fisk Jubilee Singers under the direction of Paul Kwami and the Howard University Choir under the direction of J. Weldon Norris. Thomas LIO"yc:I is associate professor recently visited Fisk University with a college chamber of music at Haverford choir with the intent of making a pilgrimage to the College, PA, director birthplace of the concert performance of the African- of the choral and vocal American spiritual. While there, we were fortunate to share a studies progtf-}n of concert with the current generation of the Fisk Jubilee Sing• HaverfQ.17:~ Bryn Mawr '·:.:i::·:•·:.. •·:<·' .::· ·:···,...,;~-a ers®, directed by Professor Paul T. Kwami. This landmark Colleges, and artistic campus on a hill looking over Nashville possesses a sense of director of the Bucks County history that permeates not only the buildings and grounds, Cher-al Soc~~-y, Doylestown, PA but also the imaginations of the current students as well, who
The jubilee Singers in Victorian costumes The Sound of the Spirituals in Their OriginalContext on stage in Victorian costumes (on a swel• twentieth century.2 The first known recording of black teringly hot day) and moved into the The young performers sought to emu• spirituals is a Columbia cylinder of the exact same configuration as the eleven late their predecessors by singing with Standard Quartette singing Keep Movin', singers in the famous portrait in Jubilee directness, simplicity, restraint, and reso• recorded in 1894 in Washington, D.C. Hall. They presented a medley of spiritu• lute dignity. In between selections, they (see Example 2
10 CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 sions that would often take place after • The singing was improvisatory in or less freely underneath, within late night worship services, could carry nature, with words and music traditional patterns.11 on for hours, late into the night, with passed on and embellished some songs starting slowly, and then through an oral tradition; this The First Tours of the gradually increasing in tempo until the method was often facilitated by gathering was roused into a frenzy. 8 Other the "call" of a strong lead singer Fisk Jubilee Singers kinds of spirituals could be sung slowly, and the "response" of those In 1867, a white, former Union army and drawn out with great feeling. One of gathered; sergeant named George L. White the early accounts of spirituals sung in (1838-95), became the treasurer and one their original context comes from the abo• • The singing was vigorous. It "would of the first teachers at the Fisk Free Col• litionist leader Frederick Douglass, recall• make the dense old woods, for ored School, funded by the American Mis• ing his days as a slave child on the miles around, reverberate with sionary Association, an abolitionist plantation: their wild songs" with a range organization. After a time, White began of vocal color from "speech• gathering a group of students together for [The spirituals] told a tale of woe like sounds" to "screaming and informal singing in his home, in part to which was then altogether beyond yelling;"!" keep his and their spirits from flagging in my feeble comprehension; they the midst of struggles to keep the new were tones loud, long, and deep, • The musical texture can best be school from going under. He was inspired they breathed the prayer and described as heterophony, by their voices and the dire financial straits complaint of souls boiling over with i.e.; rarely were the songs sung of the college, so he began arranging oc• the bitterest anguish. Every tone purely in unison or with the casional fund-raising concerts for the was testimony against slavery, and independence of individual choir. The repertoire was drawn from the a prayer to God for deliverance polyphonic voices, but there popular songs of the day, abolitionist from chains .... [I] did not, when was also no dear harmonic or hymns, Scottish folks songs, and eventu• a slave, understand the deep rhythmic uniformity: The lead ally complete cantatas.12 meaning of those rude and voice carried the melody while The second president of the new
apparently incoherent songs.9 other voices harmonized more school, Adam Knight Spence, wrote in
From these and other contemporary sources, several elements of the original performance style of the spirituals can be deduced:
• Everyone who gathered together par• ticipated in the singing, some times at post-worship meetings with hundreds at a time-there was no passive audience;
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CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 11 1871 of an incident: "[O]ne day there no voice except a soloist's was to be came into my room a few students with heard above another. some air of mystery. The door was shut and locked, the window curtains were Because they were reluctant to drawn, and, as if a thing they were expose their songs to white ears, and ashamed of, they sang some of the because they would so often have old-time religious slave songs now to rehearse their pieces in hotel long since known as Jubilee rooms, their pianissimi [sic] would songs."13 Ella Sheppard, the become a kind of signature of the leader of this group of students, Jubilee sound. White used to 'tell who would become lead so• the singers to put into the tone prano, pianist, and onstage di• the intensity that they would give rector of the Jubilee Singers, to the most forcible one that they wrote of this experience: could sing, and yet to make it as "[Slitting upon the floor (there soft as they possibly could.' were but few chairs) [we sang] [T]hey sang with 'so much feeling softly, learning from each other in every syllable' because 'Mr.
