226 PART 2 | FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORLD WAR I
Allen, Ware, and Garrison compiled Slave Songs to document a disappearing
oral practice—much as Alice Fletcher, Frances Densmore, and other ethnogra-
phers would document American Indian music later in the nineteenth century.
But Slave Songs was also the beginning of the process of turning black spirituals
into a written repertory accessible to all. Soon that larger project of dissemina-
tion would be taken up by a new generation of educated African Americans.THE SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMED
Fisk University in Nashv ille, Tennessee, founded in 1865 w ith a white faculty, was
one of the schools organized by Northern missionary societies to educate the
former slaves and their children. Dependent on donations from the North, the
school struggled to fi nd income in its early years. Then in 1870 the choir formed
at Fisk under the direction of Northern-born faculty member George L. White
performed at a national teachers’ convention in Nashville to such enthusiasm
that White began to imagine a fund-raising tour of the North by a select group
of singers, emphasizing spirituals. In the fall of 1871 the Fisk Jubilee Singers set
out on their bold venture. After performing in Oberlin, Ohio, for a convention of
Congregational ministers, who were deeply touched by the singing, and receiv-
ing further endorsement from New York’s leading clerg ymen, the Jubilee Singers
became a sensation in the Northeast. Having far surpassed the college’s fi nancial
expectations, they continued to tour for many years to come, including journeys
to the British Isles and the European continent. Their performances during just
their fi rst seven years of touring enriched Fisk University by $150,000.
The professional demeanor of the Jubilee Singers helped them bring the
past of Southern slaves to the notice of Northern Protestants, who responded
to the spirituals’ message of individual salvation. And Theodore F. Seward’s
arrangements, published in book form and sold at the concerts, could be sung
by anyone. One chronicler writes: “Hills and valleys, parlors and halls, wher-
ever they went, were vocal with jubilee melodies”—melodies tailored to suit
audiences who might have found their original form less pleasing to cultivated
sensibilities.
As pictured in the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ repertory of spirituals, the slave’s
place in the world overlaps with that of the Christian sinner. Both view life as
a hard journey, and both seek eternal peace
when death brings release from this “vale of
tears.” A key difference is that while Christian
sinners are weighed down by a sense of their
own wrongdoing, slaves suffered more acutely
from the wrongs of others. Nevertheless, white
sinner and black slave held in common a sense
of standing alone in a hostile world, and black
spirituals appealed across cultural barriers by
communicating how it felt to live in that state.
“Home” is a key notion in many spirituals.
The slaves, though, sang not about the domestic
institution that songs like “Home, Sweet Home”
celebrate but rather about an idea of home.K The Jubilee Singers of
Fisk University, Nashville,
Tennessee, photographed
around 1880.172028_09_205-230_r3_ko.indd 226 23/01/13 11:29 AM