Fisk University Jubilee Quartet

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Fisk University Jubilee Quartet · The Fisk Jubilee Singers are an African American a cappella ensemble of students from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The university was founded after the Civil War to educate freed slaves and other young Black Americans. In 1871 the money threatened to run out. Treasurer and music director George Leonard White, a white missionary from the North, put together a choir of nine students to raise money on tour. On 6 October 1871 that tour began in Cincinnati, with two quartets and a pianist.

Music and breakthrough

The first repertoire consisted mainly of traditional spirituals, supplemented by a few songs by Stephen Foster. The singers travelled through the United States and also went to Europe, where other groups performed later in the nineteenth century. After a concert in Cincinnati they donated their small profit to the victims of the great Chicago fire. The quartet made a recording of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot in 1909. In 2002 the Library of Congress added that recording to the National Recording Registry. In 2008 the Jubilee Singers received the National Medal of Arts.

Influence

The singing is in several parts and unaccompanied, with a warm, calm blend of voices. The group made the spiritual, the song of the slaves, known to a white audience and showed that this music was an art form in its own right. In doing so it laid a foundation for much later American popular music, from gospel to soul. In School of Rock the 1909 recording is one of the earliest sound examples.

Listening

• 
  Swing Low, Sweet Chariot · Fisk University Jubilee Quartet, 1909
  Apple Music ↗
• 
  Swing Low, Sweet Chariot · Fisk Jubilee Singers, 1909
  Apple Music ↗

Discography

Studio albums

• 2003In Bright Mansions

See also

• Spirituals and gospel
• Work songs and field hollers