the songs of our fathers. We did White drilled that into us.'15 not dream of ever using them in public.T? The style of singing described here George White began to work seems to be a far cry from the free, closely with the students, transcribing robust communal singing in the fields of some of the songs into musical notation ante-bellum plantations. It would also be and encouraging Ella Sheppard and the hard to dismiss the view of some in the other students to work out arrangements black community at the time that per• of the songs that they could perform in use if we were speaking to the forming the spirituals in concert in this public. White then organized the group audience.' He had a horror of harsh way represented a humiliating accommo• into a resolutely disciplined ensemble. tones: everything was softened; in dation to white audiences. They saw it as Andrew Ward outlines some of the writ• fact, esses [sic] were not just an inappropriate sharing of a part of their ten accounts from the first student sing• softened but sometimes omitted. cultural heritage that was painful and bet• ers concerning George White's approach They were to sing with their ter to be kept within the collective to singing in this way: mouths open wide enough to fit a memory of the people who suffered un• finger between their teeth. The der slavery. By the turn of the century, 'He insisted we use the same singers had to blend with each there were even a few open rebellions in naturalness of expression we would other, listen to the entire ensemble; black colleges such as Fisk and Howard, and in some prominent black churches against the idea of performing spiritu• als.16 As time passes, the achievements of the Fisk Jubilee Singers continue to be appreciated as more courageous and far• reaching in influence than may have been Soeuut~tp Steedtoa realized at the time. 76e e~ 'iii!~ s~ Countering the Images of Black-faced Minstrelsy The final abolition of slavery by the passage of the thirteenth amendment to Specializing exclusively in CD production for choral ensembles, SoundByte the Constitution in 1865 initiated one of Studios is better suited than anyone to handle your recording project. The best the most dramatic social transformations choice for I 00 or I 00,000 CDs, Sound Byte Studios can take your project from in history, as four million newly freed any point, and see it through to completion. slaves began to recreate themselves after We'd like to know what we can do for you! three centuries of servitude, arbitrary sev• erance of family ties, and prohibitions SoundByte Studios www.ChoirCD.com against education. Entire communities 225 East Deerpath Road (866) SO-CHOIR (502-4647) and an educational and economic system Suite 223 had to be created from scratch. Even in Recording Services available nationwide; the northern states to which many of the Lake Forest, lllinois 60045 local engineers in Chicago, Champaign, Indianapolis, and New York newly freed slaves fled, the predominant
12 CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 Assessing the cultural and purely musical images of Af• part of our cultural "wallpaper" at this rican-Americans were derived from black• point that the words or their original con• Achievements of the faced minstrelsy. text are rarely considered.19 Eileen South• Fisk Jubilee Singers Although this movement is sometimes ern summarizes the contradictions of this Seen in this context, it was quite star• viewed today as a quaint, racist relic on musical genre in this way: tling for white audiences to see on stage a the fringe of American culture, it was, in group of nine former slaves, dressed not in the tatters ofJim Crow or the slick-city outfits of Zip Coon, but in simple, digni• fied suits and gowns, performing the spiri• tual songs of the slaves with a restraint, As time passes, the achievementsof control, and expressive intensity that would take the audience's breath away. the Fisk jubilee Singers continue to be One listener closely affiliated with the appreciated as more courageous and singers, Mary Spence, observed: [The opening pianissimo was so] for-reaching in influence than may exquisite in quality, full of the deepest feeling, so exceedinglysoft have been realized at the time. that it could hardly be heard, yet because of its absolute purity carrying to the farthest part of any large hall, it commanded the fact, the dominant form of entertainment The practices of 'Ethiopian' attention of every audience. As the for the entire last half of the nineteenth minstrels in the nineteenth century tone floated out a little louder, century. Offshoots continued into the established unfortunate stereotypes clearer, rose to the tremendous next century, in radio and television shows of black men-as shiftless, crescendo of My Lord Calls Me, and such as Amos 'n Andy, which remained irresponsible, thieving, happy-go• diminished again into exquisite hugely popular into the 1960s. What was lucky 'plantation darkies'-that pianissimo sweetness, the most then also known as "Ethiopian minstrelsy'' persisted into the twentieth century critical enemy was conquered.21 involved the appropriation of black folk on the vaudeville stage, in musical songs by