Okay, okay, maybe I’m being a little too cynical with this heading title. However, I am now going to talk about the commodification of the Negro spiritual when it came to the Fisk Jubilee singers.
The group was started in 1871 by George L. White, the treasurer and music director at Fisk University. He formed the nine-student choral ensemble on tour to raise money for the school. On the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ own website, there is the following statement:
“The first concerts were in small towns. Surprise, curiosity, and some hostility were the early audience response to these young black singers who did not perform in the traditional ‘minstrel fashion.'”
On the website, it never says if the students willingly participated in the group (although, nowadays, participation is voluntary). Were the singers forced to participate? The power dynamic between a white school administrator and a Black student would have been greater back then, only 7 years after emancipation. Did George L. White know that the singers would attract attention for being unusual at the time? It just seems a little odd to me. However, I do appreciate that George L. White did not make the singers perform in “minstrel fashion,” which was the only way Black performers could break into the industry at the time.
The Jubilee Singers did well. They performed for the president, Ulysses S. Grant, at the World Peace Festival in Boston, and toured around Europe. They raised enough money to construct Fisk University’s first permanent structure, which is designated a National Historic Landmark and so aptly named Jubilee Hall.