No single group has given African-American spirituals greater exposure in this country, or around the world, than the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in Nashville.
Mark Twain, in a letter to friends in England in the early 1870s, a year or two after the group formed, wrote: "I do not know when anything has moved me as did the plaintive melodies of the Jubilee Singers."
White people could not imitate them, he added, "for one must have been a slave himself in order to feel what that life was and so convey the pathos of it in the music."
"The spirituals were born in a period when our people were oppressed," said Odessa Settles, a Nashville native who sings in a group that's dedicated itself to keeping the music alive for more than four decades now.
"The spirituals came from the slaves singing about their condition and then the music was passed down. That's the nature of the spirituals."
Settles grew up hearing the songs of the Jubilee Singers in her home. "My father did gospel quartet singing," she said, referring to Walter Settles, former lead singer of the Grammy-winning quartet the Fairfield Four. "The music of the Jubilee Singers greatly influenced that performance style.
"I now perform in a group called the Princely Players," Settles went on to say.
"We formed 41 years ago at the height of the civil rights movement, and one of the things that we still do today is preserve the spirituals. We tell the story of the African-American experience in this country through a cappella singing and dramatic presentation.
"Our current show travels from Africa through the Middle Passage through slavery through the civil rights movement. We believe in the necessity of preserving that rich culture."
Singing with emotion
In successive incarnations, the Fisk Jubilee Singers have been performing spirituals, a uniquely African-American form of folk song, for audiences around the globe for the better part of 150 years.
"I don't think I could overstate just how important the Jubilee Singers have been to African-American culture," said Karen Parks, a conservatory-trained soprano who made her latest album, Nobody Knows, a record consisting entirely of spirituals composed or arranged by Harry T. Burleigh, at the Blair School of Music.
"The Jubilee Singers sang with a raw emotion about things like oppression, life, death and hope. Everyone, no matter what their background, has known grief or despair. Everyone has hoped for something. The spirituals that they sang and continue to sing are maybe the most authentic of that type of music."
The performances of the Jubilee Singers, Parks added, are authentic from a strictly musical standpoint as well.
"Technically," she said, "there's a natural percussiveness in not only the language but the rhythms of the spirituals. It has either a rock or a rubato. There's a beat in the spirituals when they're sung properly. The performances of the Jubilee Singers have always captured those innate rhythms. They demonstrated that you really don't need anything other than human voices to sing them."
Tennessean.com
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080226/ENTERTAINMENT01/802260319