professional white performers comedy, on the movie screen,radio, In four tours between 1871 and 1882, whose faces were blackened by cork. They and television. And yet, blackface the vocal ensemble of between nine and successfully sought to draw laughter at minstrelsywas a tribute to the black eleven singers succeeded beyond anyone's the expense of the black characters they man's music and dance, in that the wildest expectations. They achieved their mimed, in particular the slickly urban leading figuresof the entertainment initial goal of raising a huge sum of money "Zip Coon" and the laggardly plantation world spent the better part of the ($150,000) for the survival of Fisk Uni• hand "Jim Crow." (The latter's name was nineteenth century imitating his versity that would go on to educate a later given to the whole era of racial segre• style." gation in the South).17 Following eman• cipation, black performers also began to form their own minstrel groups, re-claim• ing the material in their own fashion, in order to take advantage of the only av• NEW CHORAL MUSIC FOR 2004 enue to the theater and concert stage avail• by award-winning composer able to them at the time.18 Many of the songs that came out of Elizabeth Alexander this era are still with us today, such as Polly-wolly-doodle, Buffalo Gals, Arkansas ... and some of the world finest poets Traveler, Turkey in the Straw (which is the name of the instrumental version of Ol' Folks, I'm Te/ling You (Langston Hughes) Zip Coon), among many others, because The Earth Called My Friend (Nancy wood) their melodies, originating in black folk I Write This Poem Out Of Darkness (George Ella Lyon) culture, are great tunes that easily and pleasantly stay in the memory. Unlike the Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm (Yehuda Amichal) spirituals, however, the words did not Climb (Edna St. Vincent Miiiay) • Morning Bread (Amy Lowell) originate with the tunes, and often still Why I Pity the Woman Who Never Spills (Joan Wolf Prefontaine) reflect, in subtle or not so subtle ways, the Other Choral Pieces and Excerpts Available on Website Oeafarer CfJress ridicule intended by black-face perform• ers. These songs have become so much a (800) 278-2087 www.seafarerpress.com
CHORAL JOURNAL VOL 45 ISSUE 1 13 range of important leaders, from early literary figures such as WE.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson, to political {T}he jubilees were also pioneers leaders such as John Lewis and Alcee Hastings. The Jubilees introduced the in the dawning struggle for civil rights spiritual songs of the slaves to millions of listeners across the northeastern United States and Europe. In so doing, they by refusing to perform in auditoriums served to preserve a cornerstone of Afri• can-American culture for their own or churches that prohibited attendance people and to bequeath to the world one of its most life-affirming cultural lega• by blacks. cies. Even in the early days of the first tour when they needed every cent of ticket way, such as the segregation of Pullman that higher education was wasted on revenue just to keep going, the Jubilees rail cars in 1880.22 blacks. But without abandoning were also pioneers in the dawning Andrew Ward has aptly summarized their own culture and traditions, the struggle for civil rights by refusing to the lasting impact of the music they per• Jubilees provided vivid and perform in auditoriums or churches that formed and the way they performed it. convincing proof to the contrary. prohibited attendance by blacks. They Their music demonstrated to the confronted the harsh segregation of pub• What the Jubilees accomplished for world that there was something of lic accommodations in the supposedly themselves and the nation was lasting value in African-American more hospitable North, often by remind• to demonstrate the dignity, culture. 23 ing hotel managers and restaurateurs how intelligence, and educability of differently they had been treated in Eu• black Americans. In the circles of Word of the Fisk Jubilee Singers' suc• rope. They had some success in breaking the wealthy, a man might once have cess spread quickly among the other newly a number of racial barriers along the gotten away with casually remarking emerging colleges such as the Hampton Institute in Virginia and the Fairfield Nor• mal Institute in South Carolina. 24 How• ever, this increased touring activity diluted critical financial support for touring en• sembles from church foundations. By the time of the fourth tour of the Fisk Jubilee Singers (1879-82), decreased funding from the American Missionary Associa• tion forced them to operate independently of the university. The Fisk Singers had adopted the name "Jubilee" (associated with the biblical "year of Jubilee" when all slaves were to be freed) to differentiate themselves from minstrel groups and their repertory. 25 However, their popular success had such The National Male Choirs Reperl:Dire 8e StandardsChajr an effect that minstrel groups began to is beingvacated. If you are interested tn tbis position, call themselves "Jubilees," as they took the new sacred songs and added them to please send a resume and short "Statement of Intent" to: portions of their shows, mocking the reli• gious gatherings of the slaves. 26 By the end of the fourth tour, the Nancy Cox, National R&S Chajr declining health of George White and exhaustion of Ella Sheppard led to two 824E.Elm separate Fisk Jubilee Singer groups being Altus, OK 73521 formed by two of their singers, Frederick Loudin and Maggie Porter. Both groups [email protected] toured the world, including East Asia, until the turn of the century. But by then, Applicant submission deadline is St3~1:>.fil'JI:)LgQQ1 the Jubilees were all but lost in the crowd of imitators and minstrel troupes. 27 W E. B. DuBois observed: "Since their day they
14 CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 have been imitated-sometimes well, by Although the company's advertising copy nouncement of the first Fisk recording the singers of Hampton and Atlanta, described the spiritual's religious content promoted a new release of Down Where sometimes ill, by straggling quartets. Cari• as "quaint conceptions" that "sometimes the Big Bananas Grow by black-face co• cature has sought again to spoil the quaint excite to laughter," it nevertheless labeled medians Collins and Harlan-"another beauty of the music, and has filled the air them "folk songs" rather than "coon of those real darky shouts by the ever with many debased melodies which vul• songs," the only category reserved for welcome 'Kings ofComedy."'34 However, gar ears scarce know from the real."28 Black music of any kind. Victor also took Victor's investment in the Fisks paid off, the unusual step of listing the names of as recordings of the Jubilee Quartet re• The Popularityof the quartet on the label as a means of leased between 1910 and the early 1920s, Early Recordings of the assuring the audience of the authenticity primarily by Victor, but also by Colum• of the Fisk connection.32 Their cover bia, have been estimated at over two mil• Fisk JubileeQuartet photo was in concert dress, white tie, and lion copies sold.35 However, the next generation of Fisk tails.33 The page opposite Victor's an- The exigencies of the recording indus- Jubilee Singers created one more major resurgence of the spiritual into main• stream American popular culture. In 1899, John W Work II (1871-1925), a young member of the Fisk faculty, set out to reclaim the integrity of the spiritual by forming a touring male quartet, of which he was first tenor. 29 Reasons for forming a male quartet to carry on the tradition are open to speculation, but the barber• shop quartet movement had begun to flourish around 1895,30 and the voicing of the Fisk Quartet arrangements had some similarities with the sartorial genre, having the top voice float freely in har• mony above the lead melody in the sec• ond tenor. The development of a Fisk Jubilee male quartet may have been beneficial when ten years later John Work negotiated a significant contract with the Victor Talk• ing Machine Company for a series of com• mercial recording sessions. Acoustic recording at the time required perform• ing into a large horn (similar to the Victrola horn seen on Victor's famous "his master's voice" emblem). This reduced the number of performers who could be ef• fectively recorded. Recording engineers tended to favor strong, focused male voices over larger ensembles with a higher or more diffuse sound.31 John Work and his early collaborators (who included James Myers, tenor, Alfred King or Leon O'Hara baritone, and Noah Ryder, bass) certainly met those requirements. Their voices were resonant, vibrant, beautifully centered, and deftly tuned. The four• voiced harmonies were perfectly balanced and rhythmically unified. These impres• sive performances were all done in one or at most two complete recordings. In the early years of an industry that had thus far recorded exclusively white artists, Victor was taking something of a risk by recording the Fisk Quartet.
CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 15 cry had contributed to having the spiri• nizacions worked out by Ella Sheppard cion, and the lower parts moving with tual presented to the world in what was and her fellow Jubilees, the melodic and characteristic harmonic progressions, al• probably an even more intimate and re• harmonic language can be heard as re• beit ones chat have been decided upon in fined style than chat of the first Fisk en• maining connected to the music of the advance.35 sembles. Again, chis would seem to be plantation fields. These arrangements fairly distant from the communal style share several elements chat point to the Performance Characteristics original musical textures of the slave sing• and social context of the oppressive plan• of Early Recordings tation conditions under which the spiri• ers discussed earlier: the call-and-response For example, in the I 909 recording of tuals were first sung. However, insofar as form with a song leader and harmonizers, I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray,36 John the quartet arrangements still reflect the the lead singer taking creative liberties Work's voice soars above the melody quite relatively straightforward choral harrno- with the melody or its upper harrnoniza- freely and expressively, revealing an im• provisatory artistry associated with the spiritual far beyond the vocal conventions of other quartet genres such as barber• shop. (Example 4
16 CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE I cized the plantation life of the slaves while their formal photograph in white tie and formance for the original Fisk Jubilee glossing over the harsh realities of that tails on the cover, would reach millions. Singers, the dignity and emotional direct• life, making them easier for white audi• As different as this was from the picture ness with which the songs were performed ences to hear. Foster's songs were peren• of a large community of people in bond• coaxed a wide range of listeners to re• nial favorites of black minstrel groups as age singing for their collective survival, spond to this music seriously and on its well as the Jubilee Singers, were looked the essential musical form of the spiritu• own expressive terms. upon favorably by no less a black leader als remained intact: unaccompanied sing- of the time than WE.B Du Bois, and were performed by prominent black re• citalists in the twentieth century such as Harry T. Burleigh and Paul Robeson. During the civil rights movement of the Foster's songs were a regular and popu• 1960s, there was a reaction against the legacy of minstrelsy and Foster's proxim• lar part of the Fisk jubilee Singers' ity to the genre, but later scholarship saw his contribution in a more positive light non-spiritual repertoire. for its perceived role in promoting racial reconciliation. 41 At the end of 1916, John Work retired from the quartet and handed over the ing, a lead voice carrying the melody with Musical and Social Upheaval leadership to the second tenor, Reverend an improvisatory feeling, and characteris• in the Jazz Age James Myers, whose wife Henrietta (al• tic harmonization underneath, albeit with The social and musical upheaval of the ways listed as "Mrs. James A. Myers") concert hall clarity. The religious and po• 1920s provided the greatest challenge the also became involved. Though generally litical implications of the texts were prob• spiritual would yet faced in maintaining unheard while doubling one of the middle ably missed by most of an audience still its integrity while avoiding extinction. By parts, she eventually took over leadership enthralled by minstrel tunes. However, as the end of this period, it would find itself of the Fisk Jubilees upon her husband's was the case in a different mode of per- no longer sharing market space with the death in 1928. 42 Recording sessions con• tinued, with Columbia and smaller la• bels,43 but these never sold nearly as well as the earlier Victor recordings (which remained in the catalog until 192844). The performances never quite ascend to the level of the sessions led by Work. A comparison between the 1909 (Victor) and 1920 (Columbia) takes of Roll, Jor• dan, Rol! shows the earlier recording to be much more vibrant and expressively ener• gized with Work's soaring tenor on top.45 (Examples 8 and 9
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18 CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 lee Songs of the United States of America sound and musicality to the genre. where for one or two voices on a part, was the first published collection of spiri• Violinist, violist, and composer Hall improvisation did not need to be written tual arrangements for solo voice and pi• Johnson (1888-1970) formed an en• out. (Figure 1) ano. By the mid- l 920s, outstanding black semble of eight singers in 1925 that grew Johnson's choir and his fresh arrange• concert singers such as Roland Hayes to twenty by the time the choir made its ments were so well received, he was soon (1887-1976), Paul Robeson (1898-1976), New York City concert and Victor re• engaged for a Broadway musical, The and Marian Anderson (1902-93) began cording debuts in 1928.57 (Example 13 Green Pastures (1930), which then to make recordings of the song arrange•
(73) ff > s > A
Rock, E - Ii - jah! Shout, shout! Rock, E - Ii - jah! Com-in' up, Lord - y!
T B
Oh. E - Ii - jah, rock! Shout, shout! E - Ii - jah, rock! Com-in' up, Lord, Oh,
> > >
Com - in' up, Lord. s A
jah! Com - in' up, Lord.
T B
E - Ii - jah, rock! Shout, shout! E - Ii - jah, rock! Com - in' up, Lord.
Figure 1. Hall Johnson, Elijah Rock, mm. 74 - 80.
CHORAL JOURNAL VOL 45 ISSUE 1 19 the early Fisk Jubilee Singers and the re• Historical Black Colleges faced more of a came with the leadership of William L. cordings of the Fisk Quartet. struggle, affected not only by changing Dawson (1899-1990), who directed the Another important professional choir musical fashions, but also by drastic bud- Tuskegee Institute Choir in Alabama to emerge in the late 1920s was conducted by Eva Jessye (1895-1992), who became the first black woman to be internation• ally recognized as a professional choral conductor.61 She gained further promi• Dawson's arrangements and the sound nence through her work as chorus direc• tor for the operatic premiers of Virgil of his choirs introduced a more vigorous Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts and George Gershwin's Porgya nd Bess. 62 Many style of singing the spirituals. of the leading black concert artists of the day passed through Eva jessye's choirs. Professional black choirs continue to play an important role in the preservation and get retrenchment in their institutions from 1931-55. Dawson began his tenure advancement of the spiritual, ranging from brought on by the Depression. Fisk Uni• at Tuskegee by bringing a 100-voice longstanding groups such as the Albert versity decided to disband the Jubilee college choir to perform for an entire McNeil] ubilee Singers in Los Angeles (be• Singers in 1932 until their director, week at the opening of Radio City Music ginning in 1968) and the Brazeal Dennard Henrietta (Mrs. James) Myers, formed a Hall in New York City in 1932. Chorale in Detroit (from 1972) to newer successful octet touring group and per• Dawson's arrangements and the sound groups such as the Moses Hogan Chorale suaded the university to stay the course.63 of his choirs introduced a more vigorous in New Orleans and the recently formed Recordings of the octet under Mrs. Myers's style of singing the spirituals. In Nathaniel Dett Chorale in Toronto. direction64 show the arrangements mov• arrangements such as his Ezekiel saw de ing in a more choral direction. Mean• wheel, Ev 'ry Time I Feel the Spirit, and while, the college began to develop a larger Ain '-a That Good News! the rhythmic William L. Dawson and the all-student mixed choir, as was the case at momentum of the song brings to mind Emergence of Large Mixed many other schools, such as the Hamp• the contemporary accounts of the slaves Choirs in the Historical ton Institute under the Canadian-born singing in a ring shout, where they Black Colleges composer R. Nathaniel Dett. "would make the dense old woods, for During this same pre-war period, the A major step forward in the performance miles around, reverberate with their wild professional touring ensembles from the of the spirituals by larger college choirs songs."65 His trademark closing phrases
20 CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 are full of richly voiced extended The Spiritual spiritual to penetrate the minds of its harmonies that bring the accumulated as Freedom Song listeners with the meaning the songs had rhythmic energy to an ecstatic conclusion. Looking back, we can see how each of in the hearts of those who performed (Example 14
68 ff a tempo f ==~-ppp >.------p s ------
Steal a-way, steal a-way, steala - way,------steal a-way home, _ a tempo pp PPP > -r- > A
Steal a - way, steal a - way, _ steal a-way, __ steal a - way. _ a tempo pp PPP • > > -r- > T
Steal a - way, steal a- way,------steal a - way,_
Steal a - way,
74 p PP======-=~--pppp "'
steal a - way _ home.(hum) _ pp======-- pppp "' ._ .... _ steal a-way, steal a-~ home.(hum) _ Soli for 3 Tenors p
> > s: ain 'r got long to stay here, steal a-way, steal a-way, steal a - way. __ ======~--pppp "' steal a- way, steal a - way,_ a-way ho·-•me.(hum) ------· Figure 2. William L. Dawson, Steal Away, Ending, mm. 68 - 80.
CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 21 the spiritual Hold On! from "Keep on college students joining their black broth• American spiritual in the enslavement of climbin', and don't you tire,/ Ev'ry rung ers and sisters in singing freedom songs in one group of people by another make it goes high'r and high'r," to "We're gonna the 1960s, as a white director of pre• significant. It is a measure of the achieve• ride for civil rights,/ we're gonna ride both dominantly white choirs, I am frequently ment of the people who first sang these black and white."66 The revival of the approached by my white students with a melodies that their songs not only served spiritual as freedom song, sung by whole confession that they don't feel right about to sustain a sense of hope for the slave rooms or streets full of people whose only singing the spirituals. On one level this community through great adversity, but audience was a transfixed world looking expression of unformed white guilt also have gone on to speak powerfully of on, was not just a by-product of the move• reflects an admirable recognition that this the desire for hope in the face of despair ment, but an essential expression of music grows out of the suffering of a for people all over the world as America's its heart and soul. (Example 15 people who were enslaved by the society most recognizable form of vocal music.
NOTES I John W. Work (III), American Negro Songs and Spirituals (New York: Bonanza Books, 1940). 2 Fisk jubilee Singers Volumes 1 ( 1909-1911) and 2 (1915-1920). Document Records, DOCD-5533,5534; for recent recordings of the current Fisk Jubilee Singers under Paul Kwami, see the college Web site at
22 CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 choral repertoire. (Smithsonian/Folkways SF 40031). More 1972) 416; Ward, 399-400. 4 17 For a thorough recent discussion of issues of recently, Bernice Johnson Reagon has For an introduction to black-face minstrelsy, authenticity related to the understanding recorded the congregational singing of see Southern The Music, 89-96, and of the spiritual (well beyond stylistic current churches who still remain tied to Bean, Hatch, McNamara ed., Inside the performance issues), see Jon Cruz, these earlier ways of singing: Wade in the Minstrel Mask-Readings in Nineteenth• Culture on the Margins-The Black Water, Volume II, African-American Century Blackface Minstrelsy (Hanover, Spiritual and the Rise of American Cultural Congregational Singing (Smithsonian/ NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996). Interpretation. (Princeton: Princeton U. Folkways, CD SF40073). For a thorough discussion of the broader Press, 1999). Cruz credits educators in 8 Southern, 181-2. cultural ramifications and complexities of the new black colleges for preserving a 9 Frederick F. Douglass, Narrative of the Lift of the minstrel period, see Eric Lott, Love cultural tradition that was otherwise in Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Theft-BlackfaceM instrelsy and the danger of being lost (the freed slaves often Written by Himself(I845; reprint, New American Working Class. Lott's thesis is showed little interest in preserving the York: Penguin Books, 1982), 58 (quoted that the minstrelsy movement represented songs because they reminded them of by Cruz, Culture, 23). For a detailed a complex love/hare relationship between their oppression, while white society study of the ante-helium origins of the white society and black culture, a way in treated black musical sources with black spiritual, see Dena]. Epstein, Sinfal which whites deal with their fascination ridicule and appropriation). But at the Tunes and Spirituals-Black Folk Music with this culture and their repressed need same time, he feels this wider exposure to the Civil War (Urbana: University of to overcome racial segregation, not led to a romanticized approach by Illinois Press, 1977). because of the injustice it brought to northern white liberal abolitionists and a 10 Southern, 201-3. blacks, bur because of the void it left in detached scientific approach by emerging 11 Southern, 198. white culture. 18 academic folklorists, both of which served 12 Andrew Ward, Dark Midnight When 1 Rise Southern, 237. 19 to distance the observers from the people (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Ir doesn't rake much to see the offence who originally sang the spirituals and 2000) 83, 90. Ward's book contains a intended in some of the texts, like "Ol' their predicament, and by extension, the thorough and detailed account of the Dan Tucker," who "washed his face with predicament they faced in the rapidly origins and first tours of the Fisk] ubilee a fryin' pan, combed his hair with a industrializing and segregated North Singers, and was accompanied by a video wagon wheel," etc., but with other songs alongside the failure of Reconstruction documentary produced by WGBH and whose words on the surface seem more in the South. Nashville Public Television for the PBS benign (i.e., "Turkey in the Straw"), the The Earliest Negro Vocal Quartets-1894- American Experience series: Llewellyn fact that their crude texts were applied to 1928. Document Records: DOCD-5061. Smith and Andrew Ward,jubilee Singers: black folk music by white entertainers For a complete catalogue listing of Sacrifice and Glory (60") available solely for rhe purpose of enhancing the Document's historic re-issues, see through
CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE I 23 1865-1946 (University of Alabama: Negro Songs and Spirituals (New York: (1909), DOCD-5534 track 17 (1920). 1980) 49 (cited in Ward, 383). Bonanza Books, 1940). John Work II 46 Work, American Negro Songs 199. 23 Ward, 394-5. and his folklorist brother Frederick 47 Document-Records DOCD-5535 tracks 24 Southern, 229. published several collections and histories 3-8 (1926). 48 25 Ward, 139. of the spiritual, most notably Folk Song Southern, 365ff. 26 Lott, 235-6. of the American Negro (New York: Negro 49 See James H. Cone's penetrating look at the 27 Ward, 373-93. Universities Press, 1915). connections between spirituals and the 28 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk 37 Document-Records DOCD-5533 track 2 blues, in The Spirituals and the Blues: An (1903; reprint ed., New York: Signet (1909). Interpretation (New York: Seabury Press, Classic 1995), 267, quoted in Tim 38 Document-Records DOCD-5533 track 14 1972). Brooks, "'Might Take One Disc of This (1911). 5° For a probing discussion of the relationship Trash as a Novelty" : Early Recordings 39 Document-Records DOCD-5534 track 8 between the spiritual and gospel music, by the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the (1915). see Marvin V. Curtis, "African-American Popularization of "Negro Folk Music,'" 40 Document-Records DOCD-5533 track 6 Spirituals and Gospel Music: Historical American Music 18:3 [Fall 2000] 282 (the (1909). Similarities and Differences" in the phrase at the beginning of the title of 41 Deane L. Root: 'Foster, Stephen Collins', Choral journal 41:8, March 2001, 9-21. Brooks' s article refers to a remark made Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy One important instance where the black by Thomas Edison before deciding not (Accessed 30 April, 2004), http:// church did not abandon the spiritual was to issue three test cylinder recordings of www.grovemusic.com. For a provocative in the "Wings Over Jordan" choir, the Fisk Jubilee Quartet [Brooks 295]). recent biography of the composer with founded by pastor Glenn T. Settle of 29 Brooks (283) suggests that the quartet that an overview of the place of Foster's songs Gethsemane Church in Cleveland, which made the first Victor recordings was in American culture, see Ken Emerson's broadcast a popular weekly radio show drawn from a larger Fisk chorus, but Doo-dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of to the nation on CBS between 1939 and without citing a reference. Ward (404) American Popular Culture (NY: Simon 1949, with breaks during the war to says that there was a period from 1916 & Schuster, 1997). For a detailed study perform for the troops in Europe to 1925 where Fisk supported a of the sources and interpretations of (Southern, 423). professional quartet and a student choir Foster's song texts, see William W. 51 Some purists of the style are concerned even for fund-raising performances, citing Austin's Susanna, Jeanie, and the Old today by some of the extended jazz Richardson 81. Folks at Home: The Songs of Stephen C. harmonies such as those found in Larry 29 V. Hicks, 'Barbershop', The New Grove Foster from His Time to Ours, 2nd edition Farrow's arrangements and some of the Dictionary of Music Online ed L. Macy (Urbana and Chicago: University of gospel-inflected spirituals such as chose (Accessed 8/ 15/03), <~ Illinois Press, 1987). of the late Moses Hogan, though others www.grovemusic.com>. 42 Brooks, 300, 306. rejoice what they consider to be the 31 Brooks, 284. 43 Document-Records DOCD-5534, tracks renewing variety these and other recent 32 Brooks, 283-286. 13-24 and DOCD-5535 (Fisk University composers have brought to the tradition. 33 Document-Records DOCD-5533 cover. Singers, Vol. 3). Edison cylinder 52 Brooks, 299. 34 Brooks, 289. recordings from 1911, 1916, and 1920 5·0 Southern, 483. 35 Brooks, 297-8. can be found on DOCD-5613 (The 54 Southern, 267-8. 36 The harmonizations on the early recordings Earliest Negro Vocal Groups, Vol. 5). 55 H.C. Colles, "Antonin Dvorak in the New are fairly close to those preserved in John 44 Brooks, 296. World" in The Musical Times, vol. 82, W. Work III's later collection American 45 Document-Records DOCD-5533 track 5 no. 1180 (1941), referenced by John Clapham in Antonin Dvorak: Musician and Craftsman (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1966), 90. 56 Document-Records DOCD-5613, tracks Masterworks Chorale, founded in 1940, is a 1-5. leading 100-voice chorus located in the 57 For re-issued recordings of the Hall Johnson Artistic Boston area. The Chorale performs a three• concert series at Sanders Theatre in Cam• Choir, see Document-Records DOCD- Director bridge with professional orchestra, conducts 5566, Negro Choirs - 1926-1931 (tracks community sings at the holidays and in the 19-24 recorded 1930-31) and summer, and works with student choruses Document-Records DOCD-5608, 1940s from area high schools. The Chorale is Vocal Groups Vol. 2 - 1940- 1945 (tracks seeking a dynamic leader with a clear focus 5-15 recorded 1940-4 l). Jiil on quality, excellent interpersonal skills, an 58 understanding of managerial and orgamza• Hall Johnson, "Notes on the Negro THE MASTERWORKS CHORALE tional issues, and an interest in outreach to Spiritual," in Readings in Black American other musical organizations and to the Music, rev. edition ed. Eileen Southern community at large. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983). Submit resumes to Jennifer McDonald, General Manager, 59 The movie version of The Green Pastures P.O. Box 323, Lexington, MA 02420 or to [email protected] (1936) has been transferred to
24 CHORAL JOURNAL VOL. 45 ISSUE 1 videocassette - MGM/UA Home Video, ISBN: 079281794X. 60 Allen Woll, Black Musical Theater - From "Coonto um " to "Dreamgirls," (Baton Rouge; LSU Press, 1989), 137-141. 61 Southern, 422. 62 The 1940 original cast recording of Porgy and Bess was re-issued in 1992 by MCA Classics - MCAD 10520. 63 Doug Seroff, "Mrs. James A. Myers, 1989 Gospel Arts Day Honoree: A Life devoted ro the Spiricual," in Gospel Arts Day• Nashville, June 18, 1989, cired by Brooks, 307. 64 Document-Records DOCD-5535 cracks 9-29 (1935-1940). 65 See note 10 above. Dawson can be heard conducting rhe Tuskegee Insricure Choir on the album Spirituals originally released on Westminster Gold/MCA. A CD can be obtained from Neil Kjos Music Company. 66 For printed versions of spirituals that were adapted as freedom songs, see Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs! compiled and edited by Guy and Candie Carawan. (Berhelehem, Pa.: Sing Our Corp., 1990); includes songs originally published in: We Shall Overcome (1963) and Freedom is a Constant Struggle ( 1968), "I have worked with many travel specialists, but Classical Movements, by Oak Publications. For recordings of Inc. stands above the rest- they provide the most memorable concerts in these songs from the period, see the most prestigious venues. Their tours provide the finest experience at Smithsonian Folkways CD(2) SF 40084, an extraordinary value. I readily endorse them." Voices of the Civil Rights Movement• Black American Freedom Songs, 1960- 1966 (re-issued 1997). -.:J">~•
